Fruit Of The Spirit- Love (Part Two)

I’m continuing on looking at love based on 1 Corinthians 13. I would highly encourage you all to check out Part One of this series if you haven’t already. (They build on each other)

Verse 4: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.”
(In verses 4-6 you can replace the word “love” with you name.)

Love is patient...

Are you patient? If one of your siblings at home keeps making a ton of racket, or is doing something else that’s just as annoying; do you show them love by not “blowing up” in their faces?

To be completely honest with you guys, I’m not always patient with my brothers. I’m in the middle of 4 brothers and that’s enough to make anyone go insane! :)

Love is kind...

“Shut up you retard!” Ok so maybe you don’t say it like that, but we all have to deal with being kind to people. It doesn’t matter if it’s a family member, friend, or co-worker. We must show love by being kind to people.

When Jesus was preaching, hundreds of people came looking for Him. They wanted to see, hear, touch, and be healed by Jesus. Did Jesus get angry or annoyed with the people? Did He tell them to ‘go away and leave Me alone?’ No!

In fact, it was quite the opposite. He wept when Lazarus died (Luke 11:32-36), and He had compassion on the people He came in contact with and helped them to the best of His God-given abilities. (Matthew 14:14)

We as followers of Jesus Christ are called to be imitators of Him. (Ephesians 5:1) Now, I know we can’t raise people from the dead, or feed 5,000 people with 5 loaves and 2 fish. But we can show love to the family of the deceased member by giving a listening ear, or a shoulder to cry on. We can show those we come in contact with on a daily basis love too. We all have special gifts that the Lord has blessed us with; we can bless others with those gifts and show them that we care.

Love does not envy...

“That’s my car!” I hear these words every Wednesday night on our way to a Bible club at the church I attend. We usually have 8 people in the car with us on the way to and from church, and 4 of those 8 people love to look out the windows, point at a car they see on the street, and yell, “Oh yeah, that’s my car!” Of course this is followed by arguing because someone else wanted to “claim” that car. This is envy.

Envy- A feeling of discontent or resentment for someone else’s possessions or advantages (Webster’s Dictionary)

Envy is wanting something that someone else owns or has. Another word for envy is covet, and coveting is a sin. (Exodus 20:17)

How can we show love to people if we envy or covet the things they have or the accomplishments they’ve done? We can’t! It’s impossible.

Love does not boast, it is not proud...

Boastful- To speak with vanity or; to be unduly proud of; to brag; to vaunt; to praise oneself extravagantly.

If you are boastful, then you are proud.

The Bible talks a lot about pride. Since this post is already pretty long I’m only going to share with you 2 different verses in the Bible that talks about pride.

1 Peter 5:5- “Young men, in the same way be submissive to those who are older. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility towards one another, because, ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’”

Romans 12:3- “...Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.”

If you haven’t already guessed; the opposite of pride is humility.
Humility- To humble; to lover the dignity of

In John 13:1-17 we find Jesus humbling Himself and washing the disciples stinky, and disgusting feet. That’s a job of a servant not the Messiah! Yet He did it, and told us to do the same.

If we are boasting about our accomplishments and are prod about what we do; how on earth can we show love to anyone?

This is something all followers of Jesus can work on...

TO BE CONTINUED...

Galatians 6:14- “May I never boast except in the cross or our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”

Fruit Of The Spirit- Love (Part One)

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Against such there is no law.” -Galatians 5:22-23

This blog post will be about the first fruit of the Spirit...love.
The type of love this verse is talking about is the love that Jesus has for us, and the love that we should have for those around us. I’ll be basing this post on 1 Corinthians 13.

Verse 1- “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or clanging cymbal.”

Many Christians disagree on what speaking in tongues means. From my personal study, I believe speaking in tongues means speaking in a language that you have not learned.

“When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.” –Acts 2:1-4

The word “tongues” is a Greek word that can be translated in two different ways.
1. glossa—means languages
2. dialektos—means dialects

So in 1 Corinthians 13:1 “tongues” could be replaced with the word languages, or dialects.

We can talk all we want, but if we aren’t speaking in love we’re just making a bunch of noise. And in the end we’re most likely going to annoy someone.

Have you ever heard a gong or cymbal being hit over and over again? If you haven’t I’ll tell you this...it gets annoying after about a minute. This is how we will be if we don’t have love, or speak in love.

Proverbs 15:1a- “A gentle answer turns away wrath...”

Verse 2- “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”

We can be as wise as Solomon in all his splendor, and have faith like Abraham. But if we don’t have love; we are nothing, and the things we do amount to absolutely nothing.

Verse 3- “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”

I know a lot of Roman Catholics (basically my dad’s entire family) who would give to the poor, but usually they don’t do it out of love. So what do they do it for?

Well, they might do it for two reasons...

1. They might get something out of it
2. They believe it’s the right thing to do

Now, both of these reasons are pretty self-explanatory, but let’s focus on the second reason for a few moments.

A lot of people (not just Roman Catholics) believe they should give to the poor because it’s the right thing to do. They feel obligated to do something good.

Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t give to the poor, and help them out when we can. As a follower of Jesus Christ, we are actually commanded throughout the Bible to help those in need. But that’s a whole different subject that I’ll have to talk about some other day.

Many “religious” people help the poor because they think it might get them into Heaven.
This type of thinking is wrong. Only saving faith will get you into Heaven.
(Check out James 2: 14-16 for the last two paragraphs.)

If we don’t act in love when we do something (whether it be giving to the poor, or helping your mom around the house; we gain nothing...

TO BE CONTINUED...