Love & the Fruit of the Spirit
Romans 8:12-14,
“So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh; for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.”
The Holy Spirit will help you get rid of those bad habits, and secret sins, as you follow the whole counsel of the Spirit throughout your day. The Spirit that gives you freedom from sin, is also the same Spirit who gives you wisdom as a spouse, a parent, an employee or employer! You cannot expect to grow by limiting one and receiving another. The Spirit wants the whole man to grow, despite your initial expectations and desires to receive the Holy Spirit.
Let’s look at the fruit again in Galatians 5:22-23,
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…”
This word “love” has dramatic meanings in the Greek text. Love in Greek is the word “agape”, meaning the root of all love, and the framework of love. All love has a beginning, since God is love. God is the first cause of love, and we are able to love because He first loved us.
Love in action in the Greek is “agapao”. Agape is a noun, agapao is a verb, denoting someone showing love by their actions. But here, the fruit of the Spirit gives us, a heart change, to have love inside of us, changing our being and our thinking. Our motives then are weighed by this love, before we act or speak. We say to ourselves, “Is my initial response to what just happened, am I demonstrating God’s love, or man’s earthly thinking?” The fruit of love then, is a filter, that strains out our old way of responding to any given situation, and replaces it with a proper attitude, long before we can act or speak anything.
The interesting thing about any of this fruit of love, the more we operate in it, the more room we have to contain love. In 1 John 4:11-12,
“Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.”
Expect to see your love-walk grow as you listen to the Spirit.
Father, I desire to have Your love in me, and to have it change me into the person You always had planned for me, in Jesus’ name, amen!
Add a prayer request or Submit a prayer request (click here)
_______________________________________________________
Leave a Reply