The Fruit of the Spirit - Love - 1 John 4: 7-16

Love is a much abused term. The most prevalent notion in the Western world is that love is a warm, topsy-turvy feeling, a thrill one gets in the pit of the stomach or a tingle running up and down the spine. We think of it as a warm sense of regard, a strong desire to be with or be satisfied by someone or something.

According to verses 7 and 8 in 1 John 4, love comes from God. God showed us his love through Christ's incarnation (taking on humanity) and death. God's love broke through history in the person of Jesus Christ, and breaks through again every time Christians show love to one another. He is its Source. It is agape love. Human love apart from God is at its best a mere pale and vague reflection of what God is eternally.

Biblical love is not something we have innately. True, some forms of love arise by nature, but this is not so with the love of God. It comes through the action of God through His Spirit, something supernatural.

In Romans 13: 8-10 Paul injects love into the context of law, showing that it is the sum of all duties. He does not say love ends the need for law but that it fulfills - performs or accomplishes - the law. In Colossians 3:12-14 Paul puts love "above all," showing that love is the epitome of virtues. Its importance is as "the bond," something that binds or holds things, like a congregation, together.

1 John 5:3 is the Bible's basic definition of love. The commandments define, make clear, what the basic elements of love are and what direction our actions should take if we would show love. This means that obedience to God is the proof of love. Obedience is an action that submits to a command of God, a principle revealed in His Word and/or an example of God or the godly. In a sense, this is where godly love begins in a human being. Obeying God's commands is love because God is love. Because His very nature is love, it is impossible for Him to sin. Thus He gives us commands in love, and they will produce right and good results. Any command of God reflects that He Himself would do were He in the same situation.

What is the standard we should try to measure our love by? In Matthew 22:39 it is to love our neighbor as ourselves - we sacrifice a great deal to please ourselves. He raises this a notch or two in Matthew 5:44 when he says bless those who curse us, do good to those who hate us, pray for those who spitefully use or persecute us. And in John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends." In Ephesians 5:25 we are to love "just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it."

Love, godly love, is the fruit, the product of that Spirit which now courses through our lives. That Spirits guides us and leads us into truth. Obedience to His commands is godly love, the fruit of His Spirit that empowers us, the supreme virtue of the Almighty Creator.