Every year around March Madness you hear a lot about people filling out their brackets, and I’m usually one of those that’s involved in that as well. You know the usual favorites – Duke, UNC, Kansas, UConn. It’s easily my favorite sports event of the year. But this year I came across a different kind of bracket and it was the “Greatest Word of All Time” bracket or the “GWOAT” – the “GWOAT bracket.” It included matchups between “Happy” and “Home” and “Thanks” and “Sorry,” and at the end of several rounds of online voting, the word that won the “Greatest Word of All Time” bracket was “Love.” And love is a great word. In fact, Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, “Faith, hope and love abide, but the greatest of these is love.”
Well tonight, we are beginning a new sermon series for the next nine weeks on the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians chapter 5, verses 22 and 23. If you’d like to turn there in your Bibles to Galatians chapter 5, you can find it on page 975 in the pew Bibles. And the first of the fruit of the Spirit is love. In fact, some people believe that love is the core virtue of the fruit of the Spirit. It is in fact the chief virtue of the Christian life. And there’s good reason to think that. After all, when Jesus was asked, “What is the great commandment? What is the greatest commandment? The greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul and mind. And the second is like it. It is to love your neighbor as yourself.” But don’t you think if we were to compare Jesus and Paul and their idea, their concept of love with what most of the voters in the “Greatest Word of All Time” bracket think of when they think of love that there would be some differences there? And I think when we come to Galatians chapter 5, a good way for us to understand what the fruit of the Spirit is, a good way for us to understand what Jesus and Paul are talking about when they talk about love, is to look at it in the context of this book to the Galatians, this letter to the Galatians.
Now David Strain preached through the book of Galatians a few months ago, but over the next few weeks, we are going to take a deep dive into the nine words that are found in chapter 5, verses 22 and 23 – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. And tonight, we are going to focus our attention on that first one, love. And we’ll do that by looking at it in two ways. First, we’ll look at two dead ends, and then we’ll see only one way. Two dead ends and only one way. Before we read God’s Word, let’s pray and ask His help to understand and to apply it to our blessing. Let’s pray.
Father, we thank You for Your Word and we thank You for Your love and that we come to read Your Scripture tonight in the context of Your great love for us, Your love which sent Jesus to die for us and to suffer for us, to be raised for us that we might know You and have the gift of the Spirit to produce these things in our lives and in our church body. So speak, Lord, for Your servants listen. We pray that Your Spirit would open Your Word to us for our blessing and for Your glory. And we pray all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Galatians chapter 5, verse 22:
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”
The grass withers and the flowers fall but the Word of our God endures forever.
As we look at these two verses, and we’ll look at two dead ends, let’s start with the most overlooked parts of these verses. These are the words, or perhaps the phrases, that almost never get quoted when people quote or repeat the fruit of the Spirit. Those two words are “but” in verse 22, and “against such things there is no law,” in verse 23. Now we need to start there because we tend to sentimentalize love. We tend to sentimentalize the fruit of the Spirit. What are the things that come to your mind, what are the images that come to our minds when we think about love? Well, we think about a mother and those first few moments with her newborn child. I was telling someone recently that I pulled out, for some reason, I pulled out an old camcorder that we had in a cabinet in our house. It’s so old, I have no way to even get the images on a disc or on a screen or anything so I was just watching it there on the little screen on the camcorder and it was a video of us bringing our firstborn home from the hospital. And I wouldn’t have said this at the time, but there were two emotions in the man that was behind the camera filming that event. One of them was terror! How could they ever let us bring home a newborn from the hospital to take care of on our own? And the other was love. And there is nothing to compare to the love that a parent has for their children.
Maybe it’s the love that a husband has for a wife, and on that day when they say, “I do.” And we can picture that happy couple as they make their way from the reception, through the crowd of guests, into the car, and off together, just married and happily ever after. Those are images when we think of when we think of love. Or maybe it’s just friends that are hanging out together at the beach or at a game. The pictures that end up being posted on Instagram. Those are the mental images that come to our mind when we think about the good life, when we think about special relationships. That’s what we mean when we talk about love.
But, but what about, it’s really only a few months, 24 months, and we start talking about children as “terrible twos.” Now it’s really not that fair to them, they are actually a lot worse when they get to three than they were at two, but it turns quickly, doesn’t it? Or what about when one of those newlyweds turns out to be much more difficult to live with than they ever thought they would be, or one becomes sick with an illness and those vows become much more harder to fulfill than they ever thought. Or what about those friends? They find themselves on the wrong end of a disagreement. Maybe it’s about parenting choices. Maybe it’s something that has to do with money. And it may be just a lot easier to go your separate ways and to avoid each other than to deal with the hurt feelings and to try to reconcile with one another.
All that to say, in other words, love, relationships, life with others – it’s complicated, isn’t it? And I’m sure you’ve faced that, you’ve felt that, you’ve experienced that even in the context of this congregation perhaps. Sentimentality is not enough. We have to get past the notion that the fruit of the Spirit is a cross-stitch project or it’s a preschool craft or something like that. Actually, the fruit of the Spirit is much more radical than that, and love may actually be more controversial than we realize because for one thing, none of us really wants to love like this. I would even say that none of us is able to love like this, not if we live according to our natural tendencies. And that’s the contrast that is set up between verses 19 to 21 in verses 22 and 23. That’s the reason for that word, “but.” You see, the works of the flesh, the works of the flesh are sexual immorality, strife, jealousy, anger, divisions, envy. “But, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience” and so on. The works of the flesh are opposed to the fruit of the Spirit. The works of the flesh are all of those things which separate us. They are all of those things which cause relationships to break down, to fall apart. But the fruit of the Spirit are those things that bring us back together. They are those things that heal relationships, that keep people together for the long haul. According to our sinful nature – in other words, if we live according to our natural desires and by our own strength, we will see our own way and we will do the works of the flesh.
I had a friend recently, he was telling me about an RUF Sunday that he participated in at a church not too far away. And they had a number of campus ministers at the church for that Sunday to hear about their ministry on the campus and with students to encourage them, to support them, and remind them of their love and encouragement. They had a time of Q&A with these men. They wanted to know, “What are some of the pressing concerns on the college campus? What are the things they are running up against on a daily basis?” And one of the questions was something like this. They said, “What have we done as parents in our choices and in our parenting style to raise narcissists?” That’s a pretty loaded question, and that put my friend on the spot to have to answer that before this congregation of parents. But you know, it’s really claiming too much credit for the parents, isn’t it? Because parents don’t have to do anything to raise narcissists. We all have a natural tendency to turn in on ourselves. We all have a natural tendency to seek our own way and to give way to pride. The theologian Herman Bavinck says, “Sin is placing a substitute on the throne.” And it’s not just placing any substitute on the throne. It’s not a neighbor, it’s not another creature, it’s not some experience. No, sin is placing ourselves on the throne, and the organizing principle of sin is egocentricity or self-glorification. We don’t need anyone else’s help to teach us how to be narcissists. Pride is the natural tendency of life in the flesh.
But if we are going to live in a way that is opposed to life in the flesh, if we are going to live according to the way of the Spirit, then what does that tell us about what it means to love? Well, it tells us that to love means doing things that we do not want to do. I’m sure you’ve heard it said before that love is an action and not an emotion. I think that’s partly true. Love is an action and not merely an emotion, but we could also say that love is an action that sometimes calls for us to do things that we don’t want to do. It calls for us to do things that go against our natural tendencies. There’s a line from a Lumineers song that goes something like, “Love should make us feel good. Love should make you feel good.” And that’s what the world thinks, isn’t it? That love feels good. That’s what love is. But actually, love sometimes means saying “No” to yourself. And love sometimes means inconveniencing yourself for the good of someone else. It means to go against what’s popular. It means to be able to say that you are wrong and to ask for forgiveness when you need to be forgiven. It means pursuing reconciliation and granting that forgiveness when it needs to be granted.
You see, that was the problem in the church in Galatia. It was too much of life in the flesh. And some people thought that they had a better gospel. They thought that they had gotten the gospel better and it caused this division in the church. It caused even leaders like Peter and Barnabas to get carried away with self righteousness and hypocrisy and judgmentalism. And they separated themselves from others in the church. They kind of separated themselves into this group that they felt like they were a sort of elite Christian group. And that happens today still, doesn’t it? It could be how long you’ve been in the church or how much money you’ve given to the church. Or maybe it’s just some soapbox issue that makes you feel superior to others. Our natural tendency is to do what? Our natural tendency is to complain, maybe to start up trouble, or just to go somewhere else altogether. But that’s not love. That’s life according to the flesh. But love, love is biting our tongues. Love is giving up our rights. Love is showing grace to those with whom we differ. And we don’t really like doing those things. Those are hard for us to do. They go against the desires of the flesh. That’s dead end number one – the work of the flesh.
So how do we curb those desires? How do we curb the desires of the flesh? How do we stop following our sinful desires and start doing the things that are right? Well maybe it’s just that we need better discipline – eat right, get some exercise, get a better night’s sleep. Maybe we need better training. Maybe it’s to become more involved in the church. Maybe. But really aren’t those things just more attempts at following the rules? And that’s dead end number two – it’s trying to keep the law. And those things are not bad in and of themselves. You see, accountability, boundaries, establishing good habits – those are not bad in and of themselves. It’s just that they can’t do anything to cultivate the fruit of the Spirit.
You see, after listing the fruit of the Spirit, there is that other phrase that’s oftentimes overlooked in these verses. Verse 23, “against such things there is no law.” What does that mean? Well it could mean something as simple as that there is no law against love and joy and peace and patience and so on. And that’s certainly true. There is no law that is going to condemn any of those sort of behaviors. In fact, the law is there to protect and to promote those things. But that preposition that’s translated “against such” is the Greek word “kata,” and that Greek word can also be translated “according to.” So you might translate that phrase as “according to such things there is no law.” In other words, there is no law that can produce love. There’s no law that can produce joy or patience. The Message translation of the Bible says, “Legalism is helpless in bringing these things about.” The law can tell us what to do, and we can even carry out the law to the letter of the law. We could carry out the law with exactly what it says to the letter of the law and that doesn’t mean that that obedience comes from the heart. That doesn’t mean that the inward character necessarily matches the external actions, does it? In fact, that was the problem with the Pharisees. That was the problem with Paul prior to his conversion. He felt that he had obeyed the law to the letter of the law but it had no love in it. It was powerless to produce the fruit of the Spirit.
And in the Galatian church, the issue was circumcision. And some of the teachers had come in and they said that circumcision was required for salvation. In other words, obedience to the law of circumcision was necessary in addition to receiving the invitation to trust in Jesus for salvation. But because of that, Jesus plus circumcision, there was a division in the Galatian church and they were neglecting their love for one another. Paul says in Galatians chapter 5 verse 6, a few verses back, he says, “In Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” There’s a sense in which I think we can say that the fruit of the Spirit may actually be a rebuke to the Galatian Christians. You see, they were reverting back to living according to the way of the flesh, to the bondage of the law and the flesh, when they had been set free from the law, they had been set free from the flesh to live by faith in Jesus and to live according to the fruit of the Spirit in love and joy with one another. What they needed to do was live in that freedom, to enjoy the fruit of the Spirit in their community with one another and we need to do the same as well.
What we all too often do is we fall into other forms of legalism ourselves, don’t we? It could be obvious ones and we add to the Gospel things like politics or worship style or whatever the current moral standards are of the day. But there’s also less obvious forms of legalism as well. It’s a mindset, an approach to life with Christ that we think that we can do enough to manufacture a love for one another. You can do it in your marriage, in your families – to think that we provide for your family and you remember birthdays and anniversaries and go on vacation in the summertime and that’s loving your family. Or maybe in the church when someone has experienced a loss, a death, you write them a note, you take them a meal, and you sign the visitation book when you go to the funeral. Those are all good things, but can they actually produce love? See, it’s not a formula; it’s not an algorithm, or do these certain things and that will produce love.
If you would indulge a little more nostalgia, I was reading a book recently about the 90s and there was a part of the book, a chapter of the book that was talking about VCRs and VHS rentals and Blockbusters. If you were not around in the 90s and don’t remember those things you probably have no category for what that was! We would go to these stores and rent a movie! And the writer was saying that part of the process, the allure of that, that part of the process, the allure of Blockbuster was the complete randomness of it and it was all contained in this physical place. And he says that the rental experience was locked in the physical world and there was no algorithm coercing consumers towards those things that they were predisposed to enjoy. That’s what we’re used to, isn’t it? We’re used to these algorithms that direct us toward the things that we’re predisposed to enjoy. We like algorithms. We like those things. We’re used to those things.
There’s no algorithm. There’s no formula. There’s no protocol of do this and this and this and that equals love. Actually, love has to come first. Have you thought about that? Oftentimes, we get it the other way around and we think that if we spend time with one another, we serve together, we eat together, we do things socially together, then that will produce love. Actually, it’s the other way around. We love one another so that we can then spend time together and serve one another and serve together and enjoy the benefits of that relationship. There’s a word there for us as we go to Peru at the end of the week. We’re going to a place and to a people, we don’t know their names; never met them, never seen them before. They speak a different language. And yet what is the call for us in going with the Gospel there? To serve the people there? It’s love. We love them. We love them in Christ, and so we go to them. And that’s what we’re to keep at the forefront of our mind all this trip this next week. But in all that we do together, as God’s people, we love in order to serve one another and to serve with each other. Love comes first. Now how is that? How is that? It’s because love is the fruit of the Spirit. That’s the only way. That’s the only one way. There’s two dead ends – living according to the works of the flesh or according to the law – but the only way is to live according to the Spirit.
I was talking to a friend this week and he’s a friend that I really only see maybe a couple of times a year, but he’s good at getting right past the small talk and asking some of those questions that can make me uncomfortable. And he asked me, “What has God been teaching you? What are you learning recently?” I thought about it for a second. The thing that I answered was, “That I’m not the Holy Spirit.” I’m not the Holy Spirit. And that sounds obvious. That sounds like something that I should have already learned. But I’m not the Holy Spirit, and neither are you. But don’t we so often want God to work in our way and in our time like we planned it? And don’t we want to be in control instead of letting God be in control? To let God be in control and instead we want to be in control instead of living in dependence upon the Holy Spirit. That’s really hard for us. I think that’s particularly hard for a place like First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Mississippi because we live in an achievement focused, connections oriented, work hard, be nice, have it all together kind of culture. And we can tend to think that the fruit of the Spirit, what the Bible says about love, is about how to be a better person and how can we have better relationships. It’s about self improvement. And that’s not what it’s about.
The first thing we have to recognize about the fruit of the Spirit, the first thing we have to recognize about love, is that it is the fruit of the Spirit. And so love comes, all the rest come, not by knowing better or by doing better. Love comes first from receiving God’s love for us by faith. That God loved us when we couldn’t do better and we could never make enough connections to get ourselves to God. Our best efforts will fail and we will make a mess of everything on our own. “But when we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” When we were enemies of the cross, Jesus pursued us. It’s because God loved us first. It’s not what we do; it’s what God has done for us. And then through the gift of the Spirit dwelling in us, love comes by depending upon the Holy Spirit and walking by the Spirit.
And that can be hard for us, can’t it? Because it means being still. Walking by the Spirit, depending on the Spirit, it means listening more than talking and filling our heads with distraction. It means resting rather than always being working and striving for what’s next and what’s better. It means having a posture of prayer and dependence upon God and honestly having self examination, turning to God in repentance. It means committing ourselves to do things the way the Spirit calls us to do it and the way that the Spirit will accomplish it according to God’s ways and not our ways, according to God’s ways and not the ways of the world. You see, we have been set free by God’s love for us to walk by the Spirit, to live by the Spirit, to let the Spirit be the Spirit. In other words, to live by faith and obedience. That’s not always the first thing that comes to our minds. And so the fruit of the Spirit comes by living according to the Spirit.
And then there’s one other thing that we can say about the fruit of the Spirit. We’re calling this series, “Life Together.” Now understand that’s borrowing from a Dietrich Bonhoeffer book called, “Life Together,” but as I kept thinking about the fruit of the Spirit, I kept coming back to that word, “together.” The fruit of the Spirit together. Because what we oftentimes miss in the fruit of the Spirit when we take it as a personal character study, we miss that it’s for us; it’s talking about us together. And the evidence of the Spirit among us is our love for one another. And it’s not just for people like us, but it’s for people who are difficult to love. It’s for people who come from a different background from us or with whom we have little in common. Or maybe we disagree with them. Ligon preached this morning about how do we love those who hate us. That’s what this is about.
And if we are going to take Paul’s exhortation seriously, his exhortation for the fruit of the Spirit for love, for Jew and Gentile to love one another in Christ, Jew and Gentile to love one another in the church, what does that look like in our own day? You know what? If we are going to love people like that, I think that could put us at risk of being called progressive or antinomian or whatever word Paul is called for stirring up trouble. And if we are going to love that way, it’s going to put us at risk of going outside our comfort zones and outside of our safe circles because love that looks like Christ’s love for us, love that comes through the power of the Holy Spirit, it’s not safe, but it’s good. And what does that look like?
Well, in closing, Tertullian, he was one of the early church fathers; he lived in the second century, lived and ministered in Carthage, North Africa. He lived and ministered in a time of polarization and aggression and when the Christian faith was viewed as somewhat revolutionary and opposed to the culture of the day. And in his writings, he offered a defense, he offered an apology of the faith he had received from the apostles and as it had been lived out in the early church. And here’s what he said. As he was speaking about the generosity of those early Christians, he said that “Their gifts went not to feasts and drinking bouts and eating houses, but to support and bury poor people and to supply the needs of boys and girls destitute of means and parents and of old people confined to the house.” And he said if there happened to be any in the mines or shut up in prisons for nothing but their fidelity to the cause of God’s church, they become recipients of their care. And then he said this. “But it is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us.” And this is the brand that was placed upon them – “See? They say. See how they love one another.” See how they love one another. That’s our calling card. That’s what we are called to do. That’s what we are to be about. Our freedom in Christ, our life in the Spirit, calls us to love one another like that.
So I ask you as we close, “Who are the people that need forgiveness in your life? Where are the places where maybe you are holding a grudge? Or who are the people that you tend to ignore?” The fruit of the Spirit is love. It’s a love that is challenging. It’s a love from the heart. It’s a love that comes by the power of the Holy Spirit. “See how they love one another.”
Let’s pray.
Our Father, we come before You in humility and dependence. We are in awe that You have called us to a love like this, that You have come to us with a love like this, that You called us to Yourself to be Your children, to live as Your people. And we ask that You would, by Your Spirit, cultivate in us, work in us these fruit of the Spirit, beginning with love, that we would love one another with sacrificing and serving and giving controlling and restraining ourselves for the sake and for the wellbeing of others around us. We pray that You would send us out this week to love in this way, that that would be the brand upon this congregation and that You would receive the glory for it. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.