Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2005 : June 5, 2005
Theme: The Fruit of the Spirit -- Love
Text: Galatians 5:22, 1 John 3:11, 16-20
Church year occasion: Pentecost 3
I'd like to tell you a short story about a boy named Augy. Augy and his friends knew of a neighbor's pear tree not far from his house. One day they decided to steal some pears from the tree, even though they didn't especially like pears. So why did they do it? Just for the thrill of it. They didn't eat the pears. In fact, they threw them to some pigs. Augy grew up and eventually wrote about this experience in a book called, Confessions. We know Augy today as St. Augustine, one of the greatest of the Church Fathers of the early Christian church.
This morning we're beginning a series of sermons that will focus on the Fruit of the Spirit. In Galatians 5:22-23, Paul says, "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." When we read that list, St. Augustine's story about himself reminds us of something very clearly: human beings don't produce those fruits by nature. Instead, by nature humans love to do not good things but wicked things. We can't produce these fruits of the Spirit by ourselves if we so choose. That's what Jesus meant when he said, "The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing." And that's why Augustine marveled at the amazing love of God that forgave him and every sinner. But God's amazing love didn't stop there -- it also enables Christians to produce fruit in keeping with repentance. As Jesus also said, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit." God is there every step of the way to make that fruit grow in our lives.
One other thing must be mentioned regarding these fruits of the Spirit: Paul mentions different fruits of the Spirit. Every Christian produces these fruits, but some may not be as healthy, strong and robust as others -- some will be better than others. Take a cluster of grapes -- nine individual grapes -- all grapes, the same kind of fruit grown on a single stem from the same vine. But each grape differs in shape, size and taste. One might be fully ripe, sweet and delectable to the taste. Another might be shriveled and sour.
That's the same way with the fruits of the Spirit. They're not all fully matured. You may know someone whose fruit of kindness or gentleness is full and alive, but their fruit of patience is small and shriveled and sour. That person may be you. Those weak fruits need more time and exposure to God and his Word to mature and show themselves. All of us have a long way to go in having this fruit mature -- it's a process that continues throughout our Christian lives.
With those thoughts in mind, the fruit of the Spirit we'll start with is the first in the list -- love. The specific Word of God that will help us understand this fruit of the Spirit is from 1 John, chapter 3:
This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.
Jesus made sure his disciples knew what it meant to be his disciple. It meant that their lives would be characterized by love. That's what John means when he says, "This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another." We remember Jesus telling his disciples that very thing in the Upper Room the night before he died: "My Command is this: Love each other as I have loved you." (John 15:12) The key to this verse is the same as the words before us -- not our love for others, but God's love for us.
We shouldn't confuse this kind of love with other kinds of love, like if someone says, "I love my dog," or "I love Taco Bell." That love would probably change if your dog attacked you and mauled you; it would change if every time you went to Taco Bell you received horrible service and you got food poisoning. God's love for us is different: God loved us even when we were his enemies.
When I hear that I was God's enemy, I might say, "How could I have been God's enemy? I'm a good person." But that wouldn't be correct. When Jesus was asked to summarize the Law, he said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself." But ever since Adam and Eve fell into sin, there wasn't a man, woman or child who had ever loved God perfectly and their neighbor perfectly. Already with Adam and Eve's sin, God could have closed the case, handed down the verdict of guilty to every last individual on earth and not one of us could have claimed God was unjust.
But God didn't do that. Instead, one very short passage of the Bible tells us why God didn't: "God is love." God the Father showed that he is the epitome of love: "God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son." (John 3:16) God decided that he would save the world from sin and death and hell by taking our sin and death and hell on himself. So God the Son came into our sinful world to live and die for us. Paul expressed God the Son's love for me when he said, "Christ loved me and gave himself up for me." (Ephesians 5:2) And God the Holy Spirit showed that same love to me. "When you were dead in your sins…, God made you alive with Christ." (Colossians 2:13) Our God did everything to save us from our sins that condemned us. But now we are no longer condemned for our sins -- even the times when we have failed to love others as we should -- because God has given us life in Christ.
So John continues in our text: "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers." Laying down your life for someone else is the height of love. Some soldiers have done that on the battlefield. As parents, we realize that we would do anything, even give up our lives for our children if it came to that -- without even thinking. But the point we need to realize is that we should be thinking about why we love others and would be willing to do anything, even die, for them. We love because God first loved us. That's the key. Without remembering Christ and his love for us, and God the Father's love for us and God the Holy Spirit's love for us, our love for him and others will always be lacking, insufficient, worldly. When we aren't connected to Christ like a branch is to a vine, we lose our focus in life, we will tend to love ourselves and not others, and -- guess what? -- as a result, our lives won't be filled with self-sacrificing love that God wants us to have for others.
So when we are connected to Christ and are constantly reminded of his love for us, the opposite will be true -- love will naturally flow from us to others. How? No one said it better than the Apostle Paul in the great love chapter of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." When the love of Christ is in your heart, your life of love will show. Christ's love in your heart will make you more patient with others. What does that mean? Parents -- when your kids drive you up a wall, remember how your failings should have driven God up the wall, but instead they drove him up to the cross where he died for all of those failings. That will make you more patient. Christ's love in your heart will keep you from being self-seeking. What does that mean? Kids -- when you don't want to share that toy with your brother or sister, remember how God shared his own Son with you to make you his child. Christ's love in your heart will keep you from being easily angered. What does that mean? When someone hurts you, remember the anger God should have had toward you, but directed toward his Son instead. For the fruit of love to show itself in our lives, we simply remember the love God has had and continues to have for us, and we will then strive to live our lives of love for him.
A specific way mentioned in our text to show our love is to share our physical blessings with others. "If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?" This might sound like a difficult thing to do. Does God want us to share our material possessions with others? Yes. "But I earned them! They're mine!" First of all, no they're not -- they're God's. Second of all, they are only good for this life anyway, so why not use them to show our love to others? And finally, after all God has given us, can't we give of what God has entrusted to us to help others in need?
Finally, the last verse gives us a good summary of what we will strive to do as Christians when it comes to love: "Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth." Make it real. When we say we love others, do we really mean it? I'm sure we do. When we say we love our parents or our kids, we mean that very thing. That means we will go out of our way to show that love for them. Loving our parent in a nursing home means making sure we visit. Loving our neighbor as ourselves means that we will be telling our neighbors and friends and family members about the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
In a fairy tale riddle entitled "The Magic Mirror" a troll asks a boy to name the strongest bond in the world. The boy thought and thought. He said to himself, "If my brother the sailor were to guess this riddle, he would say the strongest bond in the world is the horizon. It joins the sky and sea together and gives us our place in the world. If my brother the farmer were to guess this riddle, he would say the strongest bond in the world is the rainbow. It joins the rain and sun together so that the crops can grow. But I guess the strongest bond in the world is the bond of love. Not even death can destroy it."
When we want to have our love for our God and others greater in our everyday lives, we simply need to remember the love that our Savior God has for us -- love that destroyed death and brought life and immortality to life in the gospel. That bond of love will take us from this world when we die to the loving and waiting arms of our Savior. Knowing what lies ahead of us and remembering what God has done for us behind us, we will then put this fruit of the Spirit into practice: love each other. Amen.
