Love: The Fruit of the Spirit

You can’t really argue with love. It's something we all want and it's something we all need. Yet, I would guess that most of us have a little bit of a different definition of what love actually means. As Matteo came into this world, I find myself saying “I love you” more than I ever have in my life. The more I say it, the more I ask myself, “How does love take a shape that is more than just words? How do I live out that love?” The question goes further though, how do I love you and my neighbor in the same way I love my son? I’m reminded that the famous wedding love passage from 1 Corinthians 13 - “Love is patient, love is kind . . .” wasn’t actually written for romantic love, it was meant for the whole community of Corinth and was a message of how we as Christians might live out love together. On top of that, Paul only got to that description of love after 13 chapters of talking about unity, faith, struggles, and more. It would seem that there is much more to love than we might initially think. Thank God that God’s Holy Spirit who is love is with us to show us along the way and lead us to a love that overcomes everything else.

There is this beautiful theological concept that I want to briefly touch on. The idea is that the love between God the Father and God the Son that existed before time before anything was created was so full and powerful that their love is actually a person and has an identity, which is the Holy Spirit. Perfect Love itself has an identity in God’s Spirit. This also means that it was love who hovered over the chaotic waters and brought order to creation. It is love that upholds our world and leads it towards God’s purpose. And ultimately, we are given the Holy Spirit, because the Father’s love for the Son has been communicated onto us, as we are adopted through Christ to become God’s children.

This is just the beginning of what that powerful phrase, “God is love” means. The interesting thing about this is that Christians are the only ones that can truly say that. We are the only ones that can say our God is love and love is the foundation of everything. Why you might ask? Well, it comes down to the amazing and mysterious doctrine of the Trinity. You see we as Christians don’t just believe that a man named Jesus is also at the same time God, but we believe that there are three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in our singular and one God and that it has been this way forever and before anything was. If God is in himself a community that means that He could be truly living out and acting out love for the other before anything was. And the only way that three could ever truly be one is through constant mutual self-sacrificial love, where they are completely and utterly in a continuous act of self-giving for the other. Yet, as they act for the other they also serve themselves. Which is the root of the command, love one another as you love yourself. If there was a primariness to God or just a singular personhood to God, then love must start as a selfish, self-centered love. Sadly, too many people in this world today are following that kind of god and living out that kind of love to the detriment of themselves and others. Or if someone has no God, it means that love has no primary purpose and shape other than a tool or a means to an end (maybe something like progeny or self-fulfillment). Again, too many people live out this kind of love.

So in the midst of this, when so many versions of love are out in the world and when we have seen so many loves that actually hurt people, how do we know what love is? It’s simple. If God is love, then coming to know him more, means that we come to know what love truly is.

We have the Holy Spirit with us and so we have access to the fullness of God and ultimately His love. Even in that simple reality of the gift of the Holy Spirit, that is God’s love with us, we already begin to see the shape of God’s love. God loves, he gives, he sacrifices, he is present, he is patient, even before we know how to love him, even before we love him as we should. We know love, not because we love God, but because God loved us first.

There are so many ways to experience and understand God’s love for us. As I already mentioned, the gift of the Holy Spirit, but from the beginning of time God gave us dominion, purpose, and potential knowing that we would misuse it. He dwelled with us and made great promises to us, even in the midst of betrayal, selfishness, manipulation, murder, and more. He has never punished us as we deserve.

Of course, the greatest vision of God’s love for us is Jesus Christ. First, he gave up his dominion and power as God to become human and walk among us. We can never truly understand how much of a sacrifice this humbling was. But he entered into all of our humanity, he was born, tempted, struggled, mourned, betrayed, abandoned, abused, tortured, and finally killed, all out of love for us. On top of that, he did this all while we were still enemies of God because we were the very ones acting this abuse and betrayal out. Jesus says, “No one has greater love than this, to lay one’s life down for a friend”. Yet, in Jesus’ story, we see that Jesus considered us friends before we ever considered him ours. We would do well to dwell on this story to understand God’s love which is true love better.

Remember, that God’s love in Jesus’ story wasn’t about doing what people wanted, or what they thought was right. In fact, Jesus' death is because he opposed what they thought was right or good, he usually stood in the way of it. Instead, Jesus lives and dies not for what they want, but what they need. In light of this 1 John 4:14 gives us a great challenge to our love by telling us what we need. It says, “We have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Saviour of the world”. The first need is probably a little more obvious, we have seen the Son as our saviour. We know, at least to some degree, that His is an amazing and life-changing love, that feeds us, fills us, and saves us from the evils of this world. Though we always need to understand this better. The second part is the greater challenge to our love. We have seen God’s love, but are we testifying to it? Are we speaking it to others? Are we showing it and sharing it? We know what a drastic and life-changing reality God’s love is to our life, if we are not sharing it and trying to lead others to that salvation and beautiful love of Jesus Christ, it means that we aren’t truly loving them as we should, because we aren’t leading them to what they need. We aren’t leading them to the love of God, in the Holy Spirit that can forever lead them out of the destruction and hurt of this world into the fullness and beauty of God’s love and that's something they need too.

I’m not pretending this is easy, but love isn’t always easy either. Showing God’s love and speaking it to others isn’t safe, but it is good. I have been challenged by the impetus of love to do evangelism for a long time. I am constantly in prayer for friends, family members, and acquaintances that they might find the love of Jesus Christ and that I will have the courage and opportunity will be created for me to speak God’s love for them. Sometimes I have been challenged to create that opportunity myself, by inviting someone to read the bible with me, or to ask them a question about their faith, or simply asking, “Could we find a time when I could share with you my faith?” Sometimes I see fruit and sometimes I don’t, but I know God is using it to show His love.

So we have learned that in order to understand and live out true love that existed before the dawn of time, we must first know God’s love and love Him in return and the Holy Spirit as God’s love, who is with us, give us the opportunity to both know and practice this love. We have also seen that in order to love someone and ourselves, it is important to see with God’s eyes not what we or they want, but what we need. Lastly, as we look at Jesus’ love on the cross that overcame, even suffering and death, I want to look at how love makes us more than conquerors.

If Jesus’ love is powerful enough to overcome death, what could His powerful love living in us do? Ultimately, it can and will overcome all of it, so we have nothing to be afraid of. Jesus’ love casts out fear, because we know we always have bounty, family and joy in Him, there is no punishment, no retribution that can take that away. That means that we can face anything. We can face our own death, we can face any amount of suffering, or going without, or loss of friends, because we know we already have more than enough in the love of God. We should do everything to have it and share His love. And we know that God’s love will lead to restoration even of those things we lost. At Jesus’ trial, torture and death, he literally lost everything, even the percieved presence of God, yet when he was resurrected, everything was restored to Him. In Christ, we are more than conquerors of these things, we don’t just overcome them, we see more as a result of them. Through Christ’s love the strange thing is that even the worst things like death and suffering become our allies and the means to our love and salvation. The hard part for us is that love doesn’t mean restoration right away, love doesn’t mean that we don’t have to struggle, it means that we move towards something together, knowing what is good and struggling to get people there with us. Love is finding and living in God’s salvation and kingdom, as much as possible, together. Since we do it together with God we know we will overcome.

We love because Christ first loved us and what an amazing, all surpassing and beautiful love it is that we can truly know and live out through the Holy Spirit. AMEN

"Love is a many splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love." Or so the medley of popular love songs from Moulin Rouge says. Whether or not we take this romantic sentiment to heart or not, we know that love (not just romantic) is very important. Most of us will recognize it as a fundamental need, both for our wellbeing, but also for a healthy ability to live out in the world. So, the essential questions should be, what is love, how do we get it, and how do we live it out?

This Sunday as we explore the Holy Spirit's Fruit of love, we will be exploring how God is ultimately the source and definition of love, how he freely gives it and how we might live it out faithfully through our relationship with him. As I spend more time as a father, I realize more and more that love is something wonderful and beautiful, but that doesn't mean it is always easy or obvious. It is Jesus who defines and empowers the love that can transform our lives and world.