Fruit of the Spirit: Love
As C. S. Lewis put it so well, “God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that he may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseen—or should we say ‘seeing’? there are no tenses in God—the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath’s sake hitched up.… This is the diagram of love Himself, the inventor of all loves.”97
LOVE AND THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT
The Songs of the Servant—April 11, 2010
1 Corinthians 13:1–13
1 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. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.
11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12 Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
This is the Word of the Lord
When you hear that read, you immediately look for the bridesmaids, the flower girl. You know, even though it’s a great passage for a wedding, especially the center of that text when it describes love, you couldn’t have a better guide for how to conduct a marriage than that. It’s fine to do that, but I want you to know right now, Paul did not write this for weddings. He wrote this about change.
See, almost all of us have parts of our lives we really want to see changed, but change is really hard. If you take a Coke can and you crush it with your hand so now it’s taking up less space (it’s smaller) and then you take your hand away, it stays where you put it. If you take a rubber ball and squeeze it with your hand so it takes up less space and then you take your hand away, it snaps right back to where it was. Why?
Because you restrained the rubber ball temporarily, but you didn’t really change it. You changed the Coke can, see, but you didn’t really change the rubber ball. You just restrained it, and it snaps back. Almost all of us have that experience (the rubber ball experience, I mean). We go out to try to change parts of our lives, and we put a lot of willpower behind it. We put a lot of pressure on certain parts of our lives. We say, “I think I got it” Then as soon as you let up or circumstances change, it snaps right back.
This is also true of Christians. It’s also true of Christians. That’s the message of this passage. In Galatians 5, Paul lists nine what he calls “fruit of the spirit,” nine character traits (love, joy, peace, patience, and so on), that are the results of a supernaturally changed heart, a permanently changed heart. They are traits that can’t be produced by willpower, and yet here in this passage, I think Paul is showing us it is very possible to mistake a morally restrained heart for a supernaturally changed heart. To mistake it.
Then we’re so shocked when we find we haven’t really changed. We’ve been restraining ourselves through our willpower, but we haven’t actually changed from the inside. What we’re going to do over the next few weeks is we’re going to do a series on the fruit of the Spirit. We’re going to take each of those nine fruit Paul talks about in Galatians 5, and each week we’re going to look at one of them as a sign of and as a mark of a supernaturally changed heart to help us understand what it means to develop such a heart.
Here today this passage, in some ways, is very simple. In other ways, it’s very profound. When you actually delve in to see what it’s actually saying since we are used to reading it at weddings, it’s always kind of a shock. What this is about is to tell us what a supernaturally changed heart is not and what it is and how it comes.
A supernaturally changed heart is, first of all, not the same as a busy life in service of others. Secondly, it’s not the same as a morally committed life (that’s in verses 1–3). Lastly, a supernaturally changed life is to meet love as a power and as a person. That’s what we’re going to learn. A supernaturally changed heart is not the same as a busy, active life. It’s not the same as a morally committed life. It’s meeting love as a power and a person.
1. It’s not the same as a busy life in service of others
Verses 1 and 2. Paul makes a list of things that really are abilities. They’re talents. They’re gifts. “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels … If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains …” Let’s go down that list.
The first part, he is talking about the things he has been discussing in chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians. He is talking about what we might call the miraculous gifts or the extraordinary gifts. He is talking about prophecy and miracles and getting revelations from God. We’re not going to go into that. Even though some of you might like me to go into it, we’re not going to go into it. We’re just going to see what he says about that. Those are very, very spectacular gifts.
Then he talks about fathoming all mysteries. In Pauline language, that means understanding God’s revelation, and particularly the Bible. Here he is talking about a person who is gifted at understanding and teaching the Bible. Then thirdly, he says, “… faith that can move mountains …” That’s not the normal kind of faith we need in order to connect to God. Faith to move mountains is visionary faith. It’s inspiring faith. It’s faith that inspires people.
Paul is talking about talents and gifts, artistic gifts, academic gifts, leadership gifts. The Corinthian church was filled with them, because Corinth was like New York in some ways. It was an urban center. It was a financial center. It was a place in which people came to excel. As a result, it was filled with smart, talented people. Therefore, the church was filled with smart, talented people, and it was a growing church. It was serving people, and it was helping people.
Everybody was very, very active. Paul shockingly says, “It’s possible to even have miraculous gifts like prophecy, it’s possible to have tremendous leadership gifts, tremendous preaching and teaching gifts, without love. It’s possible to be doing all of this not out of love.” You say, “What do you mean? What does that mean?” Well, here’s what it means.
If we can skip for a second ahead to verses 4–7, which is the guts of the text, where it says, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast …” you know what he is actually giving us here. If you’ve read the entire rest of 1 Corinthians, you know verses 4–7 are a list of everything the Corinthian Christians are not. They are impatient. They are unkind. They are rude. They are boastful. They’re bragging. They’re condescending. All right?
They are gifted. They are talented. They are successful. They’re starting new ministries and starting new non-profits. (Did they have them back then?) They’re doing things for people, but their character and their attitudes … They’re cranky. They’re crabby. They’re impatient. They’re condescending. They’re always having fights. They’re always hurting each other’s feelings. They’re always getting their noses bent out of shape. Paul says, “That is not insignificant.”
Boy, do we need to hear this now! See, like Corinth, we live in an urban culture. Let’s face it. In New York, what really counts? What really counts? “Are you smart? Are you the best? Can you produce? Okay, so you have character flaws. Well, you’re a colorful character. Okay.” I was just reading a book by a wife of a man who is now gone (Norman Mailer). She was his last wife, and she has written a biography.
Of course, Norman Mailer was a brilliant author. Everybody came out to listen to him. He ran for mayor. Okay, so he stabbed one of his wives with a knife. You know, he is a colorful character. See, what really matters is he has the gifts. He has the talent, you see. Paul totally reverses that, and he says, “No, it’s the other way around. If you’re brilliant, if you’re gifted, if you’re talented, even in God’s service, even doing all this for God, but in your heart you’re filled with envy and pride and anger and insecurity, you are nothing. That is of no value to God at all.”
Actually, one of the things that’s most frightening here … I mean, this is a very direct statement. He is trying to say, “It’s possible to have little grace in the heart (that means to have given God very little of your heart) and yet be very successful in ministry.” That’s what this is saying. It’s even saying it’s possible to be successful in ministry and not actually have given God your heart at all. At one point, he says, “You’re nothing. It’s possible to be nothing.”
You know in Matthew 7:22 there’s a place where Jesus says, “On the last day, some people are going to come to me, and they’re going to say, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name?’ ” These people prophesied, just like 1 Corinthians 13. Prophesied! “ ‘In your name did we not cast out devils and demons, and in your name did we not do many wonderful works?’ I will say to them, ‘I never knew you.’ ”
You say, “How could a person be a great preacher, cast out demons, and actually have God’s Spirit help people through that person and not even actually have ever given God his heart at all? Is that possible?” Sure, it is. Hey, look. You know, people need help, right? If you’re going out there and in your heart you’re still filled with pride, you’re still filled with anger, you’re still filled with all sorts of inner self-centeredness and self-absorption and you’re out there trying to help people, maybe God’s Spirit will use you. Why not? Temporarily, why not? People need help.
But don’t you dare, Paul says, look at that and say, “God is with me.” Isn’t that scary? The first thing we see here is though a supernaturally changed heart will always lead to a life of service, we have to remember you must not identify with a life of service, because you can have a life of service without having a supernaturally changed heart.
2. It’s not the same as a morally committed life
Let’s move on to verse 3. The second thing we learn here is you mustn’t mistake a supernaturally changed heart for a morally committed life. It says in verse 3 (now he is moving on), “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.” This is very interesting. These are not talents, are they? He has moved away from the talent and gift list, and now he has moved into what the Greek philosophers would call a virtue list, a list of virtues.
Aristotle has them. They all had them. You know, prudence and self-control and justice and wisdom. Paul gives us a kind of mini list, and it’s quite powerful (a list of virtues). Now we’re talking about moral fortitude, moral commitment. On the one hand, he says, “If I give all I possess to the poor …” Now today we would call that a liberal virtue, social justice, but by the way, look at it.
It’s not just a charitable handout. “If I give all my possessions to the poor …” Here is someone so committed to the poor that he or she is living in voluntary poverty. They’re just living in voluntary poverty. They give away most or all of what they have and just live with the poor. Isn’t that something? Wow. That’s virtue!
On the other hand, “… and surrender my body to the flames …” What’s that? See, that’s dying for your faith, going to the lions, going to the stake. That’s what most people would call a conservative virtue in a way, because to stand up for your faith and to die for your faith, that’s the sort of thing that people consider kind of traditional religion.
Here you have the list. Paul is naming all the virtues, naming all the moral commitments there are. It’s possible to do that without any love in your heart at all. It’s not out of love and, therefore, before God, it’s spiritually valueless. It’s nothing. Paul actually says, “Here’s a virtue list. That’s his value list. Again, let’s get this straight. A supernaturally changed heart will lead to a morally committed life, but you can easily have a morally committed life without a supernaturally changed heart at all. It’s very, very easy to mistake one for the other.
How does that work? Why? Well, go up to verse 1. Almost everybody goes right on by this. “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.” Have you ever thought about that? What’s so bad about a cymbal? I love the cymbals. Don’t you love the cymbals? What’s so bad about that? What’s hollow about that, or what is that?
That verse makes no sense unless, as the commentators say, it’s referring to the worship of the various temples of those Greco-Roman cities. Like in Corinth, they had all the various gods. They had all the various pagan temples. The way worship was done was a great processional in which there were gongs and there were cymbals. You were wearing your finery. It was a parade. The purpose of it was to honor the god, to get the god’s attention, to get the god’s approval. “Look how much we venerate you. Look at it!”
Paul says, “Do you know it’s possible to do not only Christian ministry but also to practice Christian ethics and virtue …? It’s possible to obey the Ten Commandments and go to church and get active in church and try to help people and do it to get God’s approval. You’re not doing it for God’s sake. You’re not doing it just because you love him for who he is in himself. You’re trying to get things from God. You’re not helping the people for their sake. You’re helping them for your sake. You’re trying to get the applause. You’re trying to get the approval.”
Paul is saying here there is a telltale sign. You’re morally committed in the broad sense and you are active in helping other people and giving your money away to charity and to the poor and all that in the broad sense, yet the telltale sign you’re doing it for you … you’re not doing it out of love. You’re not doing it for love of God or love for other people. It’s all about you … is the irascibleness. It’s the rudeness. It’s the stepping on each other’s toes.
You know, these are churches. Corinth is the typical church. People who are broadly moral and very active in serving God and other people, and half the people aren’t speaking to each other because they’re so mad at the others. There’s the gossip. There’s the backbiting. There’s the envy. There’s the rudeness. There’s the boasting. There’s the bragging. There are the critical spirits. There’s the impatience. There’s the abrasiveness, the self-pitying, the self-absorption, the vanity, the anxiety, the insecurity.
It’s all there. All underneath all of the morality, yeah, they’re moral. Underneath all the service, yeah, they’re very active. Paul says that’s absolutely deadly. You say, “Well, how can that be?” Let me give you what I still think is the best way to understand this. Let’s do a case study. Let’s think about how we actually teach children to be honest and not to lie. How do we do that? We appeal to two things: fear and pride. We ratchet up fear and pride. There are two ways.
Now we’re talking about anywhere (public schools, church, synagogue, home, family, wherever). How do we teach children not to lie? One is we appeal to fear. We say, “You’ll get caught. The teacher will catch you. The police will catch you. God will catch you. Worse, I will catch you. Worse than all of that, I will catch you.” What are we doing? We say, “It will not pay. You’re going to get it. Your sins will find you out. Your lies will find you out.” The first thing is you get them scared. You say, “You’d better not lie. If you lie, it won’t pay for you.” That’s fear.
The other thing to do is pride. That is, you can appeal to pride, and you can say to the child, “Do you know why you should tell the truth? Because you don’t want to be like those awful liars. Liars!” Sometimes if we catch the child, instead of just saying, “What you did was wrong,” we shame them. “Liar!” What are we trying to do? We’re trying to get the child to be truthful by getting the child to disdain a certain kind of person. “Liars! Liars! You liar!”
Let’s think about what are fear and pride. What are fear and pride? It’s self-centeredness. It’s enhancing a person’s self-centeredness. It’s teaching them to look down at certain people. It’s teaching them to think about … Here’s what’s going on. What is wrong with the world? It’s self-centeredness. It’s the impulse of every human heart that goes, “Me, me, me first! What about me?” That’s self-centeredness.
Instead of putting a wooden stake in the heart of self-centeredness, the way in which we teach people to be good is we enhance the self-centeredness and then jury-rig it so it’s keeping the kid or the person from doing wrong. But let’s think for a second, everybody. Why do we lie? There’s lying everywhere. There’s deception everywhere. There’s corruption everywhere. There’s embezzling everywhere. It’s awful.
Okay, why do we lie? Fear and pride are the reasons we lie. We lie when we’re afraid of losing face or when we’re afraid of losing power or afraid of losing something. We lie out of pride, feeling like, “I can pull the wool over these people’s eyes. These people don’t deserve … I can do this. I can do that.”
When you enhance in a person’s life fear and pride in order to get them to tell the truth, you’re actually setting them up eventually to lie because something will change. Something will come along. You’ll take your hand off of the rubber ball, and it will snap back. After you’ve embezzled or after you’ve lashed out or after you’ve cheated on your spouse, you can say, “What did I do that for? I wasn’t raised that way.” Yes, you were. We’re all raised that way.
That’s how we get people to be good. We squeeze that little rubber ball through fear and pride, but it doesn’t really change it. It doesn’t change the self-centeredness. It enhances it. It doesn’t destroy it. It doesn’t put a stake through its heart. That’s the reason why you see in the short run people being moral but having all of these underlying telltale signs (the unkindness, the impatience, the grumpiness, the crabbiness, the always being hurt, the always having your feelings hurt). Your ego is always being hurt.
See, that’s the telltale sign underneath the broad morality, but at some point, even the broad morality breaks through for many of us. So many people (the good people) … I mean, for example, why is it that so many high-level public officials do the most ridiculous things, fall into scandal and blow their entire careers up? This happens all the time. Every year a couple do, right?
Do you know why? Because they’re being morally committed, and they’re serving people. They’re giving their lives in public service. Very often, because they’re in public service, they’re making far less money than the other people they went to graduate school with who are making 10 times more. Deep inside, what happens? Self-pity. Self-pity! They start to say, “Oh, nobody knows what I go through.” The next thing you know, there’s the opportunity for cutting a corner here, taking some money here, having an affair over here. The person says, “I deserve it.”
Where does that come from? It comes from the self-pity. It comes from the self-absorption. It comes from what’s going on inside the heart in spite of the fact that the person out there is being so good. Paul says it’s absolutely deadly. Don’t you see? Don’t you recognize it in yourself? You are settling for something that’s going to blow up on you. Therefore, we see that even the list, the virtue list …
This is Aristotle’s: generosity, integrity, justice, prudence, self-control. They can all be done out of an inner joy or out of an inner emptiness. Why do you think Jesus Christ said, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you can have nothing of me”? He is trying to say, “Look at the scribes and Pharisees. Look at their kind of morality. There’s a kind of morality that’s morally restrained. You have to go way deeper than that.” So how do we?
3. It’s meeting love as a power and a person
You get to verses 4–7, and we see really what a supernaturally changed heart is. You have to meet love as both a power and a person. Here’s what I mean by that. It’s actually stronger in the Greek than it comes across in English, but what’s so striking about verses 4–7 is Paul does not say, “I want you to be patient. I want you to be kind. I don’t want you to envy. I don’t want you to boast. I want you not to be proud.” He doesn’t say that.
Instead, he personifies love. It’s all transitive verbs. Love becomes an individual, a person. By the way, literally verse 4 says love suffers long. That’s patience. Love suffers long and bears it. Love is so kind. Love does not envy. Love is a person doing this. Instead of saying, “Here’s what I want you to be,” he gives us a picture of an active force, a personal force who is living in a particular way. Why is he doing that? Well, here.
First of all, to get across the idea that real love only develops when you meet love. Real love doesn’t happen through trying but through receiving and through meeting. What do I mean by that? Well, you know, if he actually said, “Now here’s what I want you to do. Do these 10 things,” it would be a set of rules we are supposed to pick up and try to do. Honestly, Paul is saying, “No. Love is not first something you do. It’s a power that picks you up and changes you.”
I want you to know this actually sounds very mystical and supernatural, but it’s really not if you think about it. Here’s what we know about children. Social scientists have studied this. It’s tragic. It always kind of moves you. We know if a child, if an infant is born and is put into an environment where the child is never picked up, never held, never loved, never cooed to, nobody ever does baby talk and smiles at its face …
In other words, if you don’t love a child at all, as the child grows up, what happens? Does the child say, “Well, I’m going to have to really …”? No, the child is incapable of love basically. The child is broken. The child can’t give or receive, and we know that. In fact, in many cases, they die before they even grow.
Why? Because essentially we learn to love by being loved. We don’t just try. We learn to love by being loved. The more we’re loved, the more we can reflect love. We know that. The more we’re just embraced by love and surrounded by love and just flooded with love as we are born and grow up, the more we can do it. Before love is something you try to do, love is something you meet, something you receive. Love is not something you try to do, but it’s a power that picks you up and changes you.
That’s really important. Therefore, if we’re really going to develop this love, it means we have to have a very powerful experience of love beyond … See, if we know there is something wrong with us, we may have had the parental love so we grow up as well-adjusted human beings in general, but we know there is still stuff wrong with us, which means we need another kind of love infinitely higher than anything even the best parents could have given.
We need to meet that love, and we need to receive that love if we’re going to move ourselves, if we’re going to be moved to another plain. So first of all, he personifies love to get across the idea that love is a power. Secondly, he personifies love to get us to think of a person. Look. This isn’t just poetry. This isn’t just poetry when he says, “Love suffers long; love is kind.” When he personifies love, this isn’t just poetry. I’ll tell you why.
If verses 4–7 are nothing but a kind of abstract model, a picture of a perfectly loving person, if that’s all they are, if Paul is saying, “I want you to think about a person who is perfectly patient, incredibly kind, never boasts, never self-seeking, never keeps a record of wrongs,” if he is just laying in front of me an example of a perfectly loving person, I don’t want it, and neither do you. Are you going to say, “Wow. I can be like that”? No, you’re going to say, “Wow. I could never be like that.”
If you have any experience with your own heart, if verses 4–7 are just giving us a general picture of a perfectly loving person, it will crush you. “I don’t want it. Let’s tear it out.” I don’t think Paul is. For Paul to personify love and then to imagine that he does not have a particular person in mind is to not know Paul at all. Here’s what I want you to consider. When Paul wrote, “Love suffers long,” how could he not have been thinking about the One who said, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” There is infinite suffering out of love.
When it says love does not keep a record of wrongs, how could he not be thinking about the One who said, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing”? They were killing him. They were killing him, and he says, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.” When he says, “Love always protects, always hopes,” how could he not be thinking about the One who said, “… today you will be with me in paradise”?
Even though he was being killed, even though he was dying, he was able to turn to the thief on the cross and say, “I want you with me in paradise.” When you see hope, when you see love perseveres … One of the most amazing things Jesus said on the cross was, “It is finished,” which, as some of you know, is a Greek word that means, “It’s completed. It’s been accomplished.”
It just amazes me. Just as he is dying, he says, “It is finished.” Do you know what he means? Here’s a man stripped naked. Here’s a man abandoned. Here’s a man penniless. Here’s a man tortured. Here’s a man powerless. Here’s a man everyone has left. Just before he dies, he says, “I did it. I did it!” What did he do? He accomplished our salvation because he died on the cross in our place and took our punishment, which is a way of saying he refused to die until he had done what he had come to do. Love perseveres.
By the way, love never fails. How in the world could anyone write that (especially Saint Paul) without thinking …? You know, as much as I love my wife, as much as I love my children, someday I’ll be dead. Whom could you speak about and say, “His love never fails”? There is only One. Jesus Christ said, “I will never, never, never, never, never forsake you.” That’s in Hebrews. We have that great hymn that goes …
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.
How do you know that? We know that because Jesus Christ took hell for us. Even hell couldn’t push him away from doing what he wanted to do for us. He did it. Here’s the point. You can look at verses 4–7 as an abstract person who perfectly loves you, and that will never change your heart. It will only crush you under guilt. It will just say, “I’m going to have to really try hard if I’m going to be like this.”
Or you could see Jesus Christ being all of those things and the ultimate example of it on the cross, doing all that for you. Not doing all that just as an example but doing all that for you in your place as your Savior. When you see that, what will that do? Do you believe that? Do you embrace that? Do you take it in and think about that and sort of taste it on the palate of your heart day in and day out?
Here’s what it’s going to do. It’s going to get rid of your fear. Every day a little bit more it’s going to get rid of your fear. You’re not going to be afraid of losing face. Who cares? You’re not going to be afraid of losing anything. On the one hand, it’s going to value you out of your fear because he loves you like that. On the other hand, it’s going to humble you out of your pride because you know he loves you in spite of everything.
If you look at love as an abstraction and just try to live up to it, it will either fill you with pride because you think you’re doing it, or it will fill you with fear because you know you’re not. You could look at Jesus Christ doing it for you, and that destroys your fear. It destroys your pride, and it begins to regenerate your heart from the inside. If you see Jesus Christ doing the love of verses 4–7 for you, eventually that love will be reproduced in you. Let’s go get a supernaturally changed heart. Let’s begin right away. Let’s pray.
Father, we thank you this text is not at all like what we think it is. Of course it is what it appears to be on the surface. It is a wonderful inventory of what it means to have a loving relationship. It’s a wonderful blueprint for how to run a marriage or any relationship or how to run all of our relationships, and yet it goes much deeper than that.
It shows us we have to meet your Son Jesus Christ on the cross, the ultimate example of suffering long, the ultimate example of not keeping a record of wrongs, the ultimate example of love that perseveres and never, never fails. It can’t fail. “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
We pray, Lord, we would be so melted by, affected by, the love done for us that that reproduces that same love in us as our fear and pride melt away over time. Lord, we would be willing to confess, to a great degree, we have not been very affected by the gospel and the cross and what Jesus has done. We want to begin to develop supernaturally changed hearts now. Meet us now. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.