1 Corinthians 13

Fruit of the Spirit, I

I remember a song — this is really going to date me — that was on the charts back when I was in High School. Made popular by a group called "Blue Suede", and was reissued by a number of others since then, including, regrettably, a music video by David Hasselhoff... unbelievably bad... anyway, the song is called Hooked on a Feeling. And I bet quite a few of you know the opening lines:

I can't stop this feeling, deep inside of me;
girl you just don't realize what you do to me.
When you hold me in your arms so tight
You let me know, everything's all right... [OK, big line!]
I-I-I-I-I-I .... I'M HOOKED ON A FEELING
HIGH ON BELIEVING THAT YOU'RE IN LOVE WITH ME...

etc.

Well, that might be an old song, but it actually still summarizes our Western culture's definition of love. Right there in the title... love is, according to this song, a feeling. An emotion. And not only is it a feeling, but it is a feeling that bowls you over, comes unbidden, unexpectedly, and one that, truth be told, we have little or no control over. We can be 'hooked' on it; a word that in most cases, is not a positive thing, is it?

Pastor HeyYoung and I are beginning a series of messages this morning that will take us through the end of August based on the "Fruit of the Spirit". It comes from a list that the Apostle Paul makes in Galatians 5:23 — 24, where having just listed some examples of the 'fruit of unrighteousness' (i.e., what comes out of a life when the Holy Spirit is not leading us), things like 'immorality, drunkenness, idolatry, division, rage", and others; in contrast to that sad list, right after it, he makes another list. This is what we should expect to see in the lives of believers who are being led by the Spirit. He writes: "But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." So, each one of these will be our theme for a week in our services and messages this summer.

And today we begin with 'love'. I don't know if you would remember this, but last Summer in a message here I shared some teaching from Christian Swartz, the founder of Natural Church Development movement, who suggests that there is only one fruit of the Spirit, which is love. After that word in Galatians 5, he says, there should be not a comma, but a semi-colon. The other eight words then, are descriptions, or 'facets' of love, which is the fruit of the Spirit. So then, Paul would be describing love with these eight adjectives: joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These are all aspects of love.

Personally, I find his reasoning very convincing, both grammatically, and in the context of the rest of the New Testament. For example, in the classic 'love passage' 1 Corinthians 13, which we read this morning, as Paul describes love in these verses, he actually uses two of the exact same words that he uses Galatians 5 as fruit of the Spirit. "Love is patient, love is kind"; he also writes that love "rejoices with the truth", and of course, another of the 'fruits of the Spirit' is joy. So, I think Swartz is on to something, and so in this series we're going to try to keep that in mind, and I'll be reminding you that the main message of this summer is: love.

So this is going to be a summer of love! Groovy, huh?

I want to start off by sharing a little bit from my sermon on a similar topic from last Summer. I'd like to assume that you all remember everything I teach in my messages, but the truth is that I don't remember it all, so I know that's not likely, and besides, there are new people here, so consider this a quick review...

Christian Swartz, in his little book The Colors of Love, points out that when we read the word 'love' in the New Testament, most of the time we are reading a translation of the Greek word agape. Agape love is a love that is grounded in the very being, in the nature of God. Agape reflects who God is and how God relates to us. In other words, we can only appreciate the meaning of agape when we understand — as much as we're able to do that — the nature and character of God. Agape is the way God loves — it is the way God is!

The main thrust of agape as we read it in the Bible is that it is a love that is not stimulated by the person being loved, by the recipient of the love; rather, agape love is directed to another person by our choice. Agape comes from the giver. Agape doesn't begin in our emotions, it springs from our wills.

Of course, in New Testament times there were other concepts and words for love as well that were quite different. One common word that was often used in society was the term phileo; that's half the root of the word "Philadelphia" and it refers to the love of friends and family. It is kind affection, good will, and all that. An important word, and one that we could stand a little more of!

Another Greek word for love is eros. Now, in spite of the present derivatives of this word (i.e., erotic) the word eros doesn't only refer to sensual love. "Eros is a general longing for something that one does not have, but ought to have or would like to have. Eros means, "I want you, I need you, I desire you, because I'm incomplete without you."

So you can see, phileo and eros both depend on feelings that have been 'stoked up', lets say, by the person being loved. So Blue Suede, and David Hasselhoff were singing about eros. And in fact, most of the time when we talk about 'love' in our culture, our thoughts, our definitions are tinged, or we might even say 'soaked' in eros. It's almost the only kind of love that we know of. All of our ideas of love tend to be emotionally based. Even as we think about God's love, we think about an emotion. And that's a problem, really.

Now let me just step aside here for one brief moment and say this: There is nothing evil, anti-Christian, or embarrassing about these other forms of love. Christians have taken a bad rap in this area not because the Bible speaks against sensual love (it doesn't!), but because the Bible puts restrictions on it. It puts it in a context. God created us with these drives, and he created pheromones, and hormones, knowing full well how crazy they would drive us! But the Scriptures are also clear in teaching us that there is a point to all this — and that is to give us a way to express a deep, profound level of intimacy between two people in marriage. It's a wonderful gift from God.

We Christians have not done a very good job at explaining the spiritual significance of a physical relationship, and the result is that this aspect of who we are as human beings has pretty much taken over all of life and all of our culture! So everything today is about sex — from sale of hardware to cars to clothes, to movies, to TV shows, to every relationship (and immediately), to food — you name it. And there are a lot of victims of this obsession.

Cast aside women, abused children... a divorce rate over 50%... rampant adultery, pornography, lack of ability of couples to communicate in even basic ways, and I could go on, but that's not what this sermon is about. But I just think God has a better idea!

Agape love, being a love that is based in our wills, a love that is formed in the giver, and not the receiver, can then be a love that is commanded. You can't tell someone to have a feeling toward another person. You can't will yourself into an emotion. You can't force yourself to like someone. We can be 'commanded' to love in an 'agape' sense, and in fact, we are. The Bible says in many different ways, "Love one another." This has to do with the way we treat people, it has to do with how we relate to one another — to our neighbors, our friends, our enemies.

Here's another quick aside: in a relationship, let's say, in a marriage: all three of these types of love will be in operation. There will be good will and affection, there will be sensuality, and there will be agape — a will-generated love. And in fact, I would say that agape is what holds a marriage together. Because emotion based love comes and goes. As we grow older, as we change, our affections wax and wane. But through our commitments, in recognizing our promises and God's commands to love via our will, we ride out the valleys in the emotional parts, until that sort of love 'resurfaces'. Which it will.

In a more general sense, this agape love is certainly the love that Jesus and Paul and others in the Bible were constantly calling and admonishing us to demonstrate. This is the love that we show to our enemies. This is the love that we give to our neighbors, and to the needy. It is, as I've been saying, a love of actions and choice.

This is the love that Jesus predicted that the world would see in the church community, and while it won't understand it, because of it the world would recognize that God is among us. Through love. Through our agape love.

What does it look like? Well, the best answer is that it looks like people doing everything that Jesus told us to do! It looks like caring, and healing. It looks like forgiving. It's the love that turns the other cheek, the love that meets needs, love that feeds the hungry and clothes the naked, and cares for the lonely and the sick and the disenfranchised of the world. It looks like accepting others with grace, and bearing one another's burdens. It looks like generosity in the use of our stuff... I mean, really, this is what the New Testament is about. (As well as reminding us that when we fail to love, we are forgiven by a God whose very nature is agape!)

One of the best known summaries of love is found in Paul's first letter to the Corinthian church, in chapter 13. This is a passage that we have seemed to relegate to weddings these days. It certainly belongs there — marriages would be much stronger if we actually attempted to live out these words. But these words are for all of us. This is agape love. This is the way we are supposed to be living, and relating to one another, all the time, this is the fruit of the Spirit:

Listen to the heart of this passage once again:

Love is patient and kind;
love does not envy or boast;
it is not arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.

Ok, we're going to be coming up for communion in just a few minutes... so think about this with me...which part here do you need to talk to God about? (Or does God need to talk to you about?) Lets read it again... we'll make it personal, we'll put the word 'I' in the place of the word 'love'. So we can all ask ourselves, "Does this describe me?" The way I am? Would my husband or wife, or children... or my next door neighbor, or co-worker agree? Listen:

I am patient and I am kind;
I do not envy or boast;
I am not arrogant or rude.
I do not insist on my own way;
I am not irritable or resentful;
I never rejoice in wrongdoing, but I rejoice with the truth.
[even when that truth exposes me!]
I bear all things, I believe no matter what, I don't give up my hope no matter what,
I endure all things faithfully.
No matter what.

Obviously, this is not a description of an emotional state. This is not a feeling to become 'hooked' on. This is hard, this is work. This is commitment. This is dangerous stuff. It can change your life. And it can change the world.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to be sure of keeping your heart intact—you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safely in the casket of your selfishness. And in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will not change, it will not be broken. It will become unbreakable, impenetrable and irredeemable. The only place outside of heaven where you can be perfectly safe from the dangers of love is hell.

C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves