“But the fruit of the Spirit is love…” Galatians 5:22

What a perfect (and completely unintentional) time to speak on the subject of love! With Valentine’s Day right around the corner love is everywhere we look: aisles with boxes of chocolate, corny cards, and flowers, cheesy romance movies. I really do love Valentine’s Day. It’s a great time for me to remember to show my love to those around me in tangible ways. It’s also an appropriate time to really evaluate if I am loving others the way God intends for me to love them. 

The desire to love and to be loved is universal.

There’s not much the human race can agree on these days. It seems like disagreement and discord are on the rise while the ability to love our fellow man is diminishing. One thing I have learned over these past several months is that love can be an incredibly perplexing quality in mankind! All of the extraordinary events that have defined 2020 and the beginning of 2021 have shown me that, no matter what side of the political aisle or global pandemic debate you are on, most of us desire to see an increase of love towards one another, and yet it seems like we see less love and more disdain towards one another.

I’ve watched time and again how offering love to someone we disagree with is a rarity, and more often we see animosity and anger aimed towards one another. Thoughts and opinions are given without reservation, but love is often withheld from those who challenge our beliefs and values. Frequently I’ve watched as some are only deemed worth loving if they act a certain way, hold the same beliefs or say what upholds certain ideologies. If they don’t, then an increasingly popular idea is that we can just “cancel” them right out of our life….hence the term “cancel culture.” 

Love can be a common denominator with incredible power to bring people together, but love can also be the most difficult thing to show another person. Our human nature is to be stingy and selective with whom and how we love. Especially in regards to people we disagree with, but even with the ones we should be loving the most. Love is beautiful and thrilling, but love with the wrong motivations can also be destructive and incredibly elusive. We want love, we want to give it and receive it and increase it…but more often than not, when we love in our minimal human understanding and by our own power, we just aren’t able to offer more than a shallow and conditional type of love. 

As I study and think about the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5:22-23, I recognize that love is what encompasses all the other godly virtues making up this fruit. The next 8 traits describe what love in action looks like; but without love as the foundation holding it all together, the rest of the fruit is worthless and false. 

“It would have been enough to mention only the single fruit of love, for love embraces all the fruit of the Spirit.“

~Martin Luther~

Love wraps all the attributes of the Spirit together to work in perfect unity in our lives. Love is what motivates us to live out the rest of those qualities of Jesus that the Spirit produces in us. 

In order to understand the virtue of love that Paul talks about here, we first need to understand what kind of love this is. Because, despite what we think, all love is not created equal, it isn’t a “one size fits all” kind of word that has just one meaning and application. We toss the word around so much that we lose the depth behind what love really means. We talk about loving chocolate and tacos and loving Jesus with the same word, but they mean totally different things. 

There are four different kinds of love that we use often; no wonder we get confused and disappointed about what love should look like (and none of these 4  are the type of love we use to describe our feelings about chocolate and  tacos!). Without understanding the correct definition of the love spoken about here, we will have a wrong perception of what it is that the Holy Spirit is working out in us. 

Paul isn’t speaking of “Eros” love, which is the romantic or passionate love we feel for another person. Eros love is what we talk about when we say we’re “falling in love”, this love emits a strong physical feeling. He isn’t speaking about “Philia” love either; this is a love we have for our friends, a love based on common experiences, values, interests and activities. And this love is not “Storge” love; that natural familial love and affection we have for our children, parents, siblings or other family members. 

The love that Paul is speaking of here in Galatians is “Agape” love. Agape love is the selfless, sacrificial, unconditional love given to us by the Father through His Son. Agape love, also known as “charity”, is a love that is less concerned with self and more concerned for others. It’s the highest form of love there is. Agape love is a choice. It isn’t a love born out of affection or physical attraction; it’s a devotion that leads to the willingness to put others before ourselves; because that is exactly the way that Jesus loves us.

This is an abiding and enduring love that will not disappoint and never ends. The other three types of love will all fail us at some time or another because they are all the product of our human nature. Agape love, however,  is a product of the Spirit. It gives us the ability to love others even when we don’t feel like it, or think that they deserve it. Because agape love comes from God, there is no distinction or preference or inequality. God loves because HE IS LOVE! God’s love is the highest form of agape love there is.

Agape love is what God’s Spirit works in us so we can pour that kind of love out onto others. 

This love fulfills the law, because it’s the love that motivated God to send His Son down to earth to face the consequences for my sin in order that I wouldn’t have to. Because of God’s agape love I am no longer a prisoner to sin. Agape love brings freedom and redemption to my sin weary soul. 

In and of myself I don’t naturally have this kind of love; I don’t have the ability to love unconditionally and unselfishly. My natural instinct is to love myself more and to pour all my resources and energy into the three other types of love. They are based on feelings so they’re more tangible. It’s natural to chase after what makes me feel like loving others, and what makes me feel loved by others. Until that “eros” feeling goes away….the passionate, butterflies in the stomach feeling that eventually fades over time. The “phylia”/brotherly love I have for my friends will disappoint when we get to that point in a friendship where “familiarity breeds contempt”, or when a friend inevitably disappoints me. Even the “storge” love that I deeply feel for my children will change as they grow into adulthood and no longer need me, and the abiding love I have for my parents becomes a deep heartache as I face the reality of death. 

These other three types of love are blessings, and I can’t imagine going through life without them. Eros, philia, and storge love all make life rich and beautiful, but they also compete with the “agape” love God has for me. When I try to produce, maintain, or manipulate these other forms of love without the love the Holy Spirit works in me, I make loving others a mess. When I put all of my focus, time and energy towards these other kinds of love without abiding in this deeper love that God pours over me, love will always result in disappointment. When I try to love others in my own strength, based on my feelings or because of the way they treat me, then I’m unable to love others with the pure and complete love of agape. Without agape love there is always a good chance I will end up with a love that is destructive and devastating.

If I truly want to love others well, and I’m talking about loving the easy and the not-so-easy-to-love, then the only way I can do that is with agape love. Without abiding in the Spirit and grabbing hold of the love He has for me, my love will always have a human motivation attached to it. I will love on condition and with boundaries. Now don’t get me wrong, I think that wise, godly boundaries are a good thing, and in some instances we can love others better when we love within those boundaries. Having boundaries doesn’t necessarily mean that we are loving conditionally, it just means that we are loving in truth with wisdom. 

Loving others according to the way the Spirit works this virtue in me means that I give love unconditionally and without reservation. It means I see those I am pouring love into with the eyes of Christ and not with my own limited human vision. It means I give up my own expectations and ideas of what love is supposed to look like and I simply abide in God’s Spirit and let Him work through me to show His love to those around me.

Without God it’s impossible to truly love this way, because as 1 John 4:7-11 tells us, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might love through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

As I desire to see increased love poured out into the lives of others, I keep my eyes on the Lord, I grab hold of that fruit that His Spirit has already given me, and I love in a way that characterizes one who knows the love of Christ.