Spiritual Fruits: Love (Gal 5:22)

Sermon Transcript

So, we are in the book of Galatians, all right? So, all right, we are going through the book of Galatians verse by verse. We have been in the book of Galatians since the month of January, and we are coming to an end. And don’t worry, we’re only going to cover one word today, but that does not mean that’s the pace we’re going to keep up until we finish the book of Galatians, all right? Would you please stand with me as we read? We’re going to read Galatians 5:16-24.

“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.”

You may be seated. This is the word of Lord.

Father, I thank you so much that we have the gift of your word. Oh Lord, as your word says, the body is weak but the spirit is willing. I pray that this tired servant that you have called to deliver the word today would be blessed with supernatural heavenly energy. I pray that you would fill my mind with the energy of heaven, that I would be able to focus properly and be able to give to your people what you have ordained. Oh Lord, I pray that your people here today would receive these words as your own. And I pray, Father, that we would have our minds catapulted to the great illustrious wonderful love of God above, and that we would be compelled and motivated to likewise love others, including our enemies, in the inconvenient in the same way that you have loved us selflessly and inconveniently. We need you, Lord. Fill us in this place with your presence and your Holy Spirit so that we can be made more like you than we were when we walked in today. Be with us, heavenly Father, and open eyes to see and ears to hear, and protect us from that wicked ancient serpent who seeks to kill and destroy and thwart our attention spans. In Jesus’ name, amen.

All right, so when I started college—by the way, those who are just joining us today, you just missed out on two weeks of works of the flesh, so you’ve joined us just in time to hear the good stuff. So, when I started college, I decided I’m going to start a blog. I thought I would make money doing blogs. Blogs were a thing way before social media. Now, at the time, there was this law that had just come out of California where they were trying to legalize gay marriage way before the Oberfeld decision with the Supreme Court. And I decided I’m going to go ahead and write an article to the governor of California. I was just simply trying to make the claim in the article that it is impossible to be absolutely secular. That’s an ideal that’s unachievable because everybody has some kind of moral definition of what’s right and wrong, and that always goes above and beyond what humanity can make. Because otherwise, it’s just an arbitrary rule if we make up our own morals, right? So, it’s impossible to be secular. That was the article argument that I was making. And somebody blew up on Facebook and got really mad at me because they critiqued something I wasn’t even saying. And they said, “How dare you say who can love who?” And it took me a long time to realize that, well, one, I wasn’t saying that, but two, the world has really hijacked the meaning of the word love, like really bad. We’re going to look at some of that today because, as we saw in the text we just read this morning, love is the first and chiefest of all the fruits of the spirit. The spirit produces love in believers. We are coming off the heels of looking at the works of the flesh. In the works of the flesh, there is no love, but love is the epitome of God. And we have to take hold and reclaim the definition of love for the world because, as of right now, the enemy is using the world’s megaphone through media publications and social media to perpetrate this false idea of what true love is. And it’s leading to broken homes, it’s leading to destroyed families, destroyed marriages, it’s leading to affairs, it’s leading to addictions, it’s leading to depression and anxiety, and it is all because we have severed the anchor of what truly defines love, and that is God himself. Apart from God, love is an illusion, and that’s the world that Satan has built for us to live in. We hear “I love you” in the media, we hear things like “love yourself,” we hear “all you need is love,” we hear all these things in songs and movies and music, but apart from the sacrificial love of Jesus, love is an illusion.

So, modern Christians, this is the main point of today’s sermon. If it’s been a while, we have these handy-dandy little bulletin notes that you can follow. I say handy-dandy because I was raised on Blue’s Clues—can you tell? All right, modern Christians: the main point of today’s sermon should be that you need to recognize that within the world of Christian ethics, there is nothing more important than love—that is, a Spirit-driven love—and that is the best love in the entire world.

Now, where are we in the book of Galatians? Up until chapter 5, we have been looking at this group of people who are coming in from the circle of what we call Judaizers, and they’re trying to get the Galatian Christians—the churches, the Christians in the churches of Galatia—to follow the 613 laws of Moses again. We have learned that Jesus has set us free from the law, and Paul is arguing that you must realize that Christ has bought you freedom. You are free from the law. We no longer need to hear the dos and don’ts because we have the Spirit of God as Christians, dwelling in us, driving our consciences on what is appropriate and inappropriate.

So, it used to be in the old world that morality was defined outside of yourself. But in the new age—in the age where the law is dead—we have God dwelling inside of us (if you’re a Christian), instructing us on what is good and righteous. Now, Paul begins in chapter 5 and he says, “Now that you’ve been given this glorious freedom, what are you going to do with it?” Because you’re at a crossroads with your freedom. You can do one of two things: one, you can now take your new freedoms and run wild with them—go get wasted, go to the strip clubs, do whatever you want—because, yes, you’re no longer under the condemnation of the law, and you can do all of that. But yet, Paul says, “If you use your freedom to do such things, to practice the works of the flesh, just know there is no entrance for you in the kingdom of God.”

The contrary to that, Paul says, is, “Rather, take the freedom that Christ has bought for you—take it and use it to love your brothers.” This is the point—he says, “Love one another, use your freedom to love one another.” And we see that God has equipped us with this incredible force—that is, God himself. In verse 18, he says that the Spirit is the force of God that he puts in us, which gives us the ability to stop following the flesh. So, this is the answer to all forms of addiction. Do you struggle with pornography, alcoholism, tobacco use? The Spirit has filled you with the power to stop the flesh—that’s in verse 18. And, if that wasn’t enough, Paul doubles down for you in 5:24. He says, “Now, those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh along with its passions and desires.” This is going to be another sermon, but this means that if you still struggle with the desire for dark and wicked things, and you just—you don’t even want to leave it—then that means that you do not know the Lord Jesus.

This is not saying the same thing as, “Oh, I still struggle with this, and I’m fighting it, and I’m trying to walk in the Spirit, and you know, I mess up and I repent, and I slip.” Paul struggled with the same thing in Romans 7—that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the people who say, “I know what God’s word says; it just doesn’t faze me.” All right, so that’s where we’re at in Galatians.

So now, we’ve got to take this new ethic that God has given us through Christ Jesus. He has set us free from the law, so what is our ethic now? It is the Holy Spirit. And last week, Paul—well, actually, two weeks ago—we went through the works of the flesh, and that was diagnostic. God was showing us all the works of the flesh so that you could look at these things and say, “Am I walking in the flesh?” And the point wasn’t that you say, if you say, “Yes, I am walking in the flesh because I’m doing dissension, I’m talking bad about people, people get on my nerves, I have outbursts of anger, blah blah.” You go on and on all through the works of the flesh. The goal is not for you to go home and lace up your bootstraps and say, “I’m going to try harder.” The goal of this list of the flesh is for you to say, “I’m not walking in the Spirit. Lord, fill me with the power of your Spirit. Help me to walk in your Spirit.”

Likewise, we are now beginning the fruit of the Spirit. If you see that you are falling short—hear me, church—you don’t look at the fruit of the Spirit in this list and say, “I’m going to try harder.” We are going to focus on this one fruit—the fruit of love—today. If, after we have discussed this, you think that you are falling short in true, God-divine love in your life, do not go home and say, “I’m going to try harder.” That is not what Paul wants you to do, and neither does God. God wants you to realize that he equips you by the power of His Spirit. If you lack love at the conclusion of today’s sermon, go home and say, “Lord, show me how I can keep in step with your Holy Spirit.” That is the answer.

So, let’s turn our attention: first, we’re going to talk about what love is not. It’s the month of June; it’s every Christian’s favorite month because we’re reminded that we live in a world that is not our own, especially in America. And the phrase that you’re going to hear repetitively is “love is love.” This phrase gets at the heart of what the world has done with hijacking this phrase, the idea of love and the definition of love. “Love is love” is getting at a deeper heart issue, and that is the belief that love is an uncritical acceptance.

Just because you love someone does not mean that you never ask them to change or that you never address anything they are doing that is not good for them. That is not love, right? So, what love is not—in your bulletin, the first one is uncritical acceptance. If you have children, if I were to love my children based on the “love is love” campaign, my kids would die of obesity, they would die of diabetes, they would die of broken legs, they would never take a bath, so they’d probably have gangrene. Just because you love someone does not mean that you are not allowed to point out what is not good for them.

Love also—in the next point—is not some floating mystical power. The famous song “All You Need Is Love”—I really tried to meditate on that song and could not figure out its point. So, I had to look it up, and John Lennon admitted that this song was intentionally vague so that all nations could universally receive it; it was a reference to love with no anchor. And as a result, it really gave birth to the idea that love is some floating, mystical force, with no anchor, no real definition. So, it’s about as vague as just me making up a word, and it has no meaning.

The next one is: love is not chemistry. Some of us think that you really love someone if you have good chemistry—probably referring to some kind of sexual chemistry. That is also not love in the eyes of the Bible.

Love is also not a reduction of feelings. Love is an action word in the Bible. God’s love is that he believed that you should not perish.  So, he showed up in our wicked world, where it’s June for twelve months out of the year, and God died for us, defeating death. That is love. So, love is not a reduction of feelings, and genuine love is not conditional.

You see, we live in this idea in America, particularly, where therapy is—and look, I’m all for good therapy, but we’re all lying to ourselves if we think that all therapy is good. It’s not. I’ve had my share of interactions with bad therapists. But in that age, we’re hearing things among some therapists that say that love is transactional, it’s a give and take. That’s not the biblical model of love. If it’s a give and take, then Jesus would have never come, because Jesus came and died on our behalf while we were giving him squat.

So, biblical love is not a love that is transactional and based on conditions—“I’ll do that for you if you do this for me.” The thing that really floors me is the couples—if you’re one of these couples, I just don’t understand you. Doesn’t mean I’m thinking you’re wrong—I love you regardless, okay, so I’m not trying to step on toes—but the one that floors me is these married couples who share bills, and they say, “Honey, you got 50% of your half of the rent this month?” What? Marriage is meant to be the perfect picture of Christ laying down his life for the church. Husbands, if your wife doesn’t contribute anything to the marriage and merely cheats on you, congratulations, you get to be the perfect image of Jesus, because that’s exactly what he did for you when we were cheating on him with false idols and contributed nothing to the relationship. That’s biblical love.

And therapists will tell you, “You’re going to run yourself into the ground.” Yes, you will, you’re right—and they are right. That’s why we need the Holy Spirit to get it done, because the flesh is weak, but the Spirit is willing.

And then there’s this other form of conditional love, where we only love others if it’s convenient and safe. Now, hear me clearly, I am not saying to be in an abusive relationship where you or your children are in harm’s way. I want to be very clear in that—that is not what I mean by being only in safe relationships. I am talking about the one who never contributes, or they don’t challenge you—put it that way—the people that only help you feel comfortable and never ask you to do anything that you need to honestly change, because everybody knows that you’ve got bad hygiene and you really should be wearing deodorant, but now they’re just asking you to change yourself; or you’ve got acne, and now they’re asking you to wash your face more often with a special medicine to help you get rid of that acne. That’s what I mean by safe love: people that never bring up things in your life that make you feel uncomfortable. Not, again, not talking about the other, physically safe. But that is a biblical love—that is not biblical love, that is a conditional love that’s defined by the world’s terms: “I will love you so long as you live up to my ideal standards.” That’s not biblical love.

And we saw that Peter was doing this too in Galatians 2:1-12. Paul rebukes Peter because he is only loving the Gentiles so long as it’s convenient for him. The second the Jews stepped into the picture at the dining hall, Peter got up and walked away, and he got sharply rebuked because he was loving when it was only convenient.

All right, now we’ve defined what love is not. What is love? Paul begins—the first time he uses the word love, it’s found in Galatians—he says, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Who loved me.” This is the most personal language you will ever see Paul express in his relationship with Jesus—he loved me, so he died for me. In Paul’s mind and eyes, there is nothing greater than the love letter that is nailed to the cross. And it does not just apply to Paul, it applies to every wicked human being that you and I are today—he loves you, and it is evident in the fact that he died for you. I hope that penetrates your soul, because all the poets in the world could not string the perfect poem for that to pierce you in the way it needs to be. If it does not pierce you, you do not need a better preacher; you need the Holy Spirit.

So, if Christ’s crucifixion just falls on deaf ears in your mind, I plead with you—beg God to open your mind and your heart so that you could truly comprehend the magnitude of Christ’s love for you in the cross. So, that is the first point: love is rooted in Christ’s person and work. That’s what it was for Paul. True biblical love is rooted entirely in who Christ is and what he has done.

And this stems from God’s identity. In 1 John 4:16, he says, “We have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love.” Now, hear me out—this is not saying that love is god, because many of us will like to treat love that way. We fall in love with the idea of love—that’s a Beatles notion, right? “All you need is love,” but God himself, in his very essence and being, is the personification of love itself. You want love in the world? You need the very Being that is love—the Lord of heaven and earth. Apart from him, there is none.

What about God’s love prior to Christ—where was this seen? It was seen also when God stepped into history and he called Abraham out of Ur and he said, “I’m going to make you a great nation.” And then, the seed that’s going to come from your loins—this seed, this man, he will cause you to be the father of many nations, and you’re going to be one giant family in the Lord. That was the birth of God’s love through salvation.

Honestly, it goes even before that, because right there at the fall in the Garden of Eden, we see that God slaughters an animal to clothe Adam and Eve immediately after they fall. But then, in the Exodus, when God is drawing them out, it says in Deuteronomy 7:7-8, “The Lord loved you, that’s why he brought you out of slavery.” Well, then Isaiah picks up on this same idea—that’s not the only Exodus. God is going to send a suffering servant, and we went through this last December: the suffering servant, we know, is Christ. In Isaiah 40-55, you had this whole new idea that there was a promised Exodus that was going to come that would benefit the entirety of the world, and not just Israel. Jesus is that new Moses, and he has drawn all of us out of our enslavement to sin, and he offers us that freedom. Folks, that is love—that is love going into people’s lives and pulling them out of their bondage and giving them the very Being that can love them the way they need.

At the end of Jeremiah 30, the Lord promises to bring judgment on Israel’s enemies, and the Lord says of Israel, “I have loved you with a forever love, and I will continually, faithfully love you.”

In Hosea, God says that Israel is his son and he loves Israel, and he refused to let their sinfulness separate them from himself. In Hosea 11:1 and verse 4, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son…I led them with human cords, with ropes of love. To them I was like one who eases the yoke from their jaws; I bent down to give them food.” And all of this love that we see from the beginning of creation in the garden, it culminates to Christ on the cross.

The most famous Bible verse, thanks to Billy Graham, in the entire world is John 3:16—“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” So, it’s not just Christ’s crucifixion that is an expression of love, it’s the fact that the Father gave him up as well. This is the activity of the entire Godhead. If you think the Father did not weep at the sight of his Son suffering on our behalf, you are fooled. The Lord loves us so much that he was even willing to give up his Son, and the Son said, “I lay it down of my own will.” (John 10:17-18) So, it wasn’t child abuse—they agreed to this. The entire Godhead showed you so much love.

And then, we see that all of this was built before the fall. Check this out. I mentioned earlier that marriage was established to express Christ’s love for the church, correct? When was marriage created? Prior to the fall. In Ephesians 5:32, it says, “For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” Hear this, church: “This mystery is profound, and I’m saying that marriage refers to Christ and the church.” Do you know what that means? When Jesus made Adam and Eve, at that moment when the Lord created Adam and Eve, at that moment, he was already planning his crucifixion, because built into marriage is the idea that Christ is pursuing the church. And he created marriage before the fall, so even before everything went to hell in a hand basket—literally—he was already planning to die for you at the very beginning of creation. That is biblical love.

God’s love for us is impenetrable. Romans 8:39: “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything created will be able to separate us from the love of God.” And that brings us to our next point: love is the greatest fruit of the Spirit.

There is a reason why Paul put love at the top of this list. Now, love as a gift from the Lord is bidirectional—it goes both ways. Hear me out. The first way is Romans 5, which says that love was put in our hearts so that we could feel the love that God has for us. If you do not feel God loves you, then that needs to be a gift given to you from the Lord—you need to ask him for that. It says in Romans 5:5, “This hope will not disappoint because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit helps us to feel the love God has for us.

And then, the other direction that the gift of love goes in is from you towards others. It is a tool designed to help you serve and love others. And the greatest example of this is in the book of First Corinthians. We all know, hopefully—check out 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 if you’ve never read it—but it is the biblical definition of love. And as you read the definition of love in 1 Corinthians 13, you realize that Paul is describing Jesus to a “T,” the biggest one being: love is selfless, doesn’t care about the self. You cannot be selfish and love at the same time.

But in Corinth, why did Paul need to give them the definition? He needed to give them the definition because they were boasting and bragging about their spiritual gifts, and the gift that they were bragging on was speaking in tongues. And Paul is saying, “Hey, speaking in tongues is a gift that only benefits you; it doesn’t benefit anybody else. It is the most selfish spiritual gift.” Paul says in 1 Corinthians, “Rather, you should be praying and asking the Lord to fill you with things like the gift of prophecy; that way, you can build others up” (1 Cor 14:1-4). So, the spiritual fruit of love, Paul says, is what is going to enable you to love others.

Here’s what he says in 1 Corinthians 12-13: “Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? But desire the greater gifts, and I will show you an even better way.” Listen, church: “If I speak human or angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.” You can give 10 billion dollars to God’s church, and if you have not love, it means nothing. You can pay the bills, fathers, but if you are not there at home playing with your kids and showing them the biblical love of Jesus, you have not love—you’ve got nothing. Mothers, you can cook and clean and take care of your kids, and if you are not showing them love, you are not giving them God’s design—it’s not biblical love. Husbands, wives, you were called to love one another the way Christ loved the church. What will you do with it?”

So, love is the key to Christian ethics—that’s the last point. We see in Romans 13:8, and we see in Galatians, biblical love ultimately fulfills all of God’s law anyway. John 13:35 says that love authenticates all other actions in and among the church. When the world looks at us, they’re going to see—are we real or not? Do we really believe that Jesus is real? You want to know if Jesus is real? Do we love one another? This is what Jesus says: “I give you a new command: love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” And all of this is rooted in what Christ has done.

And loving your enemies is distinctly Christian. We all know the verse in Matthew 5:44, right? “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” But this is rooted in the fact that Jesus loved his enemies first. In Romans 5:8 and verse 10: “But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God.” This is the biblical model of love. So, let’s take that “love is love” stuff and just throw it away, and recognize that you’re called to bleed for your people.

And this goes beyond just your blood relatives—you are called to bleed for the nations. People are dying every day without having heard the gospel message, and that there is a way to enter into salvation. There are orphans that need fathers—they need to be adopted. There are boys—do you know the number one indicator of future incarceration? An absentee father. You can show the love of Christ by just being in another boy’s life. You can show the love of Christ by rescuing women who are stuck in the pits of human trafficking. You can show the love of Christ in so many ways. Will you adopt that?

Let me share a real-world example of biblical love as we conclude. Not too long ago—I think this was in 2016—there was a boy named Dylann Roof who walked into a South Carolina all-black church, and they were having a Bible study—I think there were eight or nine people there. And this boy was radicalized by teachings from the KKK, and he walked in, and he killed nine people having this Bible study. And at his sentencing, the family members of those who were slain by this hateful murderer, they showed up. Nadine Collier said, “You took something very precious away from me. I will never talk to her again, I will never be able to hold her again, but I forgive you.”

Anthony Thompson:

“I forgive you, and my family forgives you. But we would like you to take this opportunity to repent and give your life to the one who matters the most—Christ.”

Felicia Sanders:

“Every fiber in my body hurts, and I’ll never be the same. But may God have mercy on you.”

That’s biblical love.

My favorite example is more recent. In the year 2019, there was a police officer named Amber Guyger who went home to her apartment—or at least, she thought it was her apartment. She walked in and saw a big, tall man. His name was Botham Jean. She saw this man, pulled out her weapon, and killed him right there on the spot. Then she realized—it wasn’t her apartment.

At her sentencing, Botham’s younger brother, Brandt, took the stand. Everybody was calling for this woman to be imprisoned or given the death penalty. But this young man—I think he was 19 years old—had this to say:

“I can speak for myself. I forgive you. And I know that if you go to God and ask Him, He too will forgive you. I love you just like anyone else. I’m not going to say I hope you rot and die, just like my brother did. But I personally want the best for you. I don’t want you to go to jail. I want the best for you, because I know that’s exactly what Botham would want you to do.”

On the stand, he said this:

“Give your life to Christ. I think giving your life to Christ would be the best thing that Botham would want you to do. Again, I love you as a person, and I don’t want anything bad for you.”

He could not have been more clear that his love was genuine for this woman who had murdered his brother. And then he turned to the judge and said,

“Judge, I don’t know if this is possible, but can I give her a hug?”

The judge had Niagara Falls coming from her eyelids and said, “You may.” And they proceeded to hug—for a full 60 seconds. I counted. At that time, the courtroom just erupted in wailing and crying. I’m sure some were touched by the love of Jesus being exuded in that courtroom. But others could not fathom this kind of love. They were hurt that the brother did not want vengeance and justice.

But you see, church, that’s the mark of a true Christian. You can forgive and love your enemies when you truly grasp the idea that that’s exactly what Jesus has done for you. Will you take that radical love, given to you by God the Father and the Son, and go out and love others the way He loved you?

Let’s pray:

Jesus, I thank you so much that you have filled us with your Holy Spirit and that you are giving us the ability to use the freedom you gave us to transform the world. Will you please help us to love our enemies and to lay down our lives the same way that you laid down yours for us?

We can praise you because you are alive, and we know that because of your sacrifice, we too shall live. So we can endure all the uncomfortable things—with love. We can love inconveniently. We can love those who do not love us back. We can love those who spit in our face. We can proclaim the gospel in love in hopes that they find salvation—because we know that no matter what happens to this body, the love you gave us ensures our forever life.

Help us to love—especially in the month of June, when all the world thinks that we’re mainly just spouting hate. Help us to love them and to proclaim the message of love. And I pray that you open doors for us to show love to those who do not love us back. In Jesus’ name, amen.