The Fruit of the Spirit
Love
Love. All you need is love? You are probably familiar with the famous Beatles song, but do you know when it was first performed? It was composed for the first ever live global television link, broadcast to 26 countries on June 25th 1967. The BBC had commissioned the Beatles to write a song for the UK contribution and they wanted something that would be simple and meaningful to over 350 million people in dozens of languages. They settled on love.Even today love songs sell. A search on Amazon for CD’s with ‘love’ in the title finds 42,493 examples.
But what is love?
C.S. Lewis, in his famous book “The four loves” identified the four kinds of love which we read of in the Bible. These are storge (family affection), phileo (friendship), eros (romantic passion) and agape (unconditional love). The fruit of the Spirit refers to the last of these, the particularly Christian form of love known as agape. In the KJV it is translated “Charity”, because it is a love whose giving doesn’t depend upon any qualities in the subject... it all depends upon the qualities of the giver.
The most wonderful example of agape love is found in Jesus himself, who loves even the most unlovely of us with a never-ending, sacrificial love
Defining Love? (1 Cor 13v1-8)
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It would be easy to just go through this list step by step and offer a definition of each term, but I don’t think that would be very helpful – the purpose of preaching the Bible isn’t to educate us, it is to change us – Perhaps to challenge us when we have become complacent; certainly to encourage us in our walk with the Lord.
Take a moment to look over that list. Spot one of the things on the list that you think you are good at. Try to spot just one where you think you might particularly have room to improve. I know that I could do with improving patience...
The idea of patience is wonderful, isn’t it? But it is one of those things which you most need when it is least available. Those of you with young children will appreciate the difficulty in expressing patience when attempting to marshal the little troops and get them out of the door in time for church!
I'm wary of praying for patience after the experience of a friend of mine up in Yorkshire . An occupational therapist, she prayed that she would be more patient, expecting God to sort of magically give her patience. What God did was transfer her to the violently psychopathic ward for three months! She learned patience all right, but had to do it the long way round.
A man noticed a woman in a grocery store pushing a pushchair with a 3 year old girl in it. They passed the biscuits and the girl wanted some and the mother said no. The girl threw a tantrum. Her mother patiently said, "Now Florence , we just have a few more aisles to go, don't be upset. It won't take long." They came to the sweet aisle and the little girl got upset again. She was screaming and kicking. The mother said, "There, there, Florence don't cry, only 2 more aisles to go. When they reached the check out the little brat went nuts reaching for the sweets there. The mother calmly said, " Florence , we'll be through in 5 minutes and when we get home you can have a bottle and a nap."
The man followed her out of the store and stopped her to compliment her on her patience with little Florence . The mother sighed and said, "Oh, no my little girl's name is Sarah, I'm Florence ."
Agape love is partly summarised in the series of negatives that express the way that its focus is on how others feel – not how we feel! When we love someone like this we rejoice when they do well, we don’t wish that we had done better. We enjoy it when they get the limelight rather than us.
We can see the close links that love has with forgiveness when we consider ‘Love keeps no record of wrongs’. It is both amazingand marvellous that almighty God who knows everything about everything is able, through his love and forgiveness, to forget our wrongs and keep no record of them. As Corrie Ten Boom memorably said “He put our sins in the deepest part of the sea, and put up a big sign saying ‘no fishing’!”.
I also really like the sense of continuity which are contained in the last five items in the list. Always protects. Always trusts. Always hopes. Always perseveres. Never fails.
<picture of Duracell bunny runs across screen?>
But we are not given this picture to make us feel bad about ourselves... Of course we fail to live up to this standard – I don’t think anybody this side of heaven has managed to live up the absolutes on display here. These word pictures are not to condemn us for failing to reach them – they are to encourage us and lift us up with the possibilities that lie before us!
Harry introduced our subject from to us last week from John 15, and that contains one of the few direct commands that Jesus gave to his disciples, in v12-13 “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no-one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends”.
A little boy was told by his doctor that he could save his sister's life by giving her some blood. The six-year-old girl was near death, a victim of disease from which the boy had made a marvellous recovery two years earlier. Her only chance for restoration was a blood transfusion from someone who had previously conquered the illness. Since the two children had the same rare blood type, the boy was the ideal donor.
"David, would you like to give your blood for Mary?" the doctor asked.
The boy hesitated. His lower lip started to tremble. Then he smiled, and said, "Sure, Doc. I'll give my blood for my sister." Soon the two children were wheeled into the operating room- Mary, pale and thin; David, robust and the picture of health. Neither spoke, but when their eyes met, David grinned. As his blood flowed into Mary's veins, one could almost see new life come into her tired body.
The ordeal was almost over when David’s brave little voice broke the silence, "Doctor, when do I die?"
It was only then that the doctor realised what the moment of hesitation, the trembling of the lip, had meant earlier. Little David actually thought that in giving his blood to His sister he was giving up his life!
Conclusion
The disciples learned what it meant to literally lay down their lives for their friends. ...hopefully for us it will not come to that so literally – but it still has a very real lesson for us today.
Jesus’ love for us changes our lives. But it was costly for him. The wonderful, amazing thing is, that He thought we were worth it. He looked at us and loved us. Not for our abilities, not for our appearance, not even for our potential. He loved us and loves us still because that is who he is.
He is transforming us, little by little to be more and more like his image. One of the ways that he is doing that is by developing the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. We often judge ourselves harshly when we look at ourselves but I’m convinced that every one of us has a greater capacity for agape love now than we did when we first turned to Jesus as our saviour.
But just as the ultimate expression of Jesus’ love for us was costly, when he died on the cross to take away our sins, so it can be costly for us to express love to one another.
In our time and place it is most likely to be costly in terms of time, that most precious and scarce resource that we each have such a limited allowance of. As Niall can tell you, you don’t become a better runner just by reading all about running. You have to put the miles in. You have to give up the time to do it if you are going to become better.
And when it comes to love, sometimes you have to do what you know is right whether your feelings are there alongside you or not. As Corrie Ten Boom found after the war, when a German Christian approached her after a meeting and thrust his hand out in fellowship, and she recognised him as one of the cruel guards at the camp who had previously brutalised them. She felt no love for this man, whether he was technically a brother in Christ now or not. But she prayed for help and stiffly held out her hand. She writes:
For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then.
You will storge your family, phileo your friends and eros your... well, you know.... but to whom do you express agape? Well, the answer is that agape love has a place in every relationship we have. Every relationship benefits from a little unconditional love, and as Jesus’ love transforms us, the love that we show can transform others too.
Alex White
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