Read 1 John 4:7-5:5, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
My most recent post was on Galatians 5:22-23, the fruit of the Spirit. That first post was about the fruit of the Spirit in general. Now I would like to start looking at each fruit specifically. Today we will look at the first one: love.
Talking about love – that is a huge topic! We won’t talk about everything we could say about love. The whole Bible is about love. Remember what Jesus said is the most important commandment? Love God and love your neighbor. So love is a part of everything God teaches us. But we’re not going to go into all that detail.
I’ll keep it to three points.
1. Where is love from?
Remember, true love is not our love. True love isn’t from us. True love is from God. We’re talking about the fruit of the Spirit. All these gifts, including love, are produced by the Holy Spirit. How does He put His love in you? 1 John 4:10 says: This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the payment for our sins.
Love starts with God’s love for us. He loves us so much, He gave His Son to die for us, to forgive our sins. He puts His love into us through faith. When you are His child, then His love is in you. We don’t create the love. This is His love working in you.
2. What is love? What is love’s character?
Read 1 Cor. 13. You may know this as the “Love chapter” in the Bible. In Galatians 5, in the list of the fruits of the Spirit, notice that love is the first one listed. If you think about the Ten Commandments, remember that the first commandment is you will have no other gods. That commandment is the foundation for the other 9 commandments. If God is your only God, and you love, honor and trust Him above everything, then you will do everything He says. You will honor His name, you will remember His worship day, etc. Loving and honoring God is the foundation for all the other commandments.
In Galatians 5, love is the foundation for all the other fruits of the Spirit. 1 Corinthians 13 explains that. If you can do many great things, you serve God and other people, but you don’t have love, then all those things are worthless. Love is so important! Without love, everything you do is worthless.
Something else 1 Corinthians 13 shows us is that love is not about me. Love is not selfish. Love is not jealous or boastful. Those things are about me. But love is about other people. Love pays attention to others and gives to others. If people ask me what love means, I tell them that loves wants and does what is best for other people. Love doesn’t do what is best for me. Love thinks about what is best for others.
Sometimes people don’t like that. What is best for someone doesn’t always make them happy. If you have had to discipline a young child, you know you discipline them because you love them and you are doing what is best for them. The child doesn’t always think that is best. But you know that you are training them the best way because you love them.
Love does what is best for another person, not for me. So then we also see that love is sacrificial. I will give up something for myself so that I can help someone else. I will even suffer hurt or loss to help someone else. That is the character of love.
3. Who do we love?
1 John chapters 4 and 5 answer this. We love God and we love each other. That is the same as Jesus said: the whole law says love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength, and love your neighbor the same as you love yourself.
Read again 1 John 4:10, This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the payment for our sins. Vs. 11 says, Dear ones, if God loved us this way, then we should love each other.
God didn’t wait for us to love Him. He didn’t sit in heaven and wait for us to fix ourselves. He acted. He sent His Son to save us. The same, we don’t wait for other people to love us. We love them the same as God loves us. Because His love acted first and sent His Son to die for us, we respond and love God and love other people. We don’t wait for them to fix themselves or love us. We love God and people because He first loved us.
