Galatians 5:13-17, 22-26
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23a).”
We’re going to be talking about fruit over the next few months. It’s a special kind of fruit, one that the Apostle Paul called “the fruit of the Spirit” in Galatians 5:22-23a. Look at that verse and I’ll ask you two questions: Question 1: Is it one fruit or 9 fruits?
It’s clear that what the Bible is talking about is one fruit. It’s talking about the development of a way of life in which all of these beautiful characteristics are growing in us just as the whole of a piece of fruit grows together. Let me show you the picture of the anatomy of an apple: http://www.geochembio.com/IMG/apple-fruit-anatomy.png.
Do you see in that picture that there are many different components to an apple and yet it is one apple? What the Bible is saying is that when you place your faith in Jesus, Jesus gives his Holy Spirit to you to dwell within you (cf., Jn 1415-28; 16:5-15) and this Spirit begins to produce a wholly new way of life that includes all of these components. Like fruit, this new way of life doesn’t happen in a moment – but it’s a process of growth. We’ll be talking weekly about that process this fall. But here’s what I want you to notice now: This fruit of the Spirit is like other kinds of fruit in this way, i.e., an apple tree produces apples. Never will you find an apple tree that is worrying and struggling out of fear that an avocado is going to grow on it.
And the Spirit of God produces fruit that looks like the life of God. Paul says it’s beautiful. It’s not a life of sexual unfaithfulness, strife, fits of anger, envy, etc. (see 5:19-21). No, it’s like what we read about in vv. 22-23a. Boiling it down, God’s Spirit begins to produces in us a way of life that looks more and more like Jesus. See http://s7.leapfrog.com/is/image/LeapFrog/rotten_apples_misc?$lp-content-img$.
Question #2: Is there a reason why love is first on the list of the Spirit’s fruit? It’s clear to me both from the context (see vv.13-14) and from the entire NT that the answer is yes. All the laws that God gave in the Old Testament were good. They were given so that people could live life as God has created people to live. Read through the Psalms and you’ll see that the people of Israel who loved God knew this. Many Psalms are song about how much they loved God’s laws.
Now, notice this carefully: When Jesus was asked about the greatest of all God’s commands, he boiled them all down to one all-embracive command with two parts, i.e., love God and love people. When Paul said in 1 Cor 13 that we might do all the good things God would have us to do but if we do them without love, those things are like “a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” So, here in Gal. 5, “love” affects all the other parts of the fruit. If love isn’t growing in your life, then the other parts of life will rot.
And, that’s exactly what seemed to be happening in the local church Paul was writing to in Galatians. The people said they were Christians but, as v.16 points out, they were “biting and devouring one another.” Paul let them know in no uncertain terms that, when you see lovelessness in your life, the Spirit of God is not ruling in your heart. In other words: Lovelessness is proof you are not synced by the Spirit.
With that in mind, we’d better see what the Bible says about love. It’s different from what the world says. I want to do this by considering 1) what love is, 2) what love looks like, and 3) how love grows.
What Love Is
The central characteristic of love as the Bible speaks of it is that love is not self-seeking. To the contrary, it is self-sacrificial giving. Love is longing for the best to happen in the life of the person you love. More than that, love is acting intentionally in such ways that other people are benefitted by what you do.
Do you see how different this is from the way our world speaks of love? I recommend a book to you about by Philip Kenneson, Life on the Vine: Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit in Christian Community. http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51iokyy6viL._SX318_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg In it, Kenneson writes, “Cultures like ours encourage us to consider all aspects of our lives in terms of self-interest. So, how do we cultivate a life marked by God’s love – a love that is always directed toward the needs of others – in a culture so thoroughly saturated with self-concern?”
So, the world says to you that you can’t really love a person if you don’t feel in a certain way about them. And Jesus says back to you, “What love is about is not so much about your ever-changing feelings about someone but about your readiness to lay down your life to bring benefit and help to the one you love. The entire story in the Bible is about God’s unrelenting, “you-and-me-directed” love. Jesus came to this sinful world. Jesus died for us while we were sinners. Jesus gives us his Spirit to empower us to be different.” This is love! How did the Apostle John put it? “This is the way we know what love is: Jesus laid down his life for us. That’s how. So, we who follow him ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If you say you are a Christian and have resources and then you see a brother or sister in need and you close your heart and do nothing, how does that show that God’s love is in you? Fellow Children of God, let us not love simply in words or emotion. True love is always shown in action.”
So, here in Gal 5:14, Paul quotes Jesus by saying, “The whole law of God (i.e., the whole of the commands telling us how God made us to live) is summed up in one phrase, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Do you know what we’ve done to that phrase in the American church? We’ve reinterpreted it into saying, “First, you must love yourself. If you don’t love yourself, then you can’t love anyone else. So, (we say) first, focus all your attention on self-esteem and self-love.” Listen to me now: That’s NOT what Jesus was teaching. That’s not what Jesus did. That self-centered focus is nothing like the love of God. What Jesus and Paul were saying is that any of us as functioning human beings will seek to meet our own needs. When we are hungry, we’ll seek to find food. When we are lonely, we will seek to find a relationship. When we are bored or depressed, we’ll seek to fill the emptiness. In the same way as you care about those needs for yourself, focus your life on meeting the needs of others. Then you will live.
So, when you live a life of love synced by the Spirit, the first thing that you will find is that you turn from always being concerned about yourself and you will grow to live life guided by bringing blessing to others.
What Love Looks Like
To see what this kind of others-directed, Jesus-like love looks like in the lives of everyday people, I can do nothing better than to take you to the famous story of the Good Samaritan that Jesus told in Luke 10:25-37. The setting is in v.25: On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” The lawyer was not the same as a lawyer in our day. This lawyer was an expert in the “Torah”, the laws of God found in the five books of Moses. So, he would have had a very positive understanding of God’s law because he believed that all God’s laws were given “so that it may go well” (Dt 5:33) with those who obeyed them.
As he did so often, Jesus answered the lawyer’s question with a question. Remember that the man was an expert in the law. So, Jesus asked, “How do you read what God has said in Torah?” And the lawyer answered correctly, “Love the Lord your God with all being; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus is saying that the first part of the 10 Commandments tell us how we are to love God and the second part tells how to love our neighbors as ourselves. As always, a life of love according to God is not simply a matter of having loving emotions. No, a life of love is demonstrated by loving actions toward God and others.
This confrontation leads to Jesus telling the story that illustrates what loving others as you love yourself looks like. If Jesus told the story told to our church, it might start something like this:
A businessman who was a member of LAC was taking a trip to the south side of LA and decided to go through skid row. When he did, his car was stopped; he was pulled out, beaten, robbed and left to die on the street. It seemed providential that the youth pastor of his own church was going through skid row that evening because he was meeting with a group of SoCal youth ministers to plan an evangelistic outreach to the homeless. So, the youth pastor saw the man but didn’t take time to find out his identity. He drove on by because he was leading the planning meeting and didn’t have time to stop.
A few minutes later the Sr. Pastor of LAC drove down the same street because he was headed to the Union Rescue Mission down on San Pedro St and its Director, Andy Bales, had asked him to speak at a fundraiser on the theme, “The importance of helping those who are hurting.” But, the pastor was late for his appointment, so he hardly noticed that a man was crumpled and bleeding on the street and drove on past.
At this point, Jesus introduced a third man passing by the hurting man who had been left to die. Remember that Jesus was speaking to a Jewish religious leader so the man Jesus chose to be the protagonist in the story was the most offensive man possible, i.e., a Samaritan. The Samaritans were all lumped into the category of being immoral, unethical people who didn’t care at all about God’s commands. Choosing a Samaritan to play the role of the example of love offended every synagogue-goer in Jesus’ day. Whom would Jesus choose if he were telling this story to us at LAC today? (I’ll talk a bit about that.)
In the story, it’s the least likely person who loves truly, i.e., who stops to use whatever he has to meet the needs of another human being. Jesus’ whole point is that it’s often the one we think is disregarding God’s commands who might be doing what is at the heart of God’s commands. He’s trying to shock us all out of complacent religion that just goes to church and still lives for self into a true Christ-like faith that shows God’s love to others. He’s saying that we can know everything about God’s Word and still not live according to it. What does his story teach us about what love looks like? When you love as Jesus loves:
#1: You will count it your calling, even your privilege, personally to show God’s love to people
The two religious professionals were caregivers by profession – not by hearts’ conviction. If the man had shown up at the temple, they would have given him forms to fill out and then decided if he was qualified to receive any help.
We all know that politicians all over the world do this. They argue for laws to help the poor – but have no relationships with the poor personally. In church, it’s very possible for me to preach a sermon about caring for the poor but then ignore a person in desperate need. Or, any one of you in church could see a person in genuine need and say, “Oh, we have pastors who care about such things.” Let me say this clearly: When the Spirit of God is beginning to produce Jesus-like love in your, you will long to show God’s care when you identify genuine need like this man on the Jericho Road had. In fact, the more you love in this way, the more you will love to love. It’s evidence that the Spirit of the God who loves people is working in your life.
#2: You will not limit the kinds of people you are willing to help
It’s natural to want to help those you like or those you know. And, it’s good and right to extend love and help to those close to you. But Jesus fashions the story to emphasize that God’s heart is for all people. When you walk with God, you will know it because your heart will become like his! The protagonist in the story, the Samaritan, loved a man who was, by ethnicity, his enemy.
I can imagine the excuses we could make as to why we shouldn’t stop and show love to this man:
- “It’s his own fault. He shouldn’t have been on this road anyway.”
- “I don’t know the man. I mean, if he was a part of my adult class, then I might do something.”
I’m sure you know that these are the kinds of excuse that have kept some churches and church people from helping people in distress. Jesus is the Lord of our church. And he tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves and he tells us that our neighbor is any human being who bears the image of God – including those who have done some dumb things. When the Spirit of God is growing the fruit of love in us, we will reach out to hurting people like the Samaritan did simply because they are people.
#3: You will seek to meet needs whenever you have opportunity.
Looking for how you can bless those you meet will be a part of the focus of each day. Showing God’s love in practical ways will become a priority in your life. I’m sure that the priest and Levite were busy men. They had important work to do. And, I imagine their families were waiting for them… But, if they had consciously prayed that day, “Lord, bring someone across my path to whom I might show you love…”, I believe that would have made a big difference in what they did.
How much of a priority should the loving like this take in our lives? May I remind you that all of the laws of God boiled down to their basic essential is: “Love the Lord your God with all your being and love your neighbor as yourself.” We can do lots of good stuff as individual Christians and as a church, but if we miss this, we miss the heart of the matter.
Jesus told this story so that the lawyer in Luke 15 would know how to live – really live. He was saying that we really live lives of joy and peace and patience when we use whatever God has given us to bless others. The others you serve will be blessed. That’s for sure. But, Jesus promises you will be blessed too when you live a life of Christ-like love.
This is exactly what Paul was speaking about in Galatians 5:13-26. Living a life of self-interest is a bondage, he says. It’s like a kind of slavery when we live always focused on making ourselves happy. And a church of people always saying, “This is what I like… That is what I want…” – is a messed up place. Paul says, “A church of self-interested people will bite and devour one another (v.15). It will be a place in which people provoke and envy one another (v.26). But a church filled with people who love as Jesus loved, a life synced by the Spirit, will always be a community of joy, peace, kindness, faithfulness etc. Jesus said, “The world will see it and know we are Christians by our love.”
How Love Grows
The people of Israel had all of God’s commands that told them how to love God and love people. And, many of them thought God’s commands were right and good. They just had one problem: They couldn’t keep the commands. They didn’t have the power to keep the law. As Paul wrote in Rom. 7, “Those things I wanted to do, I could not do. Those things I didn’t want to do, I did.” So, I know that simply giving you rules about what you should and should not do is not sufficient.
You and I need help. And that’s what Galatians 5 is about. What you and I long to do but cannot do in our own strength; God’s Spirit can begin to do in and through us. The evil and self-centeredness that rules cannot inhibit in our lives, the good that all our passion cannot bring about in our lives are overcome by the power of the Spirit of God who dwells within us as we seek God together within a Christ-centered community. We are people of the Spirit. This kind of life is like fruit – it doesn’t happen immediately but as a part of a growth process: http://blog.uvm.edu/fntrlst/files/2013/10/apple-growth-1200.jpg So, at the end, let me give you a few steps to take:
Step 1: Let today be a new beginning of repentance of sin and faith in Jesus – Tell him today that you need his mercy and surrender in faith to his Lordship just like the day you first believed. I think that the only thing that will motivate people like us to life this way is knowing deep down that Someone who owed you nothing has given his life to save you. Someone saved you only because he loved you. Only when we experience that will people like us treat people like this Samaritan treated people. You and I need to be stunned by the fact that someone you once rejected loved you so much that he saved you.
Step 2: Begin each day this week asking God to open your eyes to the needs of others. You can’t love people unless you pay some attention to them. I believe that if the priest and Levite in Jesus’ story had done this, it would have changed their lives.
Step 3: Take some time in your morning prayer to acknowledge the presence of God’s Spirit in your life. Doing this may see strange to you at first – but soon it will become a part of your ongoing awareness. Ask God’s Spirit to slow you down enough to stop and find out what others are going through. Tell Him you want Him to direct your steps and sync your life.
Step 4: Share your commitment with a Christian friend or your small group. Make this a matter of accountability and mutual prayer. Love is a relational word. It always involved others. And the context of our passage on the fruit of the Spirit is a community of believers who, as we will see in Gal. 6:1-4, help one another to grow in Christlikeness. It’s as the subtitle in Kenneson’s book puts it: “Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit in Christian Community.”
In fact, do this now: Tell God that beginning now, you will come to church each week with a goal of looking for needs you might meet ‑‑ instead of asking what you will get out of being in church! And leave church with the same commitment. So much pain and distress would be relieved if only God’s people would live with a desire to love as Jesus loves. The lonely elderly, those hurting from broken families, those struggling to recover from difficult marriages, those who are victims of unemployment… I could go on and on. No matter where you look in this world, need is there. You and I are the ones Jesus sends into this world to love people. A life synced by the Spirit of God begins with love.