Fruit of the Spirit: Love

I'm hoping to gain a greater understanding and awareness of the fruit of the Spirit.  I thought I would start with the first one from this list, love.  I suppose volumes could be written on what love is and what it isn't, but I thought I would cover it today by taking a quick spin through (yes, again!) 1 Corinthians 12 & 13.  But first, here is Paul writing about the works of the flesh and then the fruit of the Spirit:

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. (Galatians 5:16-26)

In the accountability group I am a part of one of the questions I chose a while back to have asked of me is as follows (I came across it somewhere online and "borrowed" it):

"Do you see evidence in your life of God working to develop any of the fruits of the spirit, especially ones that don't come naturally to you?"

It has been good for me to reflect on this question on a weekly basis.  I have tended to focus in on love as being the sole quality that a Christian is to strive for...and I suppose that is essentially true.  Certainly if you boil everything down to one word, love would be the most important one to fully understand and strive for, as from it everything Holy flows.  However, focusing on love without understanding all those things that love is (and isn't) does not present a full picture of how it is defined by God, and perhaps how it defines God.

And Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40)

In 1 Cor 13: 1-3, Paul tells us just how meaningless everything is - no matter how seemingly important - unless done in love:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

In those 3 verses, Paul takes the noblest of Christian acts, such as speaking in tongues, prophecy, substantial giving, even dying for a cause and tells us that they are all completely worthless if not done out of love.  He is very directly telling us that anything that we do, no matter how difficult or extreme, is completely worthless unless motivated by Godly, loving intent.

In the next 4 verses he goes on to tell us just what this love really is (1 Corinthians 13:4-7):

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Paul is telling us that our motives matter.  People tell me at times that I worry too much about the motivations behind my behavior.  I don't agree with their concern about this as it strikes me that God is very interested in what motivates our actions toward others (Jer 17:10)...to the extent that no matter how seemingly "good" our actions may be, they amount to absolutely nothing if not carried out from a motivation to love God and others.

And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. (Colossians 3:14)

For instance, the act of giving someone my food - let's say an orange - would seem to be a kind gesture to a friend.  Now suppose the motive for my giving was actually coming from a desire I had to get my hands on the candy bar which sat next to my friend.  In this case, the gift of the orange would seem outwardly to be a kind, loving act, but in reality, because of my selfish (unloving) motivation, was nothing more than a deceptive act carried out to put myself in a better position to gain something I desired.

Unfortunately, the true desires and motivations behind our behavior, even our "kindness", are not usually so straightforward or obvious.  Oftentimes it is difficult to get to the root of what is motivating our behavior.  Sometimes even a person making a kind gesture may not consciously be aware of his or her true motivations.  This is why I think it is important to regularly seek to understand ourselves and learn about why we do the things we do.  If you take Paul's word for it, it is critical!

In the next 6 verses, Paul tells us of the permanence and preeminence of love (1 Corinthians 13:8-13)

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

If we backtrack to 1 Cor 12:31, Paul, just before telling us about love in Ch. 13 makes the statement that he is about to show us "A still more excellent way".  Throughout Ch. 12 Paul tells us of the believers need for one another.  He seems to address some pride issues among the Corinthians and reminds them (and us) that we are to be united with one another.  That all of the many parts that make up the body are necessary and that we are not to boast based on the perceived higher value of one Spiritual gift over another.  Paul says in vv. 25-26 that these gifts are to be used to build one another up and to care for one another.  He tells us that it is good to desire the "higher" spiritual gifts, but that we are to desire them so that we can use them not as a means to gain praise or respect from others, but rather we desire them so that we may use them in love - from which those gifts can be useful in service to the Lord in that others are built up by them.

I think it is clear that our motivations matter greatly.  And in deciphering what the motivation behind our actions is, should we come to understand it to be anything other than Godly love, regardless of how we appear to be outwardly to our brothers and sisters, God considers all that we say or do to be completely meaningless and beneficial for nothing.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. (1 John 4:7-12)

I often discover other motivations for behaviors of mine even in cases where I thought I was acting in love.  While it isn't for us to obtain perfection in love in these earthly bodies, we are still called to be mindful of the forces behind our behavior and to constantly reorient ourselves to a posture of action flowing out of love.

"Let all that you do be done in love." (1 Corinthians 16:14)