Scripture Readings
Matthew 22:34-39 and
1 Corinthians 13: 1-7.
This is the first of a sermon series on the fruits of the Spirit. These fruits are outlined by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians, chapter 5:22-23:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Paul’s discussion of the fruits of the Spirit comes after he’s outlined why believers in Christ are no longer under the law. The Christian community in Galatia is debating whether or not Gentile converts need to be circumcised according to the Hebrew Scriptures. How do we honor the covenant God ordained with Abraham? What role does the Hebrew play for believers in Jesus?
And, if Christians are free from the law - and the law had once been the boundaries of good behavior and virtue - how then do new Christians understand a virtuous life? This may seem like a silly question, but for Christians both converting from Judaism, with its 613 mitzvot, and for Pagans who had been schooled in philosophies like Cynicism, Stoicism, or Platonism, defining a virtuous life was incredibly important.
Yet, those old standards no longer held sway. So Paul outlines what good behavior looks like. Earlier in the chapter, he warns against things like debauchery, idolatry, and jealousy. Paul then outlines what the fruits of living in the Holy spirit are: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control.
Paul names Love as the first of the fruits of the spirit. Love is a wonderful place to begin. It’s the bedrock of all the Christian virtues that we should be cultivating.
Love in English can be translated in lots of different ways: I love my husband, I love my children, and I love ice cream… one word for very different meanings. I love my husband in a different way than I love my children, and the extent to which I love ice cream - while pretty vast 😀 - pales in comparison to the extent to which I love my kids. Yet, we don’t have a way of distinguishing these different kinds and qualities of love in English.
Koine Greek doesn’t suffer from this problem. In New Testament there were four words for Love:
Eros: romantic/passionate love like the love between spouses.
Storga: familial affection, the kind of love that indicates both obligation and kinship; this is the love between parents and children and people in the same household. This love isn’t purely selfless, but rather has connotation of responsibility to one another.
Philos: friendship love, between friends and not part of a kin group. This love is like a fondness for a colleague, and may indicate a slightly less intimate kind of love.
Finally, Agape: selfless, unconditional love. This is the steadfast love that we see repeated in the Psalms. In Hebrew this love is translated as the word chesed: God’s unfailing love for creation. Agape is the highest form of love, it is pure and selfless, thinks about the other and not the self.
When we look at the Fruits of the Spirit outlined by Paul in Galatians 5, it is Agape love that is named as the first of the fruits. We shouldn’t be surprised.
Jesus makes it very clear in our reading from Matthew that love - agape, the selfless, steadfast love - is the very foundation for all of our faith. We are to agape God with all of our heart, soul, and mind. And we are to agape our neighbors as ourselves.
It is upon this love that hangs all the law and prophets. It is this Agape-love that is patient and kind, that does not boast and is not arrogant. Is it any wonder, then, that the first of the fruits of the spirit - those spiritual attitudes and actions that we are to cultivate as Christians - is Agape-love?
Love is the primary of these virtues; not just habits of the heart, which all of the fruits certainly are, but also habits of the mind. We choose to love. We choose to act with agape-love, to act selflessly, or not. We choose to love our neighbors, or not. We choose to love God, or not.
What is essential here, what I most want y’all to take away, is that agape-love is not a feeling. It’s not the warm fuzzies you get when you look at your spouse or partner. It’s not the protective love you might have for your kids.
Look at our 1 Corinthians reading. This love is not purely emotional, it’s practical:
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Agape-love is active, it’s the choice to live into the right relationship with God and with neighbor. It’s the choice to show up even when you don’t feel like it. It’s taking actions that love God with your heart, mind, soul and strength by living out God’s desires for the world (like caring for the orphaned and widowed, for example).
It’s loving your neighbor even if they don’t deserve it. It’s forgiveness, it’s compassion; frankly to live into the act of agape-love is to encompass all the other of the fruits or virtues of the Spirit. To love, truly to live into agape-love, is to practice Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control.
Jesus Christ offers us the perfect example of Agape-love. He has loved us perfectly, and shown us the way to love others. He is the model and the benchmark for how we live out our love for God and love for neighbor.
This week I invite you to consider the first fruit of the Spirit, Love. Reflect on love in your life, all forms of love in your life. Where do you experience the most love? Where do you experience the least love?
Where do you struggle to love God with all your heart, mind, and soul? Where do you struggle to love your neighbor as yourself? How might you better cultivate the attitudes and actions of Agape-love?
It is important for us to take time in these reflections, to be honest with ourselves, for Love is the foundation of all other Christian virtues. Truly, it is the bedrock of living out our faith.
May we be filled with the love of God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may we show that love to all whom we meet. This day, and every day. Amen.
Copyright 2024, Reverend Laura Brekke Wagoner. All rights reserved.