Word of Salvation – Vol.27 No.15 – January 1982
The Fruit Of The Spirit – Love
Sermon by Rev. J. Houseward on Galatians 5:22
Scripture Reading: Galatians 5:13-26
Psalter Hymnal: 373; 396; 440; 462
Beloved Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
The Bible uses the term ‘fruit’ literally in the Old Testament. Sometimes this is given a moral or spiritual meaning – as in Psalm 1. The blessed man is likened to a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season. Jesus taught us that good and bad trees are distinguished by their fruit. The word of God is the good seed. When the good seed is sown in the heart, fruit comes forth in the measure of the understanding and faith to receive it.
Galatians 5:22,23 lists the Fruit of the Spirit as a cluster of nine manifestations or endowments. This fruit is given to all Christians, and it is not the same as gifts – or charismata – such as the working of miracles, prophecy and speaking in tongues. The first word or manifestation listed is: love. Perhaps you are thinking that you have heard enough about love, yet you must admit there is great confusion about the meaning of love. Or you might think you know all about love, although you have not seen much love in action. Let us admit that we have only a small beginning in loving God and our neighbour. May the Holy Spirit use this message to give us greater understanding, fervour and love in action.
- The Gift of the Spirit
The book of 2Peter 1:3-11 has what might be called the fruit of the Spirit. Some of the words are different. The words or fruit are given in the form of additions or steps. The list begins with faith and then adds goodness, knowledge self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness and ends with love.
Verse 3 says, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness. This verse tells us the fruit of the Spirit is a gift. This gift comes from “His divine power”. Verse 4 tells us that by faith we “may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world.” Galatians 5:22 teaches us the Person of the Holy Spirit gives this fruit to believers.
C.S. Lewis in his book The Four Loves divides love into four categories: Affection, Friendship, Eros, and Charity. This book is helpful reading. For our purposes in describing love I would like to use these categories using the content of the Bible to explain the meanings.
A. Affection:
In 2Timothy 3 Paul gives Timothy warnings of the last days. Verse 3 begins “without natural affection”; the NIV says “without love”. Romans 1:31 also uses the word “without natural affection”; the NIV says “heartless”. We show affection for persons, places and things. Think of Jonah’s affection toward a plant, a fast growing vine. It was a miracle plant. The vine grew rapidly and gave Jonah shade from the sun. God notices Jonah’s feelings. Jonah was more concerned over a vine he didn’t plant, water, or make grow, than he was for the city of Nineveh. More affection and concern was shown for a weed than 120,000 people and many cattle.
We all must confess with Jonah that we are sometimes more interested in things than people. We are more interested in a nice lawn than happy children. We are saddened more by the loss of a tree or a bush than the death of an unsaved neighbour.
The Spirit gives us natural affection. The Holy Spirit turns our stony hearts into hearts of flesh. The Spirit turned Paul’s stony and persecuting heart into a heart of love and affection for all men. Hear his words of love toward the saints at Philippi, “God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.” (Phil.1:8). The affection of Christ who gave himself for the church was Paul’s standard. This affection was deeply felt, emotional, stirring, compassionate, and like the tender mercies of the Lord.
B. Friendship:
One of the great friendships of the Bible was the friendship of David and Jonathan. These brave, talented men were knit together in a loving friendship. They swore to be friends with each other and also their descendants were to be friends after them. Proverbs tells us that there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Jonathan had much to lose by this friendship as he was the king’s son. Yet both he and David kept their vow. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the real Friend. He is the friend that sticks closer than a blood relative. In John 15 Jesus teaches us about friendship. He called his disciples friends instead of servants. He let us in on the Master’s business. John 15:13 Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. Jesus not only taught this. He did this for us. Even more so, while we were sinners and enemies Christ died for us. May the Spirit increase our friendship toward one another.
C. Eros or Romance:
The word eros means love, or Eros is the name for the Greek god of love. Much of what goes for love today is physical love, sexual love, and even lust. Love is spelt LUVE. The Bible has examples of substituting the word love for lust. David’s son Amnon loved Tamar his half-sister. His love soon ended with his rape of Tamar. After that Amnon’s love turned into hatred. The modern marriage form has changed “until death do us part” into “until love do us part”. When physical love becomes a god it is a tyrant indeed. Amnon disgraced his sister and paid for his crime by being murdered by Absalom.
There are better examples of eros or physical love. Boaz and Ruth for one couple and Jacob and Rachel for another. Jacob seems to have loved Rachel at first sight. He moved the stone at the well for Rachel by himself. Later he contracted for Rachel by working seven years. The years seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her. After Laban tricked him he worked another seven years for Rachel. God created human beings male and female. Physical love was not given for sin and lust. God instituted marriage for the enrichment of the lives of those who enter the state of marriage. Marriage is for the propagation of the human race and the furtherance of the kingdom of God; the old marriage form tells us.
D. Charity:
Charity is the word to describe the Biblical word for love or agape (a-ga-pay).
It is the word found in John 3:16; “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son”. This is the word love used nine times in 1Corinthians 13, and it is in our text Galatians 5:22. This is not a natural love. It is a love given by the Spirit. This love enables us to love God. It is the fruit of the Spirit. Romans 5:5 says, “God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us”. Praise God that He has given every believer this kind of love.
- THE PLACE OF LOVE.
A. Love is the greatest gifts;
The Bible tells us in 1Corinthians 13:13, “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; But the greatest of these is love.” Love is “the most excellent way. Love is the greater gift.”
Our text lists love first in the nine-fold cluster of fruit. Taken with other passages in Scripture we see that by listing love first it was no accident. The list from 2Peter 1:5-7 ends with love. There the virtues are added one to another until you reach the top. Peter says, Add to your brotherly kindness, love.” Greater, higher than faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, patience, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness is love.
We know from 1Corinthians 13 that speaking in the tongues of men and angels without love makes us only a resounding gong or clanging cymbal. Even the gift of prophecy and the ability to fathom all mysteries and all knowledge without love makes us nothing. The basic gift of faith that can move mountains without love is nothing and makes us nothing. We get nowhere without love.
John’s Epistles feature the importance of love. John in his old age, with all his experience emphasizes love, its greatness, its necessity, and importance. Both negatively and positively John emphasizes we are to love God and our neighbour. Negatively he says, “Anyone who does not love remains in death”. Again John says, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” Positively John emphasizes love, “We love because He first loved us.” “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.” John knew about hatred, the divisions, the prejudices and the sin of division in the church. In order to counter this he lays the heavy emphasis on loving our neighbour.
B. This leads us to a second point on the place of love when we consider love as the glue that holds all the virtues together.
1Corinthians 13 especially emphasizes the greatness of love but it also mentions the necessity of love. Colossians 3:14 says, “And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” Verses 12 and 13 mentions around seven virtues; some of the same found in Galatians 5:22,23. The word “Bind” reminds us that besides faith we need love. The other virtues fall apart when love is absent. Love is the glue that binds the cluster of fruit together. The Spirit gives us love first. The person who speaks in love the languages of earth and heaven has something to say. When the gift of prophecy and knowledge is used in love we are something. Love builds up. Love in the heart of the martyr gains a reward. Our gifts to the poor given in love give us a blessing in this life and in the life to come. May the Spirit give us this love in good measure.
C. The place of love in God’s redemptive plan is central.
The Bible tells us God is love. Love is an attribute of God. Love is part of God’s nature. God reveals His love best when He sent His Son to die on the cross. As little children we learned John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Paul inspired by the Spirit wrote Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” John in his first epistle tells us how God showed his love. 1John 4:9,10, “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” The book of Revelation tells us of the love of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. Revelation 1:5, “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood.”
Charles Wesley in one of his hymns speaks of this amazing love when he says, “Amazing love! How can it be?
That Thou my God shouldst die for me?” and he repeats it a second time,
“Amazing love! How can it be
That Thou, my God shouldst die for me?”
May that be our testimony today that Christ loved us and died for us and arose for us.
- THE EXPRESSION OF LOVE.
The fruit of the Spirit is love. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts and lives.
A. In this chapter, Galatians 5 what does Paul mean when he says the fruit of the Spirit is love?
Is it love for God or is it love for our neighbour? We know from the Bible it has to be both. We are to love God and love our neighbour. But what is the emphasis of the context?
The emphasis is placed on the second table of the law – what James called the royal law. Galatians 5:13-15 speaks of: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” The believers were challenged to serve one another in love. Freedom is to be used for loving one another and serving one another. Verse 15 takes us a little by surprise as this is just the opposite of the fruit of the Spirit is love. Paul says in verse 15, “If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.” The sentimental picture of the early church as a perfect church is just not true.
B. There were at least three groups in the Galatian Church.
The first group were the legalists. The first four chapters deal with these legalists or Judaizers. They were accused by Paul of turning to another Gospel which was no gospel. These legalists were insisting on a gospel of works. They said that Christians had to be circumcised; they had to keep special days, weeks, months, and years. The legalists were enslaved to laws, rules and their own good works. Salvation came basically from the works of men and not the grace of God.
The second group might be called the libertines. They had accepted the doctrine of grace and were against legalism and rules of man. But they had gone too far, for they were committing acts of the sinful nature. As we find it today in the church, they justified sexual immorality, perversion, drunkenness, impurity, hatred and the like. In the name of freedom they had largely given up the struggle against sin and followed their natural feelings.
The third group were the believers who were trying to follow the gospel. They were saved by grace through faith; they were trying to serve one another in love, and they were showing forth the fruit of the Spirit: love.
The Holy Spirit not only changes our hearts, leads us to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, but the Spirit brings forth future in the believer. The members of the Galatian Church needed to get back on the straight and narrow way. The lost direction of the legalists and the libertine had to be changed. They had to live by the Spirit and not the sinful nature.
C. What does it mean to have the fruit of the Spirit love?
The love of God in John 3:16 is described as giving. God so loved that He gave. When we love we are to give. This means that we give ourselves to God and to others. Although the Bible is clear that we are to love and to give ourselves, we find ourselves hating and doing the opposite of love. Let us recognize that we are not perfect in our love, that prejudices cling to us, that we make excuses for not loving. One of these excuses we make is by saying we are to love others but we don’t have to like them. As in other distinctions, not found in the Bible, this gets us into trouble. So all we have to do is love our neighbour, we don’t have to like him? So you don’t like some of the members of your church but you love them. So you go on biting and devouring in the name of love. If we love a person we surely ought to like them. For even when we like our neighbour this doesn’t mean we love our neighbour. So let us love in word and deed.
Let us be thankful that God has given us His love when He sent His Son to die for our sins. Let us be thankful that Christ gave Himself on the cross to save us from our sins. Let us be thankful that the Spirit gives us the fruit of love. Let us show forth our faith and love by accepting God’s love, by believing on His one and only Son and by showing forth the fruit of the Spirit.
Amen.