The Fruit of Love

We are going to revisit that passage but instead of one message we are going to spend 9 weeks exploring each spiritual fruit and really digging deeper in the meaning and understanding of each.

Galatians 5:22–23 NKJV

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.

Prior to this text, Paul has already made the point that what really matters is “faith expressing itself through love” (Gal 5:6), and that we should be serving “one another humbly in love” (Gal 5:13), and that the whole Old Testament law is summed up in the commandment “love your neighbor as yourself” (Gal 5:14).

In putting love first, Paul is echoing Jesus.

In the book of Matthew, when someone asked Jesus about the greatest commandment in the law, he responded with two, one from Deuteronomy and one from Leviticus:

Jesus replied:

Matthew 22:37–40 NKJV

37 Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Three times in his Gospel, John records Jesus telling his disciples that he commanded them to love one another:

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (Jn 13:34-35)

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. (Jn 15:12)

This is my command: Love each other. (Jn 15:17)

Five times in his first letter, John reminds us that this is God’s command, and goes into a lot of detail about how we should love one another not just in words but also with actions and in truth:

1 John 3:11 NKJV

11 For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another,

1 John 3:17–18 NKJV

17 But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? 18 My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.

1 John 3:23 NKJV

23 And this is His commandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment.

1 John 4:7–8 NKJV

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

1 John 4:11–12 NKJV

11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us.

So if anything can be said to be primary, central, and essential to being a Christian and becoming more like Jesus, it must be this. That is why Paul speaks of this kind of love as the first evidence that God is at work in our lives, the first fruit of the Spirit of God within us.

John too sees such love as evidence. It proves something.

In fact, love proves several things that we can look at together. When Christians love one another, says John, it is evidence of some very important realities: love is evidence of life and evidence of faith.

Love for one another is the evidence of LIFE

1 John 3:10–11 NKJV

10 In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother. 11 For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another,

Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit: Growing in Christlikeness Watch a video from Chris about love at ivpress.com/cultivating-love.

For John, walking in the light and walking in love were together the two most basic and essential parts of being a true Christian. They were part of the original message and teaching of Jesus himself (“from the beginning”).

But then John goes even further. He makes another of his frequent “we know” statements. Know what exactly, know whether or not we have eternal life. We can be sure about that.

But how can you know you’ve got the life that God gives?

ANSWER: When you see the evidence of the love that God produces in your life.

1 John 3:14 NKJV

14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death.

Let me ask you something, do you love your church family? Do you love the body of Christ?

Love for one another is the evidence of FAITH

The point that John makes about love (that it needs to be proved in action) is very similar to what James says about faith

James 2:14–17 NKJV

14 What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

John would have agreed, of course—and so would Paul. But John connects faith and love in a way that makes them just as inseparable as faith and good deeds.

In fact, he puts them together as a single command:

1 John 3:23 ESV

23 And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.

Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit: Growing in Christlikeness by J. H. Wright

So love for one another is not only the evidence of the life of God within us, it is also the evidence of the faith through which we came to receive that life in the first place.

James said that faith without deeds is dead. John would agree by saying that faith without love (love that is proved in good deeds) is also dead—nothing but an empty claim.

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