FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT—LOVE
For any woman her first introduction to love is from her father. Absent or present, stern or playful, reliable or flaky, the framework for love is built in that relationship. Furthermore, what it means to be loved by a father and what it means to be loved by a man affects the lens we use to see God.
By the grace of God and my mother’s choosing, I have a father who has and continues to make a lasting impact on my heart, my attitude towards men, and my attitude towards God. There is a deep level of respect for him that developed, a trust that has never been broken, and a love that has strengthened the more he knows me and the more I know him. I learned that men were good. Inherently, leaders and instinctually protective. Long-suffering in a way women haven’t mastered, diligent in carrying the weight of an entire family, purposeful and driven, and when they choose to love and let you in, it is for a lifetime.
My father or any person who has loved me in my life does it based on the positioning of their hearts and their knowledge of me at that given moment in time. God, my all-knowing Father and Creator has a heart positioned towards deep love and thoughtful care for His children always. His distinct and true knowledge of us allows Him to love us in a specific way that causes us to change and draw closer to His presence.
So, my father as perfect as he is to me, as much as he loves me, as much as he shows up for me, will never know or love me like God. But, out of his imperfect love for me, I have been made endlessly curious about God’s perfect love for me. I have been more relaxed in trusting God as my father because of how my earthly father treated me. I don’t concern myself with the why, how, or when provision in my life is coming from God because if my dad, an earthly falliable man, has never dropped the ball with me, how much more will the God who created me show up for me?
Whether the love of your earthly father has been stained with trauma and pain, or like me, your father has been the perfect foundation for true love, God loves in a way that restores every broken thing in our lives. God is love, and the only way to experience God is to experience love.
love changes everything
In your relationship with others how often has love caused division and offense? Separation and bitterness? We are imperfect people, but in our attempts to love, that’s where change happens. That is where movement happens. That is where God is able to dwell because He is love.
1 John 4:16,18-19 “So we have come to know and to believe the love God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”
“Come to know and to believe” is an action. We have the option to come to know the love of God or to not.
Also, “to come” is gradual movement. If you come close to someone in a natural sense you walk or move towards them. If you stop moving the opportunity for closeness or revelation of whatever you’re moving towards also stops.
Our ability to remain in Him dictates the deepness of our knowledge and belief in His love.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love (God), I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have that can move mountains, but do not have love (God), I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have (God), I gain nothing.
There is no spiritual gifting, vocation, purpose, or offering we can give to God that will replace our lack of loving God and loving others.
If we do not have love, which we also know is God, we have nothing.
All of the best things we can do for Him, others, ourselves will burn to ashes under fire if we do not have love.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8 “Love (God) is patient, love (God) is kind. It (God) does not envy, it (God) does not boast, it (God) is not proud, it (God) does not dishonor others, it (God) is not self-seeking, it (God) is not easily-angered, it (God) keeps no record of wrongs. Love (God) does not delight in evil but rejoices with truth. It (God) always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perserveres. Love (God) never fails.”
I imagined God waiting with a belt any time I made a mistake previously. Counting on His hands each time I messed up so that He could remember the degree of my punishment. But God, is not like man, He does not rejoice over wrongdoing, He hopes for us to change.
Jesus died for our sins. Meaning, at the point of salvation, all of our sins have already been covered. We are experiencing our sin, choices, and decisions in real time, but God knows them already. Everything you have done and will do against God has already been paid for. There is not a list of all we have done that pops up in God’s mind anytime we approach His throne. He sees the blood of Jesus and that is how we are able to approach Him in the first place.
If the way you love others is not aligned with what God says love is in the bible, you are out of line.
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Love will always have an action attached to it.
God loved the world so He gave His son. If we love God we will have to give something to Him as well.
God does not want us to die and go to hell. He wants us to be reconciled with Him. He wants us to know love. The idea that God is excited to throw people into the fire is a misrepresentation of His character and evidence we don’t know Him at all. He doesn’t want to lose any of us. We are the ones who choose to live a life outside of His presence. He already made the first step by choosing and loving us.
John 14:15-18, 21 “If you love Me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”
If I love God I will keep His commandments. There isn’t a middle to this. If you try to find a middle ground for this you may not love God like you think.
In any relationship you are in, to profess love with your lips and not align your behavior is dishonest, manipulative, and lazy. The evidence of God’s love is present in the sacrifice of His son and His attitude towards us. The consistent revealing and understanding of His love only happens through our ability to remain in Him through our obedience.
We are not keeping His commandments in our own power. Once we say yes to Jesus, we get the Holy Spirit—the Spirit of truth— to abide, remain, last, and stay with us forever. What does this mean? Our sensitivity to the Holy Spirit—the Spirit of truth—allows us to be consistently obedient. It is not in our own power that we are able to be obedient. If we could be obedient on our own Jesus would not have died.
When we are loving God in action by our obedience, our minds, hearts, and souls are being actively shaped by His love. When we disconnect ourselves from God through disobedience our shaping has stopped. The love remains, but our sensitivity and identification of it lessens.
we are rooted and established in love when we choose to follow after christ
The beginning of John 15 discusses Jesus the vine, God the gardener, and we the branches. In a natural sense, the role of a vine exists to nourish, feed, and grow the branches. The branches then bear the fruit of the vine. If a branch is severed from the vine in any way it no longer gets the nourishment, feedings, or growth required to bear the quality of fruit required by the gardener or that is reflective of the vine. If I take fruit from that garden and the quality of the fruit is piss poor, I have an opinion about the gardener and the way it was grown. An opinion that may keep me from ever going to that garden again.
As we conclude our discussion of bearing the Fruit of the Spirit, remember that the fruit we bear exposes the strength of our connection to Christ. A branch severed from it’s vine will never bear fruit that represents it. If we proclaim Jesus, and the fruit we bear has not been nourished or fed by His spirit, the damage we do to others and the body of Christ is great and of consequence. In Matthew, Jesus says we will know a man by their fruit. You are known by the fruit you bear in your relationship with others. Moreover, you will know the true identity of your vine, master, or ruler, based on the fruit you bear.
