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The Fruit of the Spirit: Love
Who taught you how to love? We begin our series on the Fruits of the Spirit today by considering Love. ❤️
1 John 3:16, Romans 5:6
Who taught you how to love? Maybe upon hearing that question you say “well pastor nobody taught me how to love it’s just something that I do.” And the debate is there whether or not love is something that is a natural human trait or something that we learn. But no matter how you come out on that question all of us must admit that we’ve had some pretty good examples of love in our own lives.
Who of us can’t think of that parent, maybe caretaker, the family member, friend or even complete stranger who showed incredible love for us?
We maybe want to take those examples though, the example of their love, and compare to everyone else’s in our lives. And think about how everyone else has fallen far short of loving us the way that mom did. The way that friend did or even that stranger.
How better for us to take that example and apply it to ourselves? To want to love one another the way that mom loved us, the way that friend loved us, or whoever else it was.
Of course the best example of love has to be our Savior Jesus.
In first John chapter 3 verse 16 it says this.
This is how we have come to know love: Jesus lay down his life for us. And we also should lay down our lives for our brothers. (1 John 3:16)
Yes Jesus loved us in an incredible way. He loved us though we didn’t deserve it. As it says in the scriptures in Romans chapter 5 that
Christ died for the ungodly. (Romans 5:6)
That’s us.
He loves people that disobeyed his commandments. People that didn’t deserve his love. Yet how incredible. How can he love us in this way? Well he willed to love us. He chose to love us not because of something in us but because of something in him.
Have you ever been there? Knowing that you should love someone but also knowing that they don’t deserve it. Knowing that they’re taking advantage of you or knowing of the many times that they’ve hurt you.
It’s very hard to actually love in such circumstances because you think to yourself “they don’t deserve this.” “Why am I doing this?” So easy to just resent them and go through the motions. But we can love we can love even in those circumstances.
We look to Christ. We look to his love for us that incredible love that moved him to suffer and die for us and for our sins. May God help us when it comes to this fruit of the spirit to show love in our lives even to those that don’t deserve it, just the way that God has shown love to us. Amen.
