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BY Glenn Pease
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY
MESSAGE ON GAL.5:13-26
INTRODUCTION
TO THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT
A doctor, an engineer, and an attorney were debating whose
profession was the oldest. The doctor
said, " it's obvious the medical profession was the first. The Bible refers to God creating Eve from
Adam's rib, and that is surgical procedure." But the engineer said, "No! before that, God created the
world out of chaos, and one must be an engineer to create a world." "But wait," said the lawyer,
"where do you think that chaos came from?"
Lawyer's do create a lot of chaos, because the very nature of
their profession involves the chaos of broken laws, and the resulting broken
lives. Chaos is their bread and butter. One lawyer had a bumper sticker that read,
"PLEASE HIT ME‑I'M A LAWYER." The complexity of the law is so
vast because, as judge Harry Shafer writes, "we have fifty million laws
trying to enforce ten commandments."
There has to be a law against so many human actions because they are
offensive and harmful to other persons and their property. Paul lists fifteen acts of the sinful nature
of man in verses 19‑21 of Galatians 5.
But then in verses 22‑23 he lists nine things which he calls the
fruit of the Spirit, and he ends verse 23 with this statement, "against
such things there is no law." Laws
are to restrain people from certain behavior, but there is no need to restrain
from these nine things.
In all the huge volumes of laws around the world you will
search in vain to find a law against love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self‑control. So it is not true that everything good is
either illegal or fatening. None of
these nine fruits will add a pound to your body or any guilt to your
conscience, for there is nothing illegal or fatening. There is no need for laws to control the growth of this fruit,
for in contrast to the acts of the flesh, these acts and attitudes do not hurt
people in any way. They help and heal,
and they add beauty and pleasure to all relationships. These fruits are a foretaste of heaven, and
the goal in this life is to become a garden where they grow in abundance.
The Greek word for fruit is KARPOS, and it is a very popular
word in the New Testament. It is used
66 times, and Jesus uses it more than all the rest combined. It was one of His favorite words. I looked up a number of the texts where
Jesus used the word fruit and discovered that sometimes he said fruits, in the
plural. At other times he used the singular to convey the plural. The singular
and the plural are used interchangeably. My conclusion is that there is no
basis for the debate over which is most correct to say, the fruit of the
Spirit, or the fruits of the Spirit. It
makes no difference if you call them the fruit of the fruits of the Spirit.
Either way you are dealing with nine distinct values.
Fruit is a very positive word, for it brings to mind the images
of delicious and tasty food we enjoy. God started the world with a very healthy
environment, for the basic food was fruit in the garden of Eden. Fruit is basic
to the good health of the body. The Bible ends with fruit as the key food also,
for in the book of Rev. we see the Tree
of Life, and it bears twelve kinds of fruit‑one for each month of the
year. If the Bible begins and ends with fruit, that ought to be a good clue as
to what a healthy diet is in the eyes of God. There is no image of paradise anywhere
that does not include fruit as a major factor in its beauty and pleasure
The word fruit comes from the Latin word FRUCTUS, which means
enjoyment. Fruit got this name because it is the source of such quick and easy
pleasure. You just grab an apple off the tree and sink your teeth into it and
enjoy it right now without any preparation or cooking. So it is also with many
other fruits. In contrast, grains, vegetables, and meats call for delayed
pleasure until they are prepared for eating. It is the instant nature of their
enjoyment that is a distinguishing characteristic of fruit.
This is the case with the nine fruits of the Spirit also. They
give instant pleasure to the soul. Like physical fruit, they may take time to
develop, but when they are ripe they give immediate enjoyment to both producer
and consumer. People who eat only fruit are called fruitarians. In this series
on the Fruits of the Spirit we are going to be Biblical fruitarians, and strive
to consume all God has revealed about spiritual fruit.
The Fruits of the Spirit are actually superior to the Gifts of
the Spirit. The Gifts can be abused and need laws to regulate them, lest they
do more harm than good. And if you have gifts but not the fruits, they are
worthless, as Paul says in ICor. 13. You can have the gift of tongues, and
speak like an angel, but without love you are just a noisy gong and clanging
cymbal. You can have the gift of prophecy and knowledge and understand all
mysteries, but without the fruit of love, you are nothing. Even if you have the
gift of faith and can do miracles like moving mountains, but lack love, you are
no asset to the kingdom of God. The point Paul is making is that the Gifts of
the Spirit need to be under the direction of the Fruits of the Spirit, or they
lose their value Gifts have to do with what you do, but Fruits have to do with
who you are. Being comes before doing. Doing the right thing can be done even
by the most evil of people, but being the right kind of person is what God is after. Being Christ
like has to do with character and not just conduct. The Fruits focus on
character and the inner being and not just on conduct.
The really good news about the Fruits of the Spirit is that
they are available to all Christians. So many of God's people feel they have no
gifts, or certainly none that are spectacular. But Paul makes it clear that
nobody is second class when it comes to the Fruits. The gifts are like body
parts. The eye has the gift of seeing, the ear the gift of hearing, the feet
the gift of walking, and so on. Each has a specialized function that the other
members of the body may not have. But the Fruits of the Spirit are for all
members of the body, equally.
No Christian can say that they do not have the capacity to
love, feel joy, have peace, etc., like other Christians. They may not have the
gifts of others in the body, but all have equal access to these fruits. These
are not exclusive to any part of the body. They are for all parts of the body,
and every member of the body is expected to grow these fruits. You and I can be
just as loving, and just as joyful, and just as peaceful as Billy Graham, or
Mother Teresa, or any other well‑known Christian you can think of. There
are people in every church who have just as many Fruits of the Spirit as the
best known leaders around the world. Many people can walk into their back yard
and pick an apple off a tree that is just as good as any of the name brand
apples you can get in your supermarket. So there are masses of marvelous fruits
in obscure places that almost nobody knows about, but they bring pleasure and
beauty to those who do know of them. Every Christian is a potential fruit
producer.
You know an apple tree by its fruit. If there are no apples on
a tree, but pears instead, you know it is a pear tree. All fruit trees are
identified by their fruit. So the Christian is to be identified by the fruit
they bear. How do you know if a Christian is growing in Christlikeness? You
cannot tell by the position they hold in the church, or by the gifts they
display, or by the awards they may win.
You can only tell by the fruit that they bear. If they are not adding to the
pleasure and beauty of the kingdom, but are adding strife, and negatives of all
kinds, they may be gifted leaders even, but they are not fruit bearing
believers. This is to be our primary goal. Nothing else matters if we do not
produce the Fruits of the Spirit. These
are the nine marks of the growing Christian. These are the nine signs of
spiritual maturity. These are the nine evidences of Christlikeness.
The importance and significance of these fruits is all the
more magnified when we read the words
of Donald Gee, the Pentecostal theologian who writes from a charismatic perspective.
He makes it clear that Pentecostals make a major mistake in thinking that the
gifts are all that matter. He writes,
When the great Forth Bridge in Scotland was
nearing completion we are
told that one dull, cold
day the builders tried
unsuccessfully all day long
to bring certain important
girders together. Every
available device of
mechanical power was used,
without success, and at the
end of the day they re‑
tired completely baffled.
But next morning the sun
shone in summer warmth upon
the great masses
of steel, and the expansion
thus produced soon
enabled them to make the connection. So it is with
much of the work of the
Spirit: His power some‑
times works more
irresistibly in the silent
influences of love, joy, and peace, than in the mightier
manifestations of miracles
or prophesying.
That is a powerful testimony coming from a Pentecostal
charismatic, for he recognizes that the power of the fruit available to all
Christians may be greater than the power of the gifts available to the few.
There is no doubt about it, the study of the Fruits of the Spirit can be the
most important study of our lives if we allow the knowledge we gain to be
transformed into actual fruit. The
study of love is only of value if we become more loving, and so it is with each
of the fruits. Our prayer need to be like that of the poet who wrote,
Love through me, Love of
God,
There is no love in me,
Oh Fire of Love, light thou
the love,
That burns perpetually.
Flow through me, Peace of
God,
Calm river, flow until
No wind can blow, no current
stir
A ripple of self‑will.
Shine through me. Joy of
God,
Make me like Thy clear air
Which Thou dost pour Thy
colors thro'
As though it were not there.
Oh blessed Love of God,
That all may taste and see
How good Thou art, once more
I pray:
Love through me, even me.
All of these fruits hang together like a cluster of grapes on
the vine. You can't pick and chose
which ones you will have and leave the rest alone. They come together, and you have them all, or you don't have them
at all. You cannot say I'll be loving
and joyful, but I'm not going to be kind and good. This is a package deal, and although your personality may favor
some of these over others, they all have to be a part of your personality for
you to be Christ like. The lack of any
one of them can spoil all the rest.
They are one, and that is why some prefer the singular of fruit rather
than fruits of the Spirit. They are
like nine segments of an orange. They
are parts, but together they make one orange.
There is one fruit of the Spirit in nine segments.
Even the man of the world might have some of these fruits, but
they will be offset by the works of his flesh, and so he will not be Christ
like. The Christian is to be in glaring
contrast to the man of the world by having the whole package. If one or more is missing we know we are
quenching the Spirit. We are keeping
some part of our soil in our own soil bank to raise what we want to raise
rather than the fruits of the Spirit.
To have the full crop we need to surrender our whole being to the Holy
Spirit and allow Him freedom to produce in us all that He desires.
This means all of life can be seen as an opportunity to grow
one or more of these fruits. If life is
going great and all is smooth sailing, let your life grow abundantly in love,
joy, and peace. But if life gets hard
and there are trials and battles galore, let the Holy Spirit produce in you
patience, faithfulness, and self‑control. The point is, rain or shine, the Christian needs to learn to use
all weather for growing these fruits.
Ian Barclay tells of the girl who read an article in a
gardening magazine about a fruitless apple tree. She showed it to her father who was frustrated about his tree,
which was just like that. The article
said to drive a few nails into the trunk of the tree. He decided to try it, and the next year the tree bore fruit like
never before. Sometimes pain and
suffering can be productive. It is like
pruning a tree. Do not waste hard
times. Ask the Holy Spirit to use them
as fertilizer to encourage the growth of some fruit. The fertilizer may be awful, but the effects can be wonderful, if
the end result is growth of the fruits of the Spirit.
Remember, these are not our fruits, as if we could produce
them by our own efforts. They come to
us by the working of the Holy Spirit in us.
Our task is to open up our lives and let Him work. It is a matter of submission and surrender
so that He can change us from within.
Can we resist the Spirit, and quench the Spirit, and hold our life down
to the level of scrawny crab apples rather than big red delicious apples? Of course we can! That is why we need to study these fruits. Billy Graham preached on these fruits many
years ago, and he said in that message, "now these things, these nine
things, nine clusters of fruit, are to characterize the life of every Christ‑born
child of God....But what do we find? We
find in the average so‑called Christian today, the very
opposite." The very opposite being
the works of the flesh. Graham is
saying Christians can be so worldly there is no way to distinguish between them
and the world.
In order to make a
difference in this world, Christians have to be different, and the key to that
is the production of the fruits of the Spirit.
Christians are to be in the fruit business. Why was Israel replaced by the Church to fulfill God's plan? It was a fruit issue. In Matt.21:43 Jesus said to the leaders of
Israel, "Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away
from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit." One of the key reasons Christianity has been
superior to Judaism is because it has been more fruitful. The Jews chose to be exclusive, and keep God
for themselves. The Christians said,
God loves the whole world, and we must heed the command of Christ to go to all
people with the good news of His love.
God chose the Gentile world because they would prove to be
more fruitful. God is a wise investor,
and He wants to get a good return on His investment. He wants fruit, and when He gets it He gives more resources. As we let the Holy Spirit work in our lives
to produce fruit, we will be blest by more and more of the grace of God. Fruit produces more fruit until there is a
bountiful harvest.
The motive for developing the fruit of the Spirit is both for
pleasing God and for self‑advancement.
The most selfish thing you can do is yield yourself to the Spirit of
Christ, for He will do with your life what you could never do. He will produce in you that which could never come from doing your own thing. The Christian wants life to be full of the
joy, pleasure, and happiness just like the non‑Christian. The non‑Christian seeks it primarily
by means of the works of the flesh. The
Christian is to find it primarily by the Fruits of the Spirit. That is the goal of the following nine chapters.
Howard Thurman in Disciplines Of The Spirit, tells of one of
the most unusual jobs. A large General
Hospital hired a high school girl to be there mice petter. Her sole occupation was to take white mice
out of their cages several times a day and pet them. They had learned that when mice are made to feel loved and secure
they give much more authentic results in experiments. When they are relaxed and given a sense of well‑being, they
better cope without panic.
Science is confirming all the time that God is love. It is finding that all God made needs love
to be at it's best. People who love
their garden and their plants produce better crops and more beauty. Love is the universal need of all life. Dogs and cats can admit their need for
love. They thrust their heads into your
hands and face, and demand to be loved.
But man likes to be independent and not admit to needing others, even
though it is the number one need of man for happiness. There are endless numbers of movies and
novels where people delay love and even lose it because they will not admit
their need. This is the ultimate in
pride, for God Himself is willing to admit He needs love. The first commandment is that we love God
with our whole being. Paul in Romans
8:28 says that God works in all things for good for those who love Him. In I Cor.2:9 he writes that no mind can
conceive of what God has prepared for those who love Him. In time and in eternity the best is reserved
for those who love God.
Jesus did not hesitate to declare His need for love.. He needed the love of His heavenly Father,
but He also needed the love of man. In
John14 He repeated His need often. In
verse 15 He said, "If you love me you will obey what I command." In verse 21 He said, "Whoever has my
commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love
and show myself to him." In verses
23‑24 Jesus sums it all up with these words, "If anyone loves me he
will obey me, if anyone does not love me he will not obey me."
If God the Father and God the Son long to be loved, it is the
height of folly for any man to deny his need for love. Ashley Montague writes from the point of
view of a scientist‑
"The study of love is
something from which scientists long shied away.
But with the increased
interest in the origins of mental illness, more and more attention is being
paid to the infancy and childhood of human beings. What investigation has
revealed is that love is, beyond all cavil or question, the most important
experience in the life of a human being.
Show me a hardened criminal,
a juvenile delinquent, a psychopath or
a "cold fish," and
in almost every case I will show you a person resorting to desperate means in
order to attract the emotional warmth and attention he failed to get but which
he so much desires and needs.
"Aggressive" behavior
when fully understood is, in fact, nothing but love frustrated, a technique for
compelling love‑as well as a means of taking revenge on the society which
has let that person down, disillusioned, deserted and dehumanized him. Hence, the best way to approach aggressive
behavior in children is not by aggressive behavior toward them, but with
love. And this is true not only for
children but for human beings at all ages."
The Scripture and science agree, the greatest of these is
love. Love is the highest virtue man is
capable of giving or receiving. You
cannot give God or man any higher gift than the gift of love. The highest goal of life is to be like
Christ. The only way to approach this
goal is to be a person filled with love.
This is the same as saying one needs to be filled with the Spirit for He
is the source of love. The fruit of the
Spirit is love. The more we are filled
with the Spirit of Christ the more we will have the fruit of love.
Many say that the sign you are filled with the Holy Spirit is that
you will speak in tongues, but that is an experience that occurred only in
Corinth and was not an issue in any other church of the New Testament. The real sign of being filled with the Holy
Spirit is the fruit of the Spirit, and the first fruit and main fruit is
love. The most loving Christian is the
most Spirit‑filled Christian.
Paul links the Holy Spirit and love in Romans15:30 where he writes,
"I urge you brothers by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the
Spirit...." In Col.1:8 he writes to
them and refers to "Your love in the Spirit." The Holy Spirit is the channel by which the
love of God fills the heart of man.
Paul makes this clear in Rom.5:5 where he writes, "God has poured
out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom He has given
us."
The love of God that enables us to love our neighbor as our
self, and to love one another, and to love our enemies all comes into our heart
by means of the Holy Spirit. He
produces the fruit. We cannot make it
grow by works. All we can do is to let
the Spirit have control, and He makes this Christ like fruit grow. We can plant and we can water, but God gives
the increase. We cannot make fruit
grow, but we can provide the cooperation that makes it possible for the Holy
Spirit to use our hearts as fertile soil that will be fruit producing. We can't make anything grow, but we can
provide the environment for things to grow.
We are responsible for preparing the soil of our hearts. We do this by clearing it of the rocks,
trash, and brush that makes growing anything unlikely. Our soil gets hard and the seed cannot penetrate and take root. We get stubborn and set in our ways, and do
not yield to the Holy Spirit.
Christians need to be flexible and ever open to the winds of the Spirit,
and to the new fires He may wish to kindle in our hearts. Lawrance Kusher gives us an illustration on
the human level.
"When my wife and I
were first married, for example, we believed
that our "true
love" enabled us to read one another's minds. Based on
this youthful fantasy, we
spent great amounts of time and energy
choosing the wrong birthday
presents for one another, each pretending
we loved gifts we didn't.
As we grew older and our
love matured, we gradually realized
that even great love only
rarely penetrates another's soul.
Indeed,
I suspect, real loving
stands reverent precisely in the mystery of
another's unknowable,
unfathomable self. And so, as an act of
love, we reached a mutual,
unspoken decision: We began to drop
not‑so‑subtle hints
about what we really wanted. This not
only
made shopping easier
("This is exactly what she wants!")
But
receiving presents became
much more fun ("Why this is exactly
what I wanted!") If you really love someone, don't make them
guess what to give you."
Love grows by communication.
God did not just let His people guess how to love Him. He gave them clear instructions. The Tabernacle and Temple where they were to
show their love in worship, sacrifice, and praise were revealed in most minute
detail‑nothing was left to guess.
God gave His Word and Jesus gave His teaching so we could know exactly
how to love Him by obedience. For the
Holy Spirit to produce the fruit of love in us, we need to be listening to the
Word and applying its truth to our daily lives. Listening, learning, worshiping, praising, living a life pleasing
to God, these are all part of the atmosphere we provide for the Holy Spirit to work in to produce love. When love is produced in us, like other
fruit it has seeds, and will reproduce itself in others.
Chuck Swindoll gives us an illustration in his book, Simple
Faith. "Among the many plays and
musical performances I have attended, none has ever gripped me like Les
Miserables. When these playwrights and
composers decided to put Victor Hugo's classic novel on the stage in the form
of a dramatic musical, a masterpiece was created for the public to enjoy. When my family and I saw the performance, we
were moved to tears...literally. To
this day, its scenes and songs often return to mind, bringing fresh
delight." He goes on to tell the
gist of the play. Jean Valjean is
released after 19 years in the chain gang, and is treated kindly by a saintly
Bishop. But his prison experience has
scarred him and hardened him, and he repays the Bishop by stealing some of his
silver. Caught and brought back by the
police, Valjean is shocked when the Bishop tells them he gave him the silver. This act of love that kept him a free man
had an impact on him like nothing before, and he vowed to never be the man he
was.
The policeman, Javert, however, hated him and was determined
to put him back in prison. Javert
treats him with contempt, but Valjean will not retaliate. He turns the other cheek, and he loves his
neighbor, and he lives a life of love.
In the end he overpowers his enemy, and overcomes evil with good. The last line in the theatre production
captures the essences of it all‑"To love another person is to see
the face of God."
I think it says even
more clearly‑"To love another person is to let them see the face of
God." The love of the Bishop
helped Valjean see the face of God, and he was changed forever, and his love
then helped others see the face of God.
God is love, and so wherever love is seen you are getting some glimpse
of God. That is the beauty of this
first fruit of the Spirit. It makes us
attract others to see God and desire to taste of the fruits He can produce in
lives. Love is the best witness there
is, for nothing is more attractive and enticing than love.
All the works of the flesh that Paul lists in Gal.5:19‑21
are the efforts of man to get love without God. All sexual immorality is a hunger for love. All the hate, jealousy, and envy of others is
a hunger for love. We get angry and
create problems because we want love.
Studies show that almost all, if not all, anti‑social behavior is
a cry for love. Man in his flesh seeks
the food of life‑love, but what he gets is garbage instead. Only love can meet his deepest needs. The Christian is to reveal to the world an
example of true love in contrast to the devil's fakes.
What is true love? It
is feeling and doing what Jesus would feel and do in the same situation. Jesus was Spirit filled and thus always
loving. If you can honestly say I am
feeling and doing what Jesus would feel and do, you are being as loving as you
can be. When you love you are as near
to God as you can get, for God is love.
It is the number one characteristic of God's nature, and to be a channel
of that nature in the world is to fulfill the ultimate purpose of being a
person made in the image of God. This
is also the ultimate pleasure.
Remember, fruit means enjoyment.
It is from the Latin fructus, which means enjoyment. Where love is joy is right behind. The greatest pleasure in life is love. You cannot find a greater pleasure, for it
is a taste of God's greatest pleasure.
We are forced, however, to look at the paradox of love. If it is the ultimate in enjoyment and
pleasure, why did it become so costly to God to love man? It cost infinite pain and thus we are stuck
with the paradox of love being both pleasurable and painful. In a perfect world love is only pleasure,
but in a fallen world love hurts, for love desires the best for its objects no
matter what the cost, and this means pain.
God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, and Jesus so loved
lost men that He gave His life on the cross for them to be restored to the
favor of God. It was painful, but also
the highest pleasure. Jesus endured the
cross with joy, for He looked to the eternal result for Himself and the
redeemed. Love's goal is always the
highest peak of pleasure, but to get there it often has to go through painful valleys
of suffering. This is true, not only
for God's love, but for the love of parents and mates.
Love often hurts in a fallen world, but love is willing to
hurt, for that is the price for ultimate pleasure. One who will not suffer for another does not love the other in
any meaningful way. All God‑like
love is willing to bear pain for the sake of another's well being. The Good Samaritan was good, and was used by
Jesus to illustrate love, because he was willing to pay the price of
interrupting his own plans for the sake of another who needed help. The Priest and the Levite may have had
better theology than the Samaritan, but they were not willing to suffer any
pain for the sake of the injured man.
They may have had gifts, but they were of no value to the kingdom of God
without the fruit of love.
The Good Samaritan was despised and rejected by the leaders of
God's people, but Jesus made him a hero.
Why? Because he had what really
matters to God. He had the first fruit
of the Spirit, which is love. He had
the kind of love that is willing to suffer for the pleasure of God and the
pleasure of man, and this is the fulfillment of the whole law. Loving God with your whole being and your
neighbor as yourself means to be willing to suffer pain for their
pleasure. The goal is always pleasure,
but the means to it may be painful.
Love will pay the price of pain to gain this pleasure.
What this means is, love is a chosen self‑limitation
for the sake of another. God and Jesus
both made choices that limited their sovereign freedom to do as they pleased by
creating man, and then redeeming him.
If God was unloving and self‑centered He would have ended the plan
with Adam and Eve, or at lease by the time of the flood. He would have taken Noah and his family
also, and called it quits. To pursue
the plan of salvation all the way to the cross was love beyond our
comprehension. We cannot match the love
of God, but we can grow this same fruit, and be willing to limit self for the
sake of others.
This is what parenthood is, and what marriage is, and what
ministry is. All forms of love are
choices to limit yourself for the sake of others. It sounds like sacrifice, and it is, but it is also the way to
the greatest pleasure for the self.
Those who want only self‑pleasure, and will not limit their
pleasure for the sake of others, will end up with very little pleasure. Those who limit their pleasure for the sake
of others will end up with the greatest
pleasure. This is the way of love and
love always ends up with the greatest pleasure.
Ibsen in his poetic drama Peer Gynt, has a hero who is a
reckless and irresponsible dreamer whose motto is, "To thyself be
enough." He visits a lunatic
asylum where he believes people are not themselves, but the director says it is
here that people are most themselves, themselves and nothing but
themselves. They are all totally self‑centered
with no tears for others woes, or cares for any others needs. He realizes he has been a failure by being
self‑centered. He finds healing
in the love of the heroine, solveig. It
is a message, on the human level, that without love life is barren of all fruit
that will last.
Even the secular world knows the truth about love that is why most
secular songs, plays, and movies are about love. The problem is, the highest love man knows without God is sexual
love, and when this becomes ones highest value, it becomes an idol, and leads
to all sorts of perversions. It is not
that human love is bad, for it is God‑given and one of life's greatest
gifts, but when it is seen as the ultimate it becomes an idol, and leads to
depravity.
Some wise men have seen that all human love is to be a means
to a greater love. Plato said,
"All loves should be simply stepping stones to the love of God." If men would just realize this, and keep on
stepping up the stairs of love to the love of God they would find that love
that never fails. We sing that Jesus
never fails, and Paul in I Cor.13:8 says that love never fails. Love that
reaches the God‑like, and Christ like level, because it is the fruit of
the Holy Spirit is the love that never fails, and is always the right thing to
do.
It does not succeed in the sense that it always wins its
object. Jesus failed to win many that He loved, and He wept because they would
not accept Him. The point is, Jesus
never made the wrong choice. His love
never failed to keep Him in the center of God's will. He could love His enemies, and though He could not always win His
enemies, He never failed by being unloving to them. Because Jesus never failed to love, He never failed to be a true
representative of God the Father. This
is to be the goal of everyone who wants to live a life pleasing to God, for
this is a life filled with pleasure for the self as well.
Love never fails, does not mean the loving Christian succeeds
in all he or she attempts to accomplish.
It means they always please God without fail. God never says, "I
am not pleased with your loving spirit toward your brother or your
enemy." God is always pleased with
love, and, therefore, love never fails to achieve life's highest goal, which is
to please God. That is why Oswald
Chambers said, "Love is the beginning, love is the middle, love is the
end." God made us in His image,
and thus, we are made to love, and when we do we fulfill our very purpose for
being. It is life's highest success.
What is the purpose of life?
It is to become what God made us to be‑images of Him. This is achieved by bearing the fruit of the
Spirit, for these nine fruits are love displayed in all of its aspects. Someone has described them like this‑
Joy is love's cheerfulness.
Peace is love's confidence
Patience is love's composure
Kindness is
love's consideration
Goodness is love's character
Faithfulness is love's
constancy
Gentleness is love's
comliness
Self‑control is love's
conquest.
The point is, the more these nine fruits characterize your
life, the more you fulfill your purpose for being, for you are a reflection of
His love, which is to say, you are
Christ like. Some years ago New York
city had a murder mystery that was finally solved by the arrest of several
notorious criminals. One was Jack Rose,
who after he was convicted and imprisoned said, "I always believed that
there must be a God somewhere. But when
I gave Him thought, I felt He was so far away, and so occupied with great
things, that He knew nothing about me.
I am sure I never would have become a criminal if the thought had ever
entered my mind that God cared anything about me." The world is filled with people who do not
know that God loves them because there is no Christian who is communicating
that love to them. The poet says‑
Do you know the world is
dying
For a little bit of love?
Everywhere we hear them
sighing,
For a little bit of love.
When we make choices to communicate the love of God to the
lost, then we know we have gone beyond natural love to bearing the fruit of the
Spirit. Every Christian needs to be
praying the prayer of Dr. Will Houghton, former president of Moody Bible
Institute.
Love this world through me,
Lord
This world of broken men,
Thou didst love through
death, Lord
Oh, love in me again!
Souls are in despair, Lord.
Oh, make me know and care;
When my life they see,
May they behold Thee,
Oh, love the world through
me.