Fruits of the Spirit 02 - Love

Reading: 1Corinthians 13:1-13
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  1Corinthians 13:1 (NIV)

I.   Nothing without Love

     A.  The First fruit of the Spirit

           1.  Galatians 5:22-23

                 a.  Love is mentioned 1st because it is the single most characteristic thing about following Jesus, beside the name of Jesus itself.

           2.  1John 4:7-8

                 a.  To be in relation to God is to have love in your heart.

                 b.  You can’t be in relationship to God and not love.

                 c.  God is the source of love.

           3.  Jesus prayer in John 17:20-21

                 a.  Jesus prays that we can all get along with each other.

                 b.  This is how the world will know

     B.  The First and Second Commandments

           1.  The greatest commandment Love God with everything.

           2.  The second love your neighbor as yourself

                 a.  John 13:34-35

     C.  Without love our efforts are Worthless

           1.  You can do all the spiritual looking things you want but if they aren’t motivated by your love for God and your love for ordinary, imperfect people, you’ve been wasting your energy.

           2.  What sort of things don’t amount to anything without love: speaking in unknown languages, prophecy (speaking out God’s word), enough wisdom to understand everything, enough faith to move mountains, giving everything to the poor, get suffer to the point of martyrdom.

II.  The Fruits of Love

     A.  What love Looks like

           1.  How can we recognize love when we see it?

                 a.  Love is patient, kind, rejoices in the truth, always protects, trusts, hopes and sticks to it.

                 b.  Love doesn’t envy, brag, get arrogant, have bad manners, try to get its own way, have a short temper, keep a score card of other people’s sins, get a thrill out of wrong-doing.

     B.  What love Does

           1.  Love - Agape love gives away care and service from a well full of grace.

                 a.  Agape love is self-giving love. It means a kind of love and service that has it’s reason for existence based in the one doing the loving, rather than the person or thing being loved.

                 b.  This is God-styled love. God loves because he is loving. The fact that we are lovable or unlovable is beside the fact.

           2.  Love gives service and doesn’t care if the receiver deserves it or not.

                 a.  Although, love might be wise enough to recognize when the greatest act of service is to allow someone to experience the consequences of their own decision.

                 b.  Even then, though, love doesn’t take pleasure in the pain someone might have to suffer to learn a hard lesson.

     C.  Love’s highest Example

           1.  Jesus said Greater love has no one that this: to lay down his life for his friends.

           2.  Jesus did that, by giving up the glory of heaven for the stink of a stable, by giving up his infinity to embrace our finiteness, by giving up his rights to suffer and die unjustly, and for our good.

           3.  The new command of Jesus is that we love each other as Jesus loves us.

                 a.  Jesus asks no more of us than he was wiling to do himself.

III. Mature love Lasts

     A.  Many important things are still Temporary

           1.  Paul recognized that many good and necessary things are still temporary.

                 a.  After the Lord’s return no one will need a pastor (thank-you for withholding your applause!)

           2.  All that we do now to experience God more fully and to help others experience him more fully, all of that is stuff we’ll need to be doing until we pass away or the Lord returns.

           3.  It’s about growing up and seeing what’s most important.

                 a.  That’s what happens when we grow up: we learn what’s really significant, and what’s just hype.

                 b.  We learn what’s temporary and what lasts

     B.  Love lasts Forever

           1.  Unlike all the stuff we do in Church on Sundays (and it is right to come together and do the things we do on Sundays), love will outlast almost all of it.

           2.  Love is one of those fruits that don’t go bad (we talked about that last week)

                 a.  Love is a fruit of the Spirit. That means that God produces love in us and through us.

                 b.  To have this kind of love that lasts forever, we need God working in us.

                 c.  As we said before, anyone who is in relationship to God is going to be growing in their ability and readiness to love.

     C.  Best of Three

           1.  Paul gives us three things we can have now that last forever: Faith, Hope and Love

                 a.  Faith as trust in God will only grow as we get closer to God, and especially when all the obstacles to our trust are removed after we pass on, or Jesus returns.

                 b.  Hope as confidence in God’s goodness will find its greatest fulfillment in the new Heaven and the new Earth.

                 c.  Love will continue to grow and develop throughout our lives on earth, and will continue on in perfection forever in the next life.

           2.  God’s Spirit empowers us to love and the New Testament presents love as our highest calling.

           3.  In this passage Paul wants to tell us that the most excellent way is the way that is led by love.

The Bottom Line:

.