We became children of God by faith. The Holy Spirit worked on our hearts through the Word of God. Now as His children--as branches grafted into the Vine--we begin to produce such a Spirit-fruit as love. “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
This love that shows in our lives, in what we do and say, is the very love God showered upon us. His love is one which sees us exactly as we are by nature--filthy, lost, and condemned sinners. There is nothing blind about this love of God for all mankind. He sees absolutely everything about each one of us! But then, instead of turning away in revulsion, our loving God went forward with His plan to remedy our condition. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son . . .” (John 3:16). “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). That is God’s unconditioned, sacrificial love toward us--and that is the kind of love which Paul says is a Spirit-fruit in our lives.
Remember all those people around us and all the ways that we have of interacting with them? Bearing the Spirit-fruit of love in our lives means turning a blind eye toward absolutely everything surface-deep about them-- age, gender, race, height, friend, enemy, and so forth; and instead, seeing them simply as people that God has loved--people who need to see and hear of that love of God in His Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. And why not from you or from me? As branches on the Vine that is Jesus, God help each of us to produce abundantly the Spirit-fruit of love!
-- From the Lutheran Spokesman |
