Free to Love | Sermon | The Grove Church, Port St. Lucie

Why We Must Be Loved Before We Can Love

Big Idea: Love is not natural to the self-reliant heart and cannot be produced by effort or law; it is the life of Christ, who loved you first, animated in you by the Holy Spirit as you depend on Him.

Summary

Galatians 5:16–25 sets the works of the flesh against the fruit of the Spirit, and the first fruit Paul names is love. Preaching at The Grove Church in Port St. Lucie, Florida, David Hancock opens a walk through the fruit of the Spirit by arguing that love, defined by the cross as giving yourself away for another’s good, is not natural to us; the flesh can only consume or wear a counterfeit of love for its own sake, and the law can fence the flesh in but cannot make anyone love. The only way to love is to be loved first and then to depend on the Spirit to animate the love of Christ in you. Christ loved us before we loved Him, died in our place, rose by the Spirit, and gives that same Spirit to everyone who trusts Him.

Key Takeaways

Love in the Bible is measured by the cross: Christ loved and gave Himself, so love is giving yourself away for someone else’s good, not merely giving.
The flesh cannot be trained toward love; it consumes, or it mimics love to protect and promote the self, and self-reliant effort only feeds it.
The Holy Spirit, whose name means breath, animates the life of Christ in the believer so that Christ’s own love grows in him as fruit rather than as works.
Christ loved us first, took our guilt in the courtroom, died in our place, and rose, and the Christian now lives by depending on His Spirit rather than on the self.

Read Galatians 5:16–25 (ESV)

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

Talk about it

1. The sermon opened with a simple line: to love, we must first be loved. Think of the person who has loved you best. What did that love free you to do that you could not do before it?

Love Defined: What Is Love According to the Bible?

Love did not begin with us. God is love, and before there was a world the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit loved one another in a perfect, selfless, never-ending exchange. Humanity was made in that image, made to love and be loved, and that is the love every person craves; it is the only love that will heal us and make us whole. So what is love? Paul defines it by pointing to the cross: Christ loved us and gave Himself for us. Love is giving yourself away for someone else’s good. Love is the self-giving posture of the heart underneath the act. Its opposite, which Paul calls the flesh, does not give but consumes; it bites and devours, because it is starving for a love it has never received.

GALATIANS 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” This is Paul’s working definition of love in Galatians, and he repeats it in Ephesians 5:2 and 5:25: Christ loved and gave Himself. Love, in the Bible, is not a feeling that happens to a person but a self-giving act for another’s good, measured by the cross. That is why 1 Corinthians 13:3 can say that giving away everything without love gains nothing; the gift is not the love, the self-giving heart behind it is.

Talk about it

2. Paul says love is giving yourself away for another’s good, and that a person can give a great deal without loving at all. Where in your life are you giving time, money, or effort while quietly keeping yourself back? What would it cost to give the self behind the gift?

The Fence: Why Did God Give the Law?

If people naturally loved, no one would need to be told to. God gave the law because we do not. Paul says it was added because of transgressions, and every commandment works like a fence that keeps a person from consuming his neighbor. The fence is good; it shows what love does and does not do. But it exposes something uncomfortable. Love is not natural to us, because the flesh in us is opposed to it, and the flesh cannot be trained toward love. Worse, when a person tries to keep the law by his own strength, he is using the flesh to restrain the flesh, and the monster only grows. The law can tell you what love requires. It cannot give you the power to do it, and neither can you.

KEY WORD: GUARDIAN In Galatians 3:24 Paul says the law was our guardian until Christ came. The Greek word is paidagogos, which in the Greco-Roman world named a trusted household slave placed in charge of a child: he walked the boy to school, taught him manners, and disciplined him when he strayed. A guardian was good and necessary, but he was never meant to be permanent. Paul’s point is that the law fences in a people who cannot yet love, until the Son comes of age and the Spirit of the Son moves in.

Talk about it

3. Paul says the law is a fence that shows what love does but cannot make anyone love, and that trying harder only feeds the flesh. Which relationship in your life are you managing by rules and restraint rather than love? What has your effort produced there over the past year?

Counterfeit Love: Can You Love Someone for Selfish Reasons?

The flesh can look loving; it simply cannot be loving, because the flesh loves only itself. So it wears love as a disguise, to protect, promote, or indulge the self. A person treats a coworker well to win the promotion. Look at Paul’s list of the works of the flesh and every one of them is love bent back toward the self. This is the prison: a person wants to love, but lacks the patience, kindness, and self-control that love requires, and every attempt to break out by his own strength tightens the bars. Corrie ten Boom found the bars unbreakable the day a former camp guard asked her to forgive him.

THE SERMON’S ILLUSTRATION Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch Christian imprisoned by the Nazis for hiding Jews; her sister Betsie died in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Years later, in her book The Hiding Place, she describes finishing a talk on forgiveness in a German church when a man came forward with his hand out. She recognized him as one of the S.S. guards from Ravensbrück. He had become a Christian and asked her to forgive him. She had preached forgiveness minutes before, and found she could not lift her hand.

Talk about it

4. The sermon named counterfeit love: kindness worn for the sake of the self, to be liked, to get ahead, to feel good. Name one act of love this week that was really about you. Who do you need to forgive that you have been unable to forgive, and what has trying harder done for you?

Breath of Life: How Does the Holy Spirit Help You Love?

There is hope, and it is not a better version of you. By faith something holy has entered the Christian to fight this battle: the Holy Spirit. Paul’s instruction is to walk by the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit, a habitual, disciplined dependence on Him rather than on the self. What is the Spirit depended on to do? To animate the life of Christ in you, and specifically His love. God is not merely loving; He is love, and by faith the Spirit of the Son makes His home in the believer, so love is already in you. Paul calls what grows out of that fruit, not works: as a branch draws life from the root, the Spirit draws the love of Christ up into your words and deeds. This leaves only two options, self-dependence or Spirit-dependence. The flesh resists the second because it means surrender, but surrender to the Spirit is freedom. The fence opens, because a person in whom love is growing no longer needs to be fenced from his neighbor.

KEY WORD: PNEUMA Pneuma, the Greek word translated Spirit throughout Galatians 5, also means breath or wind. To animate something is, at root, to breathe life into it. When Paul says to walk by the Spirit, the picture is of the Holy Spirit breathing the life of the risen Christ into a person so that Christ’s own love begins to move in him. Breath does not take steps for you; it gives you the life to take them.

LOVE AND DO AS YOU PLEASE Augustine of Hippo, the fourth-century bishop, wrote: “Love and do as you please; let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good.” He was not licensing anyone to live however he likes. His point is that when the love of Christ rules a person’s heart, his desires begin to come from love, so following them produces good. Paul says the same when he writes that against the fruit of the Spirit there is no law.

Talk about it

5. Paul says the only two options are depending on yourself or depending on the Spirit, and the sermon gave a prayer for the second: God, I cannot; give me what You are asking of me. Where are you still trying to produce love on your own? What would it look like to pray that prayer there this week?

The Heart of It: How Did Christ Love Us First?

God takes love so seriously that the law demands the death of everyone who fails to love, and every one of us has failed. But the moment Adam and Eve bit the forbidden fruit, God promised that a Savior would come through the fruit of Eve’s womb. So God Himself came, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law. Love came, and we arrested love, spat on love, whipped love, mocked love with a crown of thorns, and crucified love. We bit, devoured, and consumed love. Picture the courtroom: the guilty stand ashamed, and before the gavel falls the Son of God breaks through the doors and claims the guilt as His own, and His perfect record is handed to you. You go free and He dies in your place. But God’s love is stronger than death; the Spirit raised Him, and the risen Christ now gives that same Spirit to everyone who trusts Him. Behind you is a love that died and rose for you; within you is the power that raised Him; ahead of you is the picture of perfect love you are becoming.

1 JOHN 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.” This is the order of the Christian life and it cannot be reversed. God did not wait for people to love Him before He loved them; Christ loved and gave Himself for those who had failed to love, so that His love could be placed in them and then expressed through them. The Christian does not love in order to be loved by God. He loves because he already is.

Talk about it

6. Christ loved you before you loved Him, and He has already given the love He asks of you. Who is the person you find hardest to love right now? What changes if you stop trying to find love for them in yourself and instead ask Christ for His?

Questions This Sermon Answers

What is love according to the Bible?

Love is giving yourself away for someone else’s good. Paul’s working definition in Galatians 2:20 is that Christ loved and gave Himself, and he repeats it in Ephesians 5:2 and 5:25. Love is not a feeling that happens to a person but a self-giving act for another’s good, measured by the cross. That is why 1 Corinthians 13:3 says giving everything without love gains nothing; the self-giving heart behind the gift is the love.

What does Galatians 5:16–25 say about love?

Galatians 5:16–25 names love as the first fruit of the Spirit and sets it against the works of the flesh, which are love bent back toward the self. Love does not come from trying harder or keeping the law; it grows as fruit in a person who walks by the Spirit, who animates the love of Christ in him.

Why did God give the law if it cannot make people love?

Because people do not naturally love. Galatians 3:19 says the law was added because of transgressions; every commandment works like a fence that keeps a person from consuming his neighbor. The fence is good and shows what love does and does not do, but it exposes the flesh rather than curing it. The law tells you what love requires; it cannot give you the power.

What does guardian mean in Galatians 3:24?

In Galatians 3:24 Paul says the law was our guardian until Christ came. The Greek word is paidagogos, which in the Greco-Roman world named a trusted household slave placed in charge of a child: he walked the boy to school, taught him manners, and disciplined him when he strayed. A guardian was good and necessary, but never meant to be permanent. The law fences in a people who cannot yet love, until the Spirit of the Son moves in.

Can you love someone for selfish reasons?

Yes, and Paul calls it the flesh. The flesh can look loving but cannot be loving, because it loves only itself; it wears love as a disguise to protect, promote, or indulge the self, like treating a coworker well to win a promotion. Every work of the flesh in Galatians 5 is love bent back toward the self. Counterfeit love is love for the self’s sake.

What does the word Spirit mean in Galatians 5?

Pneuma, the Greek word translated Spirit throughout Galatians 5, also means breath or wind. To animate something is, at root, to breathe life into it. When Paul says to walk by the Spirit, the picture is of the Holy Spirit breathing the life of the risen Christ into a person so that Christ’s own love begins to move in him. Breath does not take steps for you; it gives you the life to take them.

What did Augustine mean by love and do as you please?

Augustine of Hippo, the fourth-century bishop, wrote: “Love and do as you please; let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good.” He was not licensing anyone to live however he likes. His point is that when the love of Christ rules a person’s heart, his desires begin to come from love, so following them produces good. Paul says the same when he writes that against the fruit of the Spirit there is no law.

What does 1 John 4:19 mean, we love because he first loved us?

It states the order of the Christian life, and it cannot be reversed. God did not wait for people to love Him before He loved them; Christ loved and gave Himself for those who had failed to love, so that His love could be placed in them and then expressed through them. The Christian does not love in order to be loved by God. He loves because he already is.

How did Corrie ten Boom forgive the Nazi guard?

She could not, so she asked Jesus for His forgiveness instead of her own. Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch Christian imprisoned for hiding Jews, was approached after a talk on forgiveness by a former S.S. guard from Ravensbrück, where her sister Betsie died. She could not lift her hand. She prayed for Christ to give her His forgiveness, took the guard’s hand, and love she did not have a moment before came.

Vision for the Christian Life

The Christian life this passage envisions is a royal son or daughter of God running free through a world that bites, a beacon of hope in every place you walk: your home, your neighborhood, your church, your workplace. Behind you stands a love that died and rose for you; within you is the power of the Spirit who raised Him; ahead of you is the risen Christ, the picture of perfect love you are becoming. You will not get there by trying harder. You will get there by saying, God, I cannot; give me what You are asking of me, and then looking to His love with faith, knowing He has already given it.

Discussion Questions for Small Groups: Galatians 5

The sermon opened with a simple line: to love, we must first be loved. Think of the person who has loved you best. What did that love free you to do that you could not do before it?
Paul says love is giving yourself away for another’s good, and that a person can give a great deal without loving at all. Where in your life are you giving time, money, or effort while quietly keeping yourself back? What would it cost to give the self behind the gift?
Paul says the law is a fence that shows what love does but cannot make anyone love, and that trying harder only feeds the flesh. Which relationship in your life are you managing by rules and restraint rather than love? What has your effort produced there over the past year?
The sermon named counterfeit love: kindness worn for the sake of the self, to be liked, to get ahead, to feel good. Name one act of love this week that was really about you. Who do you need to forgive that you have been unable to forgive, and what has trying harder done for you?
Paul says the only two options are depending on yourself or depending on the Spirit, and the sermon gave a prayer for the second: God, I cannot; give me what You are asking of me. Where are you still trying to produce love on your own? What would it look like to pray that prayer there this week?
Christ loved you before you loved Him, and He has already given the love He asks of you. Who is the person you find hardest to love right now? What changes if you stop trying to find love for them in yourself and instead ask Christ for His?

Related Messages in This Series

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Pastor David Hancock is the Lead Pastor of The Grove Church in Port St. Lucie, FL, a church where believers and skeptics wrestle honestly with faith and doubt.

Wrestling with a question this raised? You can text in your question on any Sunday and hear it answered after the sermon. Or come sit with people asking the same things. Plan Your Visit

Read the full sermon manuscript

To love, we must first be loved. You can’t give something you haven’t received. But which of us will love first? And where will that brave soul find a love so strong it can endure those who don’t yet know how to love? To build a world of love requires someone willing to teach and empower people to love before they know how. That means this love will be costly and courageous.

We are in our series called Christian freedom in Paul’s letter to the Galatian church, and today we begin to look at the fruit of the Spirit one by one. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Today we start with love. And my aim is that you would all become so plump with love that you can’t help but release it where and when it matters most.

“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:16–25, ESV)

God is love. Love has always been and always will be because God, who is love, is eternal. Love has always existed. The forever love between the Trinity. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who each selflessly love the others. It’s a perfect expression of perfect eternal, never-ending love.

Humanity is made in the image of God, meaning we are made in God’s likeness. Made to love and be loved, as it is perfectly expressed in the Trinity. That is the love we all crave. The very love of God. It will heal us, satisfy us, and make us whole.

What is love? Paul has given us a definition in this letter: the life of Christ. He says in Galatians 2:20 that Christ loved and gave himself for us. Paul repeats this in Eph. 5:2: “loved us and gave himself for us, and Eph. 5:25: “loved the church and gave himself for her.”

Love is giving yourself away for someone else’s good.

If you ask Paul what love is, he points to the cross.

But giving isn’t necessarily love. Paul says in 1 Cor. 13:13 “If I give away all I have..but have not love, I gain nothing.”

Love is not just giving but the giving of the self behind the act. It’s the posture of the heart.

Sacrifice isn’t love but the self-giving posture under the sacrifice.

Paul also gives us its opposite. The flesh that bites and devours one another (Galatians 5:15).

Love gives itself, but what Paul calls the flesh consumes. The flesh eats others. Why? It’s starving for love. It has not been loved, so it cannot love.

To prevent us from devouring and consuming one another God gave us a gift. The Law. The law is like a fence that keeps us from doing love’s opposite: biting and devouring.

The law was added because of transgressions. Every commandment is a fence that keeps you from consuming your neighbor.

Think of the law as a fence like this. Earlier in the letter, Paul talked about a royal child with a guardian. That guardian is what the Greco-Roman world understood as a trusted slave the family would put in charge to teach a child, inform, lead, and even discipline the child.

The law as a guardian is good, a helper, a guardrail or fence telling us what love does and doesn’t do.

But do we need a law? Don’t we just naturally love?

Paul’s answer shows love is not natural to us.

The reason the law is given is because of the flesh in us.

The flesh is opposed to love and the flesh is active in us.

Paul personifies the flesh as a kind of monster within each of us.

Last week I pointed to the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll was a well-loved, virtuous doctor, but found even in himself a shadowy monster hiding. He made a potion that would divide the two selves so the hidden version could go and indulge, letting out the biting and devouring, while Dr. Jekyll now looks even more virtuous, because Hyde is getting let out. But Hyde eventually takes over without the potion and consumes the virtuous doctor.

Paul is saying that there is a Hyde in all of us.

And the more we fight it, the more it grows.

He calls this flesh two things: self-reliance, and he paints the flesh as an internal, shadowy monster. Self-reliance is the flesh; the monster is the flesh. So to fight the monster within you with the self is to rely on the monster to kill the monster.

Which only activates the monster and makes the monster grow.

You can’t kill the monster with the monster.

To say it in another way. When we try to muster up love for others by our self-reliant efforts, that’s like trying to love with the monster in you.

The flesh can’t be trained toward love. Paul said the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit of love.

Paul says in Rom. 8:7 The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God.” In other words, the mind that is self-reliant becomes hostile to God because you are using the monster that is opposed to God.

There is something in all of us, even me, your beloved pastor, that is monstrous.

This is why the fence is so important. The law tries to keep the monster at bay.

And if you will let me be more offensive to us. I’m not saying the flesh can’t look like it’s loving others, but when you rely on the flesh or the self to love, the best it can do is wear a counterfeit love.

The flesh can only mimic love because the flesh loves only itself.

Why would the flesh mimic love? For itself.

The flesh mimics love to protect, glorify, or indulge in the self.

You know what I mean. You treat someone well so you can get the promotion. That’s not love, that’s doing something for the self not for the good of another.

It’s the flesh wearing love for the sake of the self, to grow the self and glorify the self.

I see this in myself as a pastor. A new person comes; we prepare our team to welcome new people well, to show we believe they are important because they are. But the temptation of the flesh is to wear love for our sake, so they return. That isn’t love, so even the church must know what we are tempted to mimic love for our sake.

I remember when we were praying about church planting, starting a church before the Grove was birthed, I would take a prayer walk outside our old house, and it would lead to a major road where you could see cars drive by. I found myself praying for these people. Don’t think me too godly. I found in myself a counterfeit love. I prayed for them so God would bring them to the church, so the church would grow, I wouldn’t fail, and I could feel good about myself. Even our prayers can be prayed by the monster in us for our own self-protection and glorification.

Look at some of the list of the works of the flesh: sexual immorality, idolatry, jealousy, rivalries; every one of these is love bent toward the self.

So God gave us the law as a fence for people like me and like you to keep the monster from getting loose.

Now the person of perfect love wouldn’t need a fence. Because perfect love fulfills the law, retires it’s need.

But we need it because we all have the flesh in us.

The law, though beautiful creates a new problem.

Even the law can make the monster grow. How? When we rely on ourselves to keep the law, we use the monster to try to keep the monster at bay.

The law imprisons us. It labels us guilty because we are unable to keep it.

The flesh is also a type of prison. We want to do good, we want to love, but we lack the patience for love, the self-control of someone who is led by love. the kindness of someone ruled by love. That is the monster in you preventing you from love. This feels like a prison of the self.

And when you rely on the flesh to get rid of the flesh it only grows.

That’s your prison.

Corrie Ten Boom, a Christian who was imprisoned by the Nazis for helping the jews. In her book Hiding Place, she just finished speaking in a church about forgiveness, and a man came up the aisle. She knew his face.

He was an S.S. guard from the concentration camp where her sister Betsie died.

He became a Christian. “Will you forgive me?” he said with his hand out.

What would you do? What would she do?

She had just preached forgiveness minutes before, but she couldn’t

Some of you might need to forgive in the parking lot today.

Some of you might need to forgive the person you sleep beside.

The fleshy monster in you is there, keeping you from doing what you ought to do.

The more self-reliant you are, the more the monster will grow until it grows into something where people start saying to you, I don’t even know who you are anymore. You might even say that about yourself, though I would imagine the monster in you wouldn’t let you say even that about yourself.

The law can teach you what to do, but can’t give you the power to do it, and neither can the flesh.

Is there any hope for us?

Paul teaches that by faith something holy has come into us to fight the battle for us. The Holy Spirit.

There is a battle raging within the Christian, between the flesh and the Spirit over whether you will love or devour.

Immediately we ask, what’s our role in this fight? Paul tells us: Walk by the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit. What does that mean? To walk and keep in step are present actions. To walk means to actively and habitually depend on the Spirit.

Keep in step is a military term that means to keep in rank, like a military walk. It’s about a life disciplined to rely not on the self, but on the Spirit.

What are we relying on the Spirit to do? Animate the life of Christ in us. Specifically today, His love.

Spirit comes from the word pneuma, which means breath. To animate also means to give breath to.

So, it’s like the Holy Spirit is giving you the breath of life and love, which animates the life of Christ’s love in you.

Paul calls the animating life of Christ in you: fruit. It’s not works at all. It’s something that is growing in you.

Let me explain. God is love. He isn’t just loving. And He is more than just the definition of love, He is love. He is love and the source of love.

By faith in Christ, the Spirit of the Son comes and makes His home in you. That means love is in you. But for the love to pour out of you, you need the Spirit to animate Christ’s love in you to be expressed as love in the way you talk and live.

Jesus says it like this: I am the vine and you are the branches; without me you can’t bear any fruit. Christ is like the root system, and in order for a branch to bear fruit it must draw the nutrients of the root system. The Holy Spirit draws the life of Christ from the root into you until it grows into the fruit of love that is expressed in your life.

What kind of love? Self-giving, courageous love. A love that died for us before we showed him love. We love because He first loved us.

You have been loved like you have always longed to be loved, by the God you failed to love. You couldn’t love like you were meant to, and He knew it, so He came and loved you in order to put the love in you and then express His love through you.

Let me expand on His love by giving you a picture of the love Paul has been telling us about throughout this letter.

We stand in the courtroom as guilty, fleshy monsters, ashamed we have bit, devoured, consumed others to feed the monster in us.

Before the gavel comes down, Christ, the Son of God, breaks open the courtroom doors and says I did it. I’m the monster. He didn’t. But he claims responsibility. And the judge says, aren’t you the one who has loved perfectly. I’m giving that record to him and to her.

You go free, and He dies in your place.

We step out of the courtroom free. But before us is a battlefield, and on the other side of the battlefield is the risen Christ, the version of perfect love we are aiming to become.

So we begin our walk to become like Him, but the temptations are strong.

How will we have the power to get through all of this?

You lower your head. This is beyond you.

Then you see beside you is the risen Christ. He touches your chest and the breath of His Spirit enters you.

The same power that raised Christ from the grave now lives in you.

Now, with strength you set out through the battle and before you go you look behind you and see the risen victorious Christ now stands behind. He is also in you, and before you.

As you grow through this life, you notice as you love, everywhere you walk: your home, neighborhood, church, and workplace; under your feet is the greenery of heaven, and the fruit of love is expressed through your words and deeds.

You are a new royal son or daughter of God running free, like a beacon of hope in a world that bites. Pressing onward toward becoming more and more like Christ.

This is the new you depending on the Spirit to animate the life of Christ’s love in you.

In this battle through life to love, you can either 1st rely on yourself, the law, the flesh, the monster to love, or rely on the Spirit to animate the life of Christ and His love in you toward others.

These are our only two options. Self-dependence or Spirit dependance.

What to do sounds obvious, and it is, but remember, there is something in you fighting against what is obvious.

The flesh in you doesn’t want to depend on the Spirit because that is surrender.

The flesh doesn’t want to lose control.

Surrendering to the Spirit sounds like slavery, but it’s freedom. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom.”

Why? Because you now have a power in you that opens the fence.

There is no law for things like the fruit of the Spirit.

The law was there to stop you from doing things that weren’t loving.

But now love is in you, so in a sense, when you depend on the Spirit, there is an instinct growing in you that isn’t to bite but to love. It’s becoming natural.

St. Augustine says, “Love and do as you please…let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good.”

This doesn’t mean live however you want. It means to live, however the love of Christ in you wants to live. Let Christ rule your heart, and then you can follow your instincts and do whatever you want, because what you want comes from love.

Now you no longer need the fence. Some people like the fence. It feels safer than freedom.

Surrender now means God can ask you for anything. When He says love, He is thinking of you loving like He loved you. There are no boundaries to His love. Meaning, it might require your very life.

But His love also won’t even let death have you.

Jesus says no greater love is there than this: that someone lay down his life for his friends.

Do that, and He will raise you from the grave.

Paul’s language throughout the letter is that you have become a royal son who has come of age, and you no longer need a guardian of the law. Instead, depend on the Spirit that pours life into you and love out of you, and the eternal life and love of God will be animated in you.

Corrie Ten Boom looked at her hand at her side. Her prayer in her heart “Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.” Not help me try harder, but I can’t; not I’ll try harder, but I can’t; give me yours.

She took his hand. She said, “a current seemed to pass from me to him.” And love for the man she did not have a moment before.

In reflecting on this, she said, “It is not on our forgiveness anymore than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”

The battle is before you and in you. The battle to love in a world that bites and devours.

The path isn’t self-reliance but dependance on the Spirit to animate the life of Christ in you.

But you must do something. Depend and act.

Breath doesn’t take steps for you. It gives you life so you can take a step.

What does it look like to depend and then act?

It’s to say, God, I can’t; give me what you are asking of me.

Who do you need to forgive? God, I can’t; give me what you are asking of me.

Struggling to be patience with your family: God, I can’t; give me what you are asking of me.

Feel it’s impossible to love your enemy? God, I can’t; give me what you are asking of me.

This is the battlefield. It is a battle to love.

God takes love seriously. It’s the core of what it means to be God and to be human.

It’s so serious that the law demands the death of those who fail to love.

"'Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law' (Gal. 3:10)."

But God made a promise long ago, as soon as Adam and Eve bit the rotten fruit in an attempt to redefine love.

But as soon as it happened, God promised that through the fruit of Eve's womb, a Savior would come to redeem us and what we have become.

So God Himself came into the world, born of woman, born under the law to redeem those under the law.

Love came, and we arrested love, spit on love, slapped love, whipped love, mocked love with a crown of thorns, crucified love to the cross, buried love in the grave. We bit, devoured, and consumed love.

But God’s love is stronger than death, and fiercer than the grave.

The Spirit raised Him from the dead.

And when He rose, He gave us the gift of His Spirit, the same power that raised Christ from the grave.

Christ came to teach us love, give us the power to love, and love us all the way to His death and through it to His resurrection.

Behind you is a love that died and rose for you; within you is the power of love that rose for you; ahead of you is the picture of perfect love.

Let’s live our lives in complete dependance saying, God, I can’t; give me what you are asking of me.

And then let’s look at His love with faith, knowing He has already given it.