Friday, May 31, 2019
But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! Galatians 5:22-23
Today we
come to the last part of our investigation into the nine-fold manifestation of
the Fruit
of the Spirit. These nine
characteristic traits are alive and functioning in the believer who offers
him/herself fully to God’s care and leading.
So, why did we leave love until the end when it is
the first on the list? That’s a good question
and has a great answer. In the ancient
world the most important thought came first and is summed-up in what
follows. For Paul, any description of
what God is, does, thinks, or….well, loves are a representation of
who God IS. This concept is hard to get
down in a few words, but the Apostle John did it better than anyone else:
…anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 1 John 4:8
Love, God’s
character, is summed-up in that list of the fruit. Granted, this is not the totality of God…we
haven’t even scratched the surface about his omnipotent power, righteous
judgment, omnipresence, or omniscience, let-alone his eternal being. The vastness of this unseen God makes my head
hurt when I try to entertain just the beginnings of understanding all of He who
sits on Heaven’s throne. He is the
ancient One, unfathomable; no human can even continue to live if we were thrust
into His presence. But if we go to love,
it gives us (at least) the starting point of understanding how God applies all
His being to His creation. It shows us
what God wants to be in us, and what we can be like as dwellers together in His
Kingdom.
To turn
John’s phrase, anyone who loves knows God, and from that love spring
all the wonders of joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, kindness, self-control,
faithfulness, and patience. And, in a
life lived in love, which produces all the rest of that spiritual fruit, there
is a resultant absence of selfishness, anger, greed, lust, laziness, envy, and
pride, those seven deadly sins. It is an
absolute mathematical equation…as love produces fruit of the Spirit, sin, in
all its association with death, darkness and evil, must scatter and die.
So, with
no apology to Erich Segal’s Love Story and the heartbreak
of Ali McGraw and Ryan O’Neal, love is not where you never have to say you’re sorry…love
is all about knowing your transgressions bring on anger, violence, and a host
of every kind of evil, destroying and rotting the fruit of God’s Spirit in you
and others. It is all about re-plowing
the field of God’s vineyard in your life…saying you’re sorry, and receiving the
reviving of forgiveness, the restoration of fruit-filled love!
For You Today
It’s time to put Hollywood back in their little camera boxes. They’ve created a whole generational culture
where love is a feeling, surrounded by photoshopped, background music and
moments to remember. They wouldn’t know
God-love if it dropped from the camera-boom on their silly heads!
All that list of the fruit of God’s Spirit is yours when you choose to
love.
Go to VIDEO
[1] Title Image: Pixabay.com
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The New Living Translation©
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The New Living Translation©
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