Living in the Spirit: Love
LIVING IN THE SPIRIT: LOVE
How do we see the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives?
I feel like this is a common question among Christians. Some look for flashy signs and miracles, while others are content to listen to the gentle whispers of the Lord. Regardless, the Bible has a list—a “Holy Spirit measuring stick,” if you will—of attributes that the Bible says we can look for to see if we are living in the Spirit, in Spirit-led lives.
“So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions…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 5:16-17, 22-23
So you see, as he does throughout his writings, Paul is emphasizing that there is a battle within ourselves: the flesh and the Spirit. And I love how he says: “there is no law against these things.” Even to the sinful world, everyone recognizes that the Fruits of the Spirit are things that we can strive for. But we all recognize that these are some of the hardest things to achieve.
For the next few posts, I’ll be going through and talking about each of the Fruits of the Spirit in turn, and how they can manifest in our lives.
I’ll go in order, so the first one up is love.
Paul never minces words when it comes to love. In fact, he wrote the famous “love chapter,” 1 Corinthians 13. And I’ll delve into detail with that whole chapter in a second, but I want to point out how much emphasis he put on love, starting at the tail end of that chapter: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). Paul doesn’t say love is just an important thing. He says it’s the most important thing. His assertion echoes Jesus’s own, when He said the greatest commandments were to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your soul…love your neighbor as yourself.”
Whoa.
That’s heavy.
Jesus and Paul are both calling us to love each other deeply. Love one another. Love desires to help. Love desires to cherish. Love desires to respect.
Think about this as I put the greatest commandment into use:
If we loved our neighbor as ourselves, we would do whatever we do for ourselves for them. We would try and make sure they’re fed. That they are cared for. That they have shelter. Most importantly: we would worry for their salvation as much as we worry over ours.
If we loved our neighbor as ourselves, we would care for their physical needs whenever we could. We would be moved to compassion. Just as we would want to love ourselves and make sure we are fed, clothed, and loved, so we would want to take care of them, too.
If we loved God with all our hearts, our souls would feel heavy with the weight of His love for the world. His love, His mission, would become our mission. We would weep with Him. We would want to try and fix what we can. We would want to take as many people as we could to Heaven with us, because God’s love would burden us with such a weight for their souls.
If we loved God with all our hearts, doing His Will would be paramount in our lives. We would want to love Him, desire to follow Him, and strive to be true followers of Christ—whatever the cost.
If we loved God with our minds, we would try and learn more about Him. We would study His Word and spend time growing. Growing in Christ should make us excited! We should strive to learn as much as we can each day.
If we loved God with our minds, we would strive to keep them focused on Him. We would think about holy, pure, and righteous things.
When we love someone, it’s not just words that we say. It’s not something we get in our hearts that fades. It’s a commitment, it’s a choice, it’s a desire to love them, in whatever capacity we can. (And, no, romantic love isn’t the only facet of that! Platonic, brotherly, familial—there are many types of love, and romantic love is not the peak of it!)
Love is the way we act towards someone.
Paul gives a great description of this earlier in 1 Corinthians 13. Let’s break it down:
“If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing.”
Here, Paul knows that the church of Corinthians was pursuing the flashy spiritual gifts, but he was like a father, giving them a shake by their collar. “Don’t you see? Look—even if you were AS POWERFUL AS GOD—but you didn’t love, you’d be useless!” (Note that he says “if I understood all God’s secret plans,” which is impossible, considering that not even Jesus nor the angels know all God’s plans, like when Jesus is coming back. So, here, Paul is using blatant hyperbole to make his point.) Paul is giving the Corinthians a good shake to tell them: you’re focusing on the wrong thing! It’s not the spiritual gifts, but the love you should be desiring. That’s why he called love the greatest.
“If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.”
Here, Paul is saying that we shouldn’t be like the Pharisees—the people who would make grand shows of how much they donated to the poor, or what martyrs they are. But Paul is saying, just like Jesus did, don’t do this for attention! Don’t do it at all unless your heart is in the right place! Unless you’re doing it in love, all this sacrifice is useless.
So…
How do we show our love?
Don’t worry. Paul doesn’t leave us in suspense as we read 1 Corinthians 13:1-7, 13:
“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.”
Let’s break it down, because this is utterly important. This was what Paul wanted us to focus on. This is how we are to show we are Christians.
Patient
Kind
Not jealous
Not boastful
Not proud
Not rude
Not bossy (or demand its own way)
Not irritable
Keeps no record of being wronged (i.e., you don’t keep saying “don’t you remember what you did to me??”)
Does not rejoice in injustice (i.e., we don’t celebrate when others get their comeuppance)
Rejoices when the truth wins out (consider this: when two people have a disagreement, love rejoices when the truth comes out. Whether or not you were wrong or right.)
Never gives up (I’ll be honest, I’m humming Rick Ashley under my breath right now.)
Never loses faith
Always hopes
Endures through every circumstance.
Phew. That’s…a lot of things.
That’s a lot of hard things.
Some might say…a lot of impossible things.
But that’s why they’re Holy Spirit things. These are things we cannot do by ourselves. We can’t do them all the time. We can never do them by ourselves, because it’s such a high demand.
But that’s why we need the Holy Spirit to guide us.
That’s why we need to walk in the Spirit, to hear Him guide us.
Because that’s the mark of a Christian.
Remember what Jesus Himself said: “if you are my disciples, they will know you by your LOVE” (John 13:35).
NOT your flashy gifts.
NOT your talents.
NOT your donations.
NOT your wealth.
NOT your “Jesus Mama” shirts.
NOT by your “I’m a Christian” status on Facebook.
Don’t you see?
All those are useless if you don’t have love.
All those are useless if you don’t treat others with love like Jesus did.
Because, you know what? It’s not those things that will ever win any souls. It’s the way we love one another. It’s how we offer a cup of cold water in Jesus’s name (Matthew 10:42). It’s how we treat others with dignity, like the woman caught in adultery or the woman at the well. It’s how we tell others about Jesus, even to our deaths, like the thief on the cross.
That is how Jesus loved.
And that is how we must love.
Because that is how people are saved.
In fact, only when we demonstrate the Fruits of the Spirit can we ever “shine/make ‘em wonder what you got/make ‘em wish that they were not/on the outside looking bored/shine/let it shine before all men/let ‘em see good works and then/let ‘em glorify the Lord.”
