Bible Study 2: The Fruit of the Spirit - Love

2.1 Key Themes⤒🔗

Love is the most important of the fruit of the Spirit.
True love is not the love that we have, but the love that God has for us.
The Holy Spirit lets us grow in love, by helping us to understand God’s love.
When you love God, you will love God’s people.
When you love other people, you have no reason to be afraid of God.
The love of the Holy Spirit is “love in action.”

2.2 Galatians 5:22-23←⤒🔗

^5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

^5:23 gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

2.3 - 1 John 4:7-21←⤒🔗

^4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been fathered by God and knows God.

^4:8 The person who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

^4:9 By this the love of God is revealed in us: that God has sent his one and only Son into the world so that we may live through him.

^4:10 In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

^4:11 Dear friends, if God so loved us, then we also ought to love one another.

^4:12 No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God resides in us, and his love is perfected in us.

^4:13 By this we know that we reside in God and he in us: in that he has given us of his Spirit.

^4:14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.

^4:15 If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God resides in him and he in God.

^4:16 And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has in us. God is love, and the one who resides in love resides in God, and God resides in him.

^4:17 By this love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because just as Jesus is, so also are we in this world.

^4:18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears punishment has not been perfected in love.

^4:19 We love because he loved us first.

^4:20 If anyone says “I love God” and yet hates his fellow Christian, he is a liar, because the one who does not love his fellow Christian whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

^4:21 And the commandment we have from him is this: that the one who loves God should love his fellow Christian too.

2.4 Love is the most important←⤒🔗

In Lesson 1 we saw that the fruit of the Spirit can be described with nine words: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Love is first in the list, because it is the most important of all.

In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is often connected to love. For example:

Romans 5:5: “God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.”
Romans 15:30: “I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me.”
Colossians 1:7-8: “Epaphras…told us of your love in the Spirit.”

A fruit normally grows from a flower. We can say that love is the flower from which the fruit of the Spirit grow. Every good thing (joy, peace, patience, and so on) comes from love.

2.5 True love is God’s love←⤒🔗

The two greatest commandments are:

Love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind.
Love your neighbour as yourself (Matthew 22:36-40).

None of us can say that we love God with our whole heart. And none of us can say that we love every other person as much as we love ourselves. If you want to know what true love is, do not look at yourself. Do not look at the love of other people. Look at the love of God. In 1 John 4:10 we read, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

We did not love God. But he loved us. On the cross when Jesus was dying, the world was saying, “We hate God this much!” But at the same time, God was saying, “I love you this much!”

When the Holy Spirit lives in you, he helps you to understand the love of God. He helps you to believe the gospel. Even when you are going through hard times, the Holy Spirit reminds you: you have a Father who loves you.

In this way, the Holy Spirit teaches you to love God back. It is as 1 John 4:19 says: “We love because he first loved us.”

2.6 When you love God, you love God’s people←⤒🔗

When the Holy Spirit teaches you to love God, he also teaches you to love the other children of God. That is clear from 1 John 4:11: “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

Love is more than a feeling. It is also a choice that we make in our minds. This is how the choice works: “God has loved me. Now I also love God. But that means that I must also love the other people whom God has loved.”

If God lives in us through his Spirit, then of course we will love the people whom God loves! We will even love our enemies, just as God loved us when we were his enemies (Romans 5:10).

2.7 Love drives out fear←⤒🔗

In 1 John 4:18 we read, “Perfect love drives out fear.” When we love other people, then we know that the Holy Spirit is working in us. If we know that the Holy Spirit is working in us, we know that we belong to God. And if we know that we belong to God, we “will have confidence on the day of judgement” (1 John 4:17).

Yes, you do not yet love God with your whole heart. And you do not yet love your neigbours as yourself. But you do not have to be afraid that God will punish you, because:

Jesus Christ lived a perfect life of love in your place. In him, all your sins are forgiven.
The Holy Spirit is already working in you, to make your love grow more and more.

2.8 Love in action←⤒🔗

The fruit of the Spirit is “love in action.” Look at the life of Jesus Christ: how he loved people by doing good to them, by teaching them, and by giving his life for them. In the same way, your love must be visible in deeds. It does not help to only say to people, “I love you.” Your actions must show that you love them.

That is why love can be so difficult. It is difficult to show love to a person when that person does not love you back. It is difficult to make time for people who are different from you. Only the Holy Spirit can give us this type of love: a “love in action” that never stops!