The Fruit of the Spirit Is Love

Last nig-ht I tried to put before you what a life filled with the Holy Spirit may be, but more from the doctrinal side. These expressions were found in Romans, 8th chapter, “Walk in the Spirit,” “Beingmade free by the Spirit from the law of sin and death.” “Being in the Spirit,” “Having the Spirit dwelling in us,” “Throug-h the Spirit mortifying-the deeds of the body,” “Beingled by the Spirit,” ‘* Having the Spirit of adoption.” All these are truths which have to be appropriated and assimilated and worked out in actual life. I want this morning to look at the matter more from the practical side, and to show you how this life will show itself in our daily walk and conduct. Under the Old Testament you know the Holy Spirit often came upon men as a Divine Spirit of revelation, to reveal the mysteries of God, or for power to do the work of God. But he did not then dwell in them. Now, as I said yesterday morning, many just want the Old Testament gift of power for work, but know very little of the New Testament gift of the indwelling Spirit, animating and renewing the whole life. We saw last night that when God gives the Holy Spirit His great object is the formation of holy character. We saw that it was a gift of a holy mind and spiritual disposition, and that we need above everything else to say, “I must have the Holy Spirit sanctifying my whole inner life if I am really to live for God’s glory.” You might say that when Christ promised the Spirit to the disciples He did so that they might have power to be witnesses. True, but then they received the Holy Ghost in such heavenly power and reality that He took possession of their whole being at once and so fitted them as holy men for doing the work with power as they had to do it. Christ spoke of power to the disciples, but it was the Spirit filling their whole being that worked the power. I wish to speak this morning upon the passage found in Gal. 5:22. “The fruit of the Spirit is love.” We read that “Love is the fulfilling of the whole law,” and my desire is to speak to you this morning on love as a fruit of the Spirit with a two fold object. One is that this word may be a searchlight in our hearts and give us a test by which to try all our thoughts about the Holy Spirit and all our experience of the holy life. Let us try ourselves by this word. Has this been your daily habit, to seek the being filled with the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of love? “The fruit of the Spirit is love.” Has it been your experience that the more you have of the Holy Spirit the more loving you become? In claiming the Holy Spirit you should make this the first object of your expectation, the Holy Spirit comes as a Spirit of love. Oh, if this were true in the church of Christ how different her state would be. May God help us this morning to just get hold of this simple heavenly truth, that the fruit of the Spirit is a love which appears in the life, and that just as the Holy Spirit gets real possession of the life, the heart will be filled with real. Divine, universal love. To understand this fully let us remember that God from whom the Spirit comes is love. Love is not a mere attribute of God, but God is love, and because this Holy Spirit comes as the Spirit of God, He comes as the Spirit of love. What does it mean that God is love? You have in the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians the most perfect definition of love. “Love seeketh not its own.” It goes out of itself and lives in its object, etc. Love longs to commend itself to and bless the object of its love. Therefore it was an absolute necessity in the idea of a perfect God that He should have a Son to whom He could communicate Himself. We cannot conceive of God, who is love, alone, He must have a Son to whom He can communicate Himself and with whom we

can have fellowship. So God is love. And in the everlasting intercourse of the Trinity the Spirit is the bond of fellowship between the Father and Son. The Holy Spirit is the overflowing and interchange of the love between Father and Son. He is the very life of Deity; if that Spirit comes to us He comes in no other way than as the Spirit of love. God is love not only to Christ, but in Christ God created the world that He might pour out His love upon it and that He might give to all His creatures just as much of His love as they each are capable of receiving-. God is love. God created ang-els and men that they mig-ht enjoy fellowship with Him, His love permeating and fillingtheir whole being-. When man had fallen, when sin had darkened this love of God in man, what did He do? He gave His own Son to the death to restore it. To that fallen world God g-ave His Son in a new way, in the flesh to prove to man the power of His love. And with His Son He gave His life. His joy. His glory, His holiness, His power. His blessedness; in Christ He gives it all. God is love, ever delighting to give and communicate Himself. Love is the essential nature of God; with the Holy Spirit coming from this God, must we not expect that He will fill us with love? Sin has robbed us of love. You know that God created man, male and female, that they might live a life of love even as God lives in love, and they might be happy in love. When sin came it destroyed the love. You know how easily Adam put the blame upon his wife, how speedily Cain killed Abel, how soon the world became filled with wickedness; how true it is that since that time the world is full of divisions, and strife, of sin and unrighteousness. Love vanished from the world. There may have been beautiful examples of love even among the heathen but only as a little remnant of what has been lost. The worst thing sin ever did was, it made men selfish and selfishness cannot love. Selfishness can do something that is called love; it can lead me to love some one who pleases me or makes me happier, but that is not real love. The true unselfish love, that loves the unworthy or unlovable, sin destroyed. To bring this love back to us Jesus came. He came as the manifestation of Divine love. We read before He went to be crucified, that havingloved His own that were in the world He loved them unto the end. Christ’s life with His disciples was one of love. His influence was personal. His whole intercourse with them was one of love. In the 13th chapter of John you will remember Christ said unto them, “A new commandment I g-ive unto you, that ye love one another.” This commandment differed from all other commandments, and yet it contained them all. It was a new commandment Christ alone could give, because He had revealed a new love, and would give it in the heart by giving His Spirit there. I tell you, love one another. By this shall men know that ye are my disciples if you love one another. In the 15th chapter He says again, “This commandment have I given unto you that ye love one another.” In the 17th chapter He prayed, “That they may be one as we are one, that the world may know Thou hast loved me and hast sent me and hast loved them as Thou hast loved me.” The world is to know the love of God through Christ by our love to one another. So we are taught that the great mark of the believer is that he is to be a man of love. Dear friends, how little the world understands that; how little the church understands that; how little it is preached, or proved in practice, that love is actually the chief thing for every believer to set his heart upon. How little can believers say before God, “Thou knowest I pray for one thing”, fill me with love; I study one thing-, how can I be filled with love?” The Lord Jesus came

to bring love back to the world. He did so when He died on Calvary, it was the triumph and the revelation of love. And now He calls us to dwell and to walk in love. He demands that though a man hate you still you love him. True love cannot be conquered by anything in heaven or upon the earth. The more hatred there is the more love triumphs through it all and shows its true nature. This is the love that Christ commanded His disciples to exercise. John in his epistle says that Christ laid down His life for us, therefore we ought to lay down our life for the brethren. How little men understand that. Look at the disciples. How often there were dissensions among them; more than once they disputed as to who should be chief in the kingdom, there was pride because of their want of love. Love is humility. Love says, I only exist to be a blessing to others. Love cannot be selfish; it loves as Jesus loved. The disciples whom Christ had chosen had to be taught many things, but one chief object was to let us see what human nature is and how incapable it is of the higher life, of love like Christ’s, until the Holy Spirit comes.

2. When Jesus Christ had revealed love on earth and had done the work of redeeming love, the Holy Spirit came from heaven to bring His love down to our hearts. We ought to think of Pentecost as it brought the very life and love of Jesus into the hearts of His disciples. So it was that Peter could speak out of the very Spirit of Jesus. The disciples learned not only to love each other, but even their enemies. We talk of their boldness because that comes out in contrast to their cowardice; it was the redeeming love of Christ that came to take possession of them; which the Holy Spirit broug-ht down from heaven. In the second and the fourth chapters of Acts we read that they were of one heart and one soul. During the three years they had walked with Christ they never had one heart and one soul. All Christ’s teaching could not make them of one heart and one soul. But the Holy Spirit comes from heaven and sheds the love of God in their hearts and they are of one heart and one soul. The same Holy Spirit that brought the love of heaven into their hearts must fill us too. Nothing less will do. Even as Christ did, one might preach love for three years with the tongue of an angel, that would not teach any man to love unless the power of the Holy Spirit come upon him to bring the love of heaven into his heart. If we wait upon the Holy Spirit and yield ourselves to Him He will fill us with the love of God. Look at this as we have it here in our text. It is in our daily life and conduct that the fruit of the Spirit is love; from that there comes all the graces and virtues in which love is manifested: joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness; no sharpness or hardness in your tone, no unkindness or selfishness; meekness before God and man. You see that all these are the gentler virtues. I have often thought as I read those words in Colosians, “Put on therefore as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuif ering,” that if we had written, we should have put in the foreground the manly virtues, zeal, courage and diligence; but we need to see how the gentler, the most womanly, virtues are specially connected with dependence upon the Holy Spirit. These are indeed heavenly graces. They never were found in the heathen world. Christ was needed to come from heaven to teach us. Your blessedness is longsuffering, meekness, kindness; your glory is humility before God. The fruit of the Spirit, that He brought from heaven, out of the heart of the crucified Christ and that He gives in our heart, is first and foremost, love.

Don’t you see that if this is really true, our great desire in asking to be filled with the Holy Spirit, our great study now that we are talking about, the filling of the Spirit, and how to be filled with power by the Spirit, our great aim and study must be to get hold of this thought, if we are to have the Holy Spirit we must give up ourselves give up self to live the life of love. How sadly has this been wanting? “What shall I say about the divisions throughout the Church of Christ? How the most precious truths given by Christ to unite us have been made barriers of separation. Take the Lord’s Supper. What terrible quarrels between Reformed Lutherans about the meaning of the simple words, “This is my body.” What was meant as a bond of union is a badge of separation. Alas! how little the Divine beauty, the Divine supremacy of love has been seen.

Our doctrines, our creeds hare been more important than love. In these later times, even the baptism of the Holy Spirit is a cause of separation. Let us learn not to expect that everyone should think the same or express themselves in the same way; let our first care be to exercise love, g-entleness, kindness. We often think we are valiant for the truth, and we forg-et that God’s word commands us to speak the truth in love. How often one hears that even away out among- the heathen or mission stations there are too often divisions and coldness among- those who are working- for God. Because of differences of temperament or opinion, estrang-ements and jealousies come in and love waxes cold. What a sad thing- in the church that earnest Christians who have g-iven up all for Christ have never learned the mystery of love. Is it any different at home? Is there not often, in the circles where we meet tog-ether, in church councils, and committees, in missions and associations, a want of that love among- fellow-workers, which is the true mark of the presence of the Holy Ghost? Is there not often harsh judg-ment, evil-speaking-, etc., all because the love of Christ has not been allowed to take complete possession. Is there not often even in the family the outburst of temper and haste? Alas! we have not learned to love, have not even learned to count love the chief fruit of the Spirit. We must learn to take this word as the true test of life in the Spirit. All our desire to be filled with the Spirit must center here, to have self sunk down in willing-ness and humility, and to have the love of

God and Jesus become the life of our life. I want to lead you to the life in which love is supreme, in which love shall bow you down in such deep humility that g-o where you will and let man do what they will, you shall say, by the help of God I must love. Let us bring- our whole life to the looking-glass of this word of God. Let us think of the church and Christians around us. When you have looked around well then look at yourself and say”, “Oh God, I ask Thee so often to fill Thy church with the Holy Spirit. Have I been filled with the Spirit of love?” You know what John says, “No man hath seen the Father at any time. If we love one another God dwells in us.” That is, I cannot see God, but as a compensation I can see my brother and if I love him God dwells in me. Is that really true? That I cannot see God, but I must love my brother, and God will dwell in me. Loving my brother is the way to real fellowship with God. You know what John further says in that most solemn test, 1 John, 4:20, “If a man says he loves God and hates his brother he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” There is a brother, a most unlovable man. He worries you every time you meet him. He is of the very opposite disposition to yours. You are a careful business man and you have g”ot to do with him in your business. He is most untidy, unbusiness-like. You say I cannot love him. Oh friends, you have not learned the lesson that Christ wanted to teach above everything-. Let a man be what he will you are to love him. Love is to be the fruit of the Spirit all the day and every day. Yes, listen, if a man loves not his brother whom he hath seen, if you don’t love that unlovabley man whom you have seen, how can you love God whom you have not seen? You can deceive yourself with beautiful thoug-hts about loving- God. You must prove your love to God by your love to your brother; that is the one standard God will judge your love to Him by. If the love of God is in your heart you will love your brother. The fruit of the Spirit is love. The first thing- you need, if you want to be filled with the Spirit, in any real, full sense of the word, you must not only have Himtakepossession of your will, but you must yield up your heart and life to be filled with the Spirit of love.

Nothing- can enable you to live such a life of love but the fullness of the Holy Spirit. The two texts are inseparably connected. “Be filled with the Spirit,” “The fruit of the Spirit is love.” If a man wants to have the fruit of an apple tree he must plant the apple tree. You must have the tree if you want the fruit. If you want to be filled with the love of God you must be filled with the Spirit. You must come with the humble confession of how little you have loved, or even desired to be full of love. You have soug-ht for the power of the Holy Spirit in your work in pride and selfishness You have not g-iven up yourself to Him to be filled, first of all, with love, with gentleness and humility and meekness. Oh! come and make confession, and let Christ cleanse you from the selfishness and pride and unloving-ness. Seek to be filled with the Spirit for a daily life of humility and love, and the power of the Spirit for service will come.

Brother, do you want to be filled with the Spirit of God? Is it true? Do you really want to be filled with love that you may be the humblest, gentlest of men, so that everyone may know that you are a disciple by the love you have? Brethren, if we love one another God dwelleth in us and we in God, and then we can be perfected in love. Is that an attainment of ours? It is a g-ift, a bestowment of the Holy Spirit. I hope, in the evening-, to speak about the hindrances to this life, how it comes that this life in the Spirit, this love of the Spirit, walking- after the Spirit, made free by the Spirit, indwelt by the Spirit, having- the witness of the Spirit, what it is that hinders these in our life. How it is that Christ has g-iven the Spirit, that the Spirit is in the church, and her life is so feeble. But, meantime; let us first in confession ask God to forg-ive us our shortcomings; let us in prayer and faith yield ourselves and let God fill us with the Spirit of love. Let us even now absolutely and entirely give ourselves to be just vessels filled with the love of God. Let us even now say to God that we accept the lesson, that the Spirit comes to fill us with the love of heaven, with a love that makes loving others the one joy of our life; that we yield ourselves to it, and that by His grace we will make this our one object and desire. May God write it in our hearts. The Holy Spirit’s fruit and chief work is to give Christ and the love of God in us for our every day life. By His grace we can live lives of unceasing love.