The Fruit of the Holy Spirit - Chapter 2
Love
The first fruit of the Spirit of which Paul speaks in Galatians chapter five is the fruit of ‘Love’. The English language is rather poor when it comes to talking about love. Greek, the language in which the New Testament was first written has several different words to express the various kinds of love there are. In English we speak of loving all sorts of things and really it is only another way of saying that we like them. We say we love fruit and flowers, and the fresh air and animals, but really we only like these things, even though we may like them very much. Then we use the word love for the sexual desire between men and women. This may include love but it may not, because it can often be only lust - without love at all.
There is a love, though, which is a true love whether it is between man and wife, brother and sister, parent and child, or friend and friend. This love means devotion, willingness to sacrifice, to give ourselves to the one we love, and to work for the very best and highest in their lives. When we think of this love at its very highest level it is God’s love. Sadly, merely human love is often spoilt and ruined by wrong motives and by sin. Sinfulness has been a part of mankind’s character from the earliest days of man’s history, and it is because of this that human love has been spoilt. It has become tarnished, and is often nothing more than selfishness, rather than true devotion and the desire for the good of others.
God’s love is pure and unspoilt. It is a holy Love. It wants and desires only the very best for mankind. God so loves us that He gave His only Son to die for us. He did this so that He could reconcile us to Himself, deal with our sin, and restore us to His likeness.
In The First Letter of John, in the New Testament of the Bible, in chapter 4 verses 8 and 16, we read that ‘‘God is love’’. The Christian faith believes in one God, one essential Being and this Being is holy love. Within this one Being there are three distinctions, The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit. These three are coequal and co-eternal. They are equal in majesty and power. No one of them is greater than the others or differs in desire from the others. What one desires, all desire, and what one wills, all will. Love works perfectly within the Godhead. It is the perfect bond which unites them in the one Godhead. There is perfect harmony, and it is this love which is the very essence of God.
There are two marks of true love. It wants to give its own blessedness and nature to others. But it also desires those who are loved to return love in devotion, gratitude and service. God’s love to us is revealed in the giving of the Lord Jesus Christ for us, and in Christ’s willingness to die for us. God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. And so He asks of us our love, devotion and obedience in return. Humanly and naturally this would be impossible because of our sin, but God makes it possible for us to become possessors of His love so that we can love Him back. ‘‘We love’’, says John, ‘‘because He first loved us’’ (1 John 4 v. 19).
Not quite every time, but most times, when the New Testament wants to speak about this kind of love it uses a special word to express it. It is a different word from those used to mean sexual love, or love between relatives and friends. It is not merely a word of emotion, though it can include emotion; it means ‘‘supreme choice’’. God set His love upon us to do the best for us, to save us from sin and to make us like Himself. This is what we have just considered. This was God’s supreme choice. We have to love Him in the same way. We have to set Him above all else and choose Him before all else. I will say more about this later.
Paul has a whole chapter on this fruit of love. You will find it in his First Letter to the Corinthians - it is chapter 13. The letter was written to one of his difficult churches. Its members were given to boasting, and loved to be praised as wonderful Christians. Paul wrote to correct this and to advise them on many other matters. Their worship was often spoilt by each trying to do better than the others. Paul told them not to be eager to get all sorts of spiritual gifts, but to make sure that they had the best gift of all - the gift of love. He describes this gift of love very fully in this chapter 13. His heart burns and he is borne away into the thought of love and pictures it in glowing terms.
He says it is the most important gift of all. We can speak with the tongues of angels, but unless we have love it is nothing more than a clanging gong. We can give away all we have in gifts to the poor, and we can suffer and die as martyrs, but without love it does no good. All we do is useless unless love is the source and motive. All our activity if we do not have love is like the body without life, the engine without power. All is useless unless love drives and enthuses. Love is the fulfilling of God’s law. Love like this matters more than anything.
Paul continues in 1 Corinthians 13 to speak of some of the marks of love. Some of them occur again in the list of the fruit in Galatians chapter 5 of which we are thinking, so we will not say much about them here. It makes us see, though, that Paul though of love as the source of all the rest of the ‘‘Fruit of the Spirit’’. Let us look at some of the marks of love mentioned in 1 Corinthians 13 which are not mentioned in the list in Galatians 5.
Paul tells them first of all that love does not envy. Envy and jealousy are evil, bitter feelings which spoil the christian life. There is nothing wrong in desiring the best spiritual gifts - Paul urges us to do so. It is wrong, though, when, because others have what we see as better gifts, we have ill feelings towards them and feel resentful. When we allow the love of God to fill our hearts, these evil feelings are driven out.