Posted on February 15, 2009 - by Tim L

Fruits of the Spirit - Love

What do you love?.
What do you love the most?
What do you mean when you say ‘I love you’?

Turn to your neighbour and discuss with them

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone. “It means just what I choose it to mean - neither more or less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master - that’s all.”
Lewis Carroll, English author & recreational mathematician (1832 - 1898)

Human beings create language and we create meaning out of the language.  In Genesis God gave to humanity the gift of naming the animals of his creation.  But language changes and so over time does what we use words for.  Many words can be used to express the same idea or a single word can express many thoughts.
Love is many different things to different people. It’s an emotion, romance, sexual intercourse, it’s fleeting, lifelong,

What is God’s view of love?

You might have heard it said that ‘God is love.’  But what does that mean?
Who knows what a noun is?
Sometimes when people say ‘God is love’ they think it is a noun - a description of God, in many ways they are right, but,….
Christians believe that God is a personal being.  You cannot get to know God by a scientific experiment by philosophical wondering or even by theological musing.  You can know God’s love but it is only known whenever and wherever God makes that love known.
Love is made known by God by what he does.
God does not stay distant and far away. He is not into random acts of kindness. God does not send the occasional box of chocolates or a bunch of flowers.
How do we know how much God loves us?

“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life.  God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.
Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.
John 3: 16 - 18 (The Message)

God’s love is made known in the world by the incarnation. Love is embodied.  We might ask ‘What is love?’  but God forces us change the question and ask ‘Who is love?’

Jesus said
“You’ve been with me all this time, Philip, and you still don’t understand? To see me is to see the Father. So how can you ask, ‘Where is the Father?’
Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you aren’t mere words. I don’t just make them up on my own. The Father who resides in me crafts each word into a divine act.

John 14: 9-10 (The Message)

In the person of Jesus love is cemented into action.  Love is no longer a noun, naming something or even somebody.  Love becomes a verb, an active force.  Love becomes real.  Love takes legs and walks.  Love gets skin and bones.
Jesus healed the sick, liberated the oppressed, fed the hungry, consoled those in mourning.  Jesus lived for others.  He also died for others.  Jesus expressed love as it should be expressed as God intended it.  Jesus didn’t say “I love everyone” meaning that he had a warm fuzzy feeling for them all.  He loved specifically and actively.

As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place. When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written,
“God’s Spirit is on me; he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free, 19 to announce, “This is God’s year to act!”
Luke 4: 16-19 (The Message)