Exploring the Father’s Love Fruit of the Spirit Galatians 5:22-23 Exploring the Father’s Love

A Father’s Love We will be looking at the concept of love and will attempt to reinterpret the word “love” as it is shown to us by our Heavenly Father. The fact that God shows us his love as a Heavenly Father speaks to a particular quality of the love we have received.

1 John 4:9-10, 16-19 “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins … God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us.”

What is Love? The first thing that stands out in this passage is that love is sourced in God; love begins with God and not us. Love is a gift of God. God is qualified to give this gift because as our passage makes clear, God is love. The Greeks had different concepts and words for love Eros for erotic love Philios for brotherly “happenchance” love Storge for a natural, instinctual love.

Sin separates us from God’s love in a profound way. In Jesus, God gave of himself in an incredibly sacrificial way to demonstrate His love to us and to tear down the barrier to relationship with God that sin had built up. Once we come to faith in Jesus, nothing “in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39). Our passage indicates that perfect love creates an absence of fear. If our experience is that love can hurt, is not fear a fitting response? There is no fear in God’s love because love is not a feeling, it is a choice. When we come to faith in Jesus, He promises to love us eternally. Our confidence in God’s love is based in God’s unchanging character.

Psalm 103:8-18 “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbour his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed … from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children’s children — with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts.”

God’s love is with those who fear him from “everlasting to everlasting”. Those who fear God “keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts”. In spite of our disobedience, God loves us. He doesn’t repay us as we deserve – the just punishment for sin is death and eternal separation from God. Love does not ignore fault; it loves in spite of fault. The opposite of love is not hate or anger; it’s indifference. In God, we see One who so cared about our sin, who was so disturbed by how sin had shattered our ability to give and receive perfect love, that He intervened himself, sending His Son. God is not indifferent to us.

The trifecta of love – love for God, love for one another, and love for our neighbours and enemies. Love for God is perhaps the most fitting response to His love for us in Jesus Christ. 1 John 3:18 instructs us to “not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth”. Love of God is made complete in our actions. Love for God is evidenced in obedience to God’s word and a choice to live like Jesus did. So, to truly love God, we must first learn God’s word and seek to understand how Jesus lived. This places a great deal of importance on knowing God’s word.

“Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” (1 John 4:11-12) Our approach to one another within the church bears witness to the reality that God dwells within us. “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?” (1 John 3:16-17) We must show our love for each other in tangible ways. We are encouraged to lay down our lives for each other, just as Christ did for us. Death, really?

I believe that there is one more act of the Spirit that John had in mind as he wrote this, one more act that results in an increased production of love. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:43-45)  Loving your enemies seems exceptionally difficult.

Love is a gift from God; it is something the Spirit produces in us as we engage in relationship with God. We are personally incapable of loving unconditionally, of showing agape love, apart from God enabling us to do so. As we learn to lean more heavily on His love, His love will shine more brightly through us. Our world needs to see this kind of love. We’ve developed a generation of people who feel profoundly unloved. So, may you experience the Father’s love today in a fresh way and may you produce this love in an abounding way for people who feel generally “unlovable”.