Joy is a deep inner stability from the Lord, gained in his presence.
My wife Michelle told me the story of a conversation she had the other day with one of the women she works with. The woman has resettled here in Lancaster, along with her husband and two kids. They fled the African country of Eritrea, spending years in a refugee camp. This woman is known to the other employees as a steady joyful woman. This week as she and Michelle were talking, she shared a bit about the years her husband was forced to be a soldier, which led them to flee Eritrea. She talked about how some of her family is still in Eritrea and some family is in refugee camps waiting to be resettled. She shared about the heartache that brings.
She ended the conversation with Michelle by saying, “And so I pray each day. God is caring for me and I pray for their care. I wish for my entire family to be with me here, but I am grateful. We are here and so my children are safe. I so I feel two things: a strong hope for the rest of my family to be here with me, and gratefulness that we can be here.”
That’s what joy is sometimes. Both the longing and the struggle are present with the joy and contentedness. But it takes intentional connection to the Spirit, it takes effort to cultivate that kind of contented joy. The work is worth it. God says it is important, and it is for our good.
Something very practical we can do is spend time in God’s presence. It might be just learning to rest in his presence, which can be frustrating, especially because of the fast-paced society we live in, or if you yourself are a person who loves to be on the go.
I recently listened to a podcast in which a person remarked that in our contemporary world, so often when we wake up each day, the first thing we do is open our devices or turn on the TV. Instead, he recommended that we should start the day with quietness, in the presence of God. That takes practice, working on being aware of the truth of God’s love for you, that you carry his Spirit with you.
We could start each day by thanking God. Write down five things you are thankful for in a journal. Thankfulness, which is the practice of counting your blessings, is a very helpful way to grow joy in your life. Even if it is just that you are thankful for coffee, for the new day, for breath.
Joy as inner strength during trials is not to be confused with a bubbly or outgoing personality. Not everyone has such a charismatic personality, but they can feel joy deep within them. Also, not everyone who is bubbly and charismatic is feeling joy. Extroverts most often seem joyful. Introverts not so much. But we’re not talking about personality.
Instead we’re talking about a unique source of joy.
Paul writes in Romans 15:13, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
This deep inner joy is from the Lord, found in knowing Christ.
In Psalm 16:11, David writes that we can be “Filled with joy in God’s presence.”
Christians have been persecuted for their relationship with Christ for centuries all over the world. And yet they can be filled with joy. Paul writes in Romans 12:12, “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”
Joy is not easy. Joy can require work. Joy is a willful choice to follow the way of Jesus when what we want to do is lash out in angry hurtful ways. Joy is rooted, however, in the knowledge that God is our rock, that we can always depend on him, so that even when we are hurting and fearful and the future is unknown and perhaps not looking good, we our hope is found in God.
When life is awful, the joy of the Lord is our strength. When the future seems grim, we can be joyful in hope, knowing that God can overcome anything. That doesn’t mean he will make everything work out like we want or think it should work out. Often circumstances do not turn out as we hope they will. Sometimes we screw up and face difficult consequences of our own doing. Sometimes others hurt us. But we can have joy in the middle of all of it.
Many Christians might wonder, “But what if I don’t feel joy? Does that mean the Spirit hasn’t given this gift to me?” Remember that being led by the Spirit requires action. It is not a series of characteristics that he magically gives to us.
While the Spirit does work in, we also cultivate joy, we grow it, as we walk in step with him. The qualities in the list of Fruit of the Spirit are not emotions, not feelings, but a total package describing people who are walking in step with the Spirit.
In the New Testament book of Acts, which tells the story of the earliest Christians, we hear about how they experienced many difficulties. For example, in Acts chapter 16, we read that the missionaries Paul and Silas are imprisoned, and yet they are singing hymns! They are choosing to express joy despite their circumstances. Do you see the very practical application? You can choose to do things, to think things that will move you in line with the way of Jesus, even when you are hurting.
Consider how Jesus himself showed us how to choose joy. When he was being nailed to the cross, what did he do? Scream, “I hate you! I curse you!” No. He prayed for the people that were killing him, saying, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” That’s the kind of thing that you do when you have joy deep down inside, flowing from you.
How is it possible to grow what can seem like inexplicable joy?
There is a fascinating story in the Old Testament book of Nehemiah that might help us answer this question. The events of Nehemiah chapter 8 occur about 150 years after Jerusalem was destroyed and the people were exiled to Babylon, the events we learned about during our recent study through the book of Ezekiel.
Nehemiah is a Jew in Persia, as the Medes and Persians eventually defeated the Babylonians. Nehemiah made it up the ranks in service to the King of Persia, and thus Nehemiah received permission from the king to take a delegation back to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls around the city. Before that time, Ezra had led the work of rebuilding the temple. There was a celebration, which we read about in Nehemiah 8. After 150 years of pain, the people are finally seeing a bit of restoration of their beloved city. What happens? As Ezra reads the Old Testament Law to the people, they starting weeping! This is what we read:
“Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them all, ‘This day is sacred to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.’ For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law. Nehemiah said, ‘Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.’ The Levites calmed all the people, saying, ‘Be still, for this is a sacred day. Do not grieve.’ Then all the people went away to eat and drink, to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy, because they now understood the words that had been made known to them.”
The people were weeping because it had been so, so long since their ancestors were living in Jerusalem, since the words of the Law had been read in the temple. But Nehemiah says, don’t weep and grieve, now is the time for rejoicing, because the joy of the of the Lord is your strength. Do you see how deep inner joy is like a strength that God gives us as we choose to walk in step with the Spirit?
When the writers of the New Testament wrote about joy, such as in Galatians 5:22-23, when Paul wrote about the Fruit of the Spirit, he used the Greek word kara. That’s right, the women’s name Kara is the Greek word for joy. The people who study words tell us this that the word kara means “to enjoy a state of happiness and well-being.”[1]
Is that definition describing an emotion? I’m not sure. The definition doesn’t specify.
What was Paul talking about in Galatians 5 when he said that we should be growing joy in our lives? If we are to walk in step with the Spirit, it means becoming a person that is increasingly joyful. That much we know. When we are walking in the Spirit, we will be growing joy in our lives. The Spirit brings joy. Not less joy. More joy. To grow joy is to produce more of it.
Keep in mind that these qualities of love, joy, and the others in the Fruit of the Spirit, are OF the Spirit. On our own we will not have these qualities, like joy, as a regular consistent part of our lives. Also keep in mind what the metaphor fruit suggests. Fruit grows through the work of planting, watering, fertilizing, pruning. It takes effort. Likewise, growing joy in our life takes the work of staying in step with the Spirit. Spending time with the Spirit, he will grow joy in our lives.
So that is the first aspect of understanding joy. We grow it by choosing to walk in step with the Spirit.
The second aspect of understanding joy is a related question, “What is happiness?” Or put another way, “Is there any difference between joy and happiness?”
I’ve heard some people try to make a case for the difference between the two. Sometimes I think they are just two ways of describing the same thing, the emotion of gladness. Other times I think it is helpful to define who joy and happiness are different.
I would suggest to you that joy is best understood as a deep inner calm and fulfillment. This joy, this deep stability is also sustained, it endures.
Happiness, however, is a surface feeling, an emotion based on one’s current situation. Happiness is temporal, meaning that it does not endure.
Some people who make this argument about the difference between joy and happiness suggest that you can have joy deep down inside at the same time that you are feeling unhappy.
I think a woman from our church, and how her battle with cancer. This woman and her husband Lamar are long-time members of our church, and for years they have been serving as missionaries in Africa. About five years ago they were home for a few months on home assignment, and during a health check-up they learned the shocking news that our friend had cancer. She was not happy about getting cancer. It was very difficult for her, for her husband, for their family. They had to delay their return to Africa so she could start chemo and have surgery. None of this made them happy. But those of us who walked with them through her many months of treatment remember what she said about her situation from day 1:
“I choose joy.”
Her joy was a choice to trust in God, to have faith in him, no matter the outcome of her treatment, and spread the word that it is possible, and in fact it is best to have that kind of stability in God in the middle of hardships. Janice’s joy was real. Praise God, Janice is cancer free, and they have been back in Kenya for a number of years.
What was so wonderful about her joy was that it was real in her life, before, during and after the cancer. Of course we were all elated when she was healed, but that is not the point. Her joy was real even in the middle of her pain and in the middle of the difficulty of her treatment, when the outcome was not sure. Her joy was not dependent on the outcome. That is important because not everyone experiences the outcome they desire, but they can still have joy, even in the pain.
When the brother of Jesus, James, wrote in James 1, “Consider it joy when you face trials of many kinds,” that’s what we are talking about. Joy in the pain. But I have to admit, I think to myself, “Really? How is this possible?”
It is okay to not feel happy about the trial. It is okay to not feel good about the trial. When we are not emotionally excited about trials, we are just being normal humans. But deep within, joy is the knowledge that the painful trial can bring us growth. That God will keep his promises to us, and so we pray that he will redeem the bad situation.
There is no doubt that it can be a battle inside us, to feel joy when we are not feeling happy. That’s why we need a consistent intentional connection with the Spirit to grow joy in our lives. Having joy in the middle of pain and loss is not natural.
It is very similar to the difference between “love and like” that we talked about last week here. Joy is a choice to be thankful despite the circumstances, despite the feelings. We are joyful when we turn our thoughts and attitudes towards the truth of who God is as we walk through the trial.
[1] Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 302.
I once read the following quote: “There are lots of reasons people cite for their loss of interest in faith, but one of the main reasons I have often heard stems from the perception that God’s people are boring, sad, anxious, narrow. One person said: ‘I just think that life should be joyful; and many Christians I know aren’t.’ Another person said, ‘I’ve been living my Christian life for two decades now, but one of the things I’m struggling with is that I don’t have much real joy. Can we talk about that?'”
Does that resonate with you? I remember my grandmother telling me, in her 90s and on her deathbed in hospice, that she was afraid she was not truly a Christian because she struggled so much with a grumpy, bitter spirit. We pitied my grandfather for the tongue-lashings he received. My grandmother was a woman who walked closely with Jesus for years, but as she grew older, she struggled with joy. How about you? Do you struggle with joy?
This week on the blog as we continue our series about the Fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5:22, we’re talking about joy. In the Bible there are some very intense statements about joy.
For example, the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk writes, “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.” (Hab. 3:17-18)
Jesus’ disciple Peter writes, “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.”
Peter wasn’t some glutton for punishment. He got this teaching from Jesus. In Matthew 5:11-12, Jesus himself taught, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
Clearly there is a Christian understanding of joy which says that joy is possible and important even when you are going through bad times. In fact, in Philippians 4, Paul writes “Rejoice in the Lord ALWAYS, and I say again, rejoice.”
If we are honest, though, we sometimes feel the opposite. Always rejoice? It can sound impossible. Is this just one of those Christian teachings that looks good on paper, but when we try to apply it to our real lives, we repeatedly fail, or we think we have no idea how to do it, so we conclude that it is a goal to shoot for, but not one that Jesus ever really expected us to achieve in this lifetime? We can think that the only place time we’ll have unceasing joy is in heaven. In Revelation 21:4 we read a description of heaven that says this, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
But that’s heaven. That’s clearly not now. Now the world is filled with many difficulties, some of which we wonder how we can possibly rejoice in the Lord always. You might remember a few weeks ago on the blog, Clint Watkins taught us about lament. (See the first post in Clint’s series here.) What do we do with lament, which is clearly not an expression of joy? Lament is a holy complaint to God, a crying out of our pain and hurt and loss. Lament is the expression of that pain and hurt. Isn’t lament the opposite of joy? Furthermore, the inclusion of so many psalms of lament in the Bible teaches us that it is right and good to express our pain. But is the practice of lament disobeying the teaching to rejoice always?
What do we do when we don’t feel joy? Maybe we should just say, “Lord, I’m confused here. You say it is okay to lament and feel all the hurt and even express it to you. But you also say that we should rejoice all the time, even in bad things we go through.” I suspect many of us might find that dissatisfying. Is God being contradictory? It kinda seems like it, doesn’t it?
Remember what we know of God. He is not a contradictory God. He is loving, good and wants us to experience the flourishing abundant life. So if he is telling us that both lament and joy can coexist, it is possible, and it is for our good.
With that in mind, let’s see what we can learn about joy, the second Fruit of the Spirit. On the blog we are studying the list of qualities in Galatians 5:22-23 called the Fruit of the Spirit. In Galatians 5, we learned that we Christians are people who are to crucify the acts of the sinful nature and walk in step with the Spirit. Christians are people who take action to grow the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. Last week we looked at what it means to grow love in our lives. (See the first post in the love series here.) This week, we are studying the second quality in the list, joy.
What is joy? In the next post we’ll try to define it.
At Christmas we sing “Joy to the world, the Lord has come!” The words of that Christmas carol reflect what the angel declared to the surprised shepherds keeping watching over their flocks at night just outside the town of Bethlehem, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.” The shepherds rushed into town and found the baby, just as the angel said. After spending some time with Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus, we read that the shepherds, “spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child…glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen.” (Luke 2:8-20)
Then at Easter we rejoice likewise, declaring joyfully that Jesus won the victory over death, sin and the devil. In so doing, we are like the women who were the first to discover the empty tomb, “afraid, yet filled with joy.” (Matthew 28:8) We are also like Jesus disciples who “were overjoyed when they saw” him risen. (John 20:20)
But come to think of it, of course we are joyful on Christmas and Easter. Those are two holidays marking momentous events, giving us loads of reason to be joyful. And to a lesser degree, so is Palm Sunday when “the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices,” as is Ascension Sunday when the disciples “returned to Jerusalem with great joy” after seeing Jesus ascend to heaven (Luke 24:52-53). But for most of the year, can it be said that our level of joy is lower than on those special days?
How is your level of joy, generally-speaking? Do people think of you as a joyful person? No doubt, the world we live in has its fair share of troubles, and that might have you feeling less than joyful these days. Or at least less joyful than normal. Whether it is the war in Ukraine, the Covid pandemic, the abortion debate, racial injustice, or many of the other headlines in the news, it is normal human nature to get sucked into negativity. That’s not to mention the very real difficulties you might be facing in your own lives. Broken relationships, financial instability, health concerns, you name it. What is the source of pain and loss in your life? Has life affected your joy?
When Clint Watkins was our guest blogger recently, his posts (starting here) resonated with many people because of how many are dealing with tough times. But what about joy? Is it not true that we Christians are supposed to be joyful? Actually, is it not true that we are called to be very joyful? Join us on the blog this coming week, and we’ll talk about joy further, continuing our series on the Fruit of the Spirit.
In addition to the word agape, the Greeks had another word for love, phileo, which is defined as “brotherly love.” For example in Romans 12:10, Paul uses phileo when he writes, “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.”
What does brotherly love look like? Brotherly love is sacrificial, the willingness to lay one’s life down for their friend, as Jesus so clearly demonstrates for us.
But many people feel they can’t love like that. Or perhaps people read the active description of agape love in 1 Corinthians 13 and think, “Whew…that is some crazy love. That’s deep, that’s hard, and I don’t know I can do that.”
Maybe that’s because we forget how much God loves us, maybe we don’t understand how to love ourselves. God loves you.
Do you know how valued and special you are? You are loved!
And that brings me to the classic story of The Beauty and the Beast.
In a blog post here the author makes a helpful connection between the Gospel, the good news of Jesus, and the story of the Beauty and the Beast. The author writes,
“The wonder of the gospel is not the love of the beautiful; it’s when Beauty kisses the Beast. The Beast isn’t loved because he has changed; the Beast is changed when he is loved. Joy doesn’t come when he’s loved for his beauty; joy overwhelms him when he is loved in his hideousness. If the Beast were loved for his beauty, it would be an unbearable burden. Any day he might be scarred, and soon he will certainly be a wrinkled old man.”
What can it look like for you and I to live with that kind of love flowing from our lives? Allow yourself to bask in the truth that God loves you even in your beastliness. In Romans 5:8, Paul makes this point clearly when he writes, “God demonstrates his love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
The author of the article continues, “God’s love isn’t vague sentimentality, but it cost him his most precious treasure to turn us into his prized possession; the story line of the Bible is God’s Search and Rescue mission to find the dying Beast and kiss him into joyous life.”
The author suggests that numerous famous stories in the Bible include God’s heart for the “beast”:
How Abraham was an idol worshiper and God loved him and pursued him;
How Joseph was a narcissistic boy and God loved him and pursued him;
How David was a murdering adulterer and God loved him and pursued him;
Paul was a persecutor of Christians and God love him and pursued him.
God reaches out in love to all, no matter how beastly we are. In turn, he calls us to allow his living-giving love to grow in our lives, and flow out of our lives to those who are difficult to love.
Who do you look at as beastly in your life? Who is difficult? Who has hurt you? Who is awkward? Who is your enemy? Who do you hate?
God wants his kind of love to be growing in you toward even those people. Walk in step with the Spirit, who can help us grow God’s love in our lives. Treat people how the Spirit would treat them. Notice what Paul writes about this in Ephesians 5:1-2, “Be imitators of God, as dearly loved children, and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us!”
Love requires sacrifice. Love requires awareness. Love requires intention. But as we rest in and learn to understand how beloved we are, and then as we interact with others in that spirit of the beloved, we will be walking in the Spirit more and more. Again, walking in the Spirit is not a promise of ease. It can actually be hard work to love, even those who are mostly easy to love. It can be exponentially more difficult to love those who we find difficult. But we have the promise of knowing more and more of God’s presence, of his empowerment to love even the unlovely.
How can you grow more love this week? Who will you ask to pray for you? Who will you ask to check up on you, to hold you accountable, perhaps, in taking action steps to love, especially to love those who you find unlovely? Who you can encourage when you see love flowing out of their lives as they walk in the Spirit?
Let’s conclude with Paul’s amazing prayer in Ephesians chapter 3. Notice God’s work, Father, Son and Spirit, to encourage the growth of his love in us.
“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
This week we’ve been learning about the first quality in the Galatians 5 list called “The Fruit of the Spirit.” That first quality is love. But there is a roadblock to love, and the roadblock can be deep within us.
There is a story in the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus said that the two greatest commands in the Bible are “Love God” and “Love others…as yourself”, think about that second one.
How can you love others if you don’t love yourself?
What is a healthy love of self? In asking that question it could seem like we’re entering dangerous territory. What I mean is that we don’t want to become self-important, self-righteous, egotistical. Where’s the balance?
We are not to have self-hatred. Have you ever had thoughts like this: “I’m worthless, I don’t deserve anything, I hate myself.”?
Jesus said, “Love your neighbor, as yourself” so there is a sense in which it is okay to love yourself. But why should we love ourselves? God loves us. If he love us, we can follow suit and have a healthy love of self.
Further, being made in the image of God, we see he has created us, given us importance, dignity. We can love ourselves because God loves us. So remember who you are to him and in him.
Lastly, the Scripture tells us we are the temple of Holy Spirit, which means God lives in us, which shows how he feels about us. If God the Spirit lives in us, then he loves us, and we can have a healthy attitude about ourselves as well.
So what does a healthy love of self look like? It means that your value is found in who you are in Christ. Your identity is not found in a vocation, in how much money you have, in what other people think of you. Instead it is being thankful for life, for the good the bad the ugly in our lives, being secure in God’s love for us, no matter what life brings our way. In 2 Peter 1, Peter writes that God has given us everything we need for life and godliness. That means we can be secure in who God created us to be, in his love for us, so that when life gets difficult or people mistreat us, we can always go back to the bedrock knowledge that God loves us.
This doesn’t mean that life won’t hurt sometimes. God’s love for us doesn’t mean that we will always experience a pleasant feeling or the ease of life. But we can know, no matter what we are going through, that God loves us.
As a result of God’s love for us, we express healthy love of ourselves by taking care of ourselves physically and emotionally. Healthy eating, exercise, sleep. Since our bodies are the temple of God, this is important for us and for him.
Practice the principle of Sabbath rest. It is right and good for us to make regular time for rest, recharging, worship, family, relaxation, celebration, to be grateful to God for his blessings. In that sense, practicing sabbath is not a 24 hour period each week, but a principle we can apply in our own way, and we can see it as a gift from God to us.
God wants us to know that we can be filled with his love, so that we have a healthy sense of love for ourselves, and then we can share his love with others.
How, then, are you growing God’s love in your life love?
In addition to the word agape, the Greeks had another word for love, and we find out about that in the next post.
In the previous post, I mentioned that, Paul, the guy who wrote about the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23, used the Greek word, agape, when he was referring to love. What is unique about agape love?
Paul describes it much more in-depth in 1 Corinthians 13, which is often called “The Bible’s Love Chapter.” I’m going to quote 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 below, and my guess is that you’ll find it quite familiar. It is often used in wedding ceremonies.
What’s so interesting is that the context of 1 Corinthians 13 is not marriage or romantic relationships. That context is made very clear when you examine the chapters of 1 Corinthians before and after chapter 13. I read from 1 Corinthians 11 almost every month before we observe the Christian ritual of communion. Chapter 11 is about worship, and in it Paul includes comments about how to participate in communion. Why? Because the Christians living in the Roman city of Corinth were disunified in the practice of worship. Then in chapter 12 Paul discusses relationships in the church community, famously using the metaphor of the body, explaining how each person has spiritual gifts and that they should be used for unity. Jump ahead to chapter 14 and we see an interesting parallel to chapter 12. Once again he talks about the gifts and about worship, and his point is to urge unity.
Are you starting to see the singular theme in the larger context of 1 Corinthians 11-14? Do you think Paul randomly placed a chapter about love sandwiched in the middle of a big discussion on unity? Random? “I think I’ll just take the love chapter and plunk it down here!”
Nope.
God gives us gifts to use so that we might have unity with others. There is no place for selfishness, even in the gifts given to us. God’s heart is to show love and care for others through us whom he loves. With that context in mind, we see God’s heart in chapter 13. Love is essential to the unity of the church. Love fuels unity. Love sustains unity. Love should be our passion in the church.
Now we’re ready to read Paul’s description of agape love. Look at how active the description of love is.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
What Paul makes clear is that agape love is not a feeling, but an intentionally selfless choice to treat the other person with dignity, care, kindness, and goodness. As Paul describes it here in 1 Corinthians 13, love is a radically different way to approach relationships that what we normally hear about in our culture. Love is not the flowery emotions of desire, it is the hard work of goodness.
Jesus, on his last night with his disciples before he was taken from them, shared a final meal with them. We call it the Last Supper, and during that meal, John tells us that Jesus gave his disciples some final instructions. One was this, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples that you love one another.”
Jesus talked quite a lot about how he wants us to be his disciples, what that should like, and how we should help other people be disciples. At that last supper he was basically saying, “Here’s a little test that you can use on yourselves and on the people you’re trying to help become disciples: Are you loving one another? You disciples should be known for your love for one another. Is love for one another evident? Is it missing? Is it strong or is it weak?”
I’m not trying to be accusatory or judgmental when I say this, but some of us have a hard time with love. I can say this because I say it about myself as well. Pastors are generally considered to be people who ought to be loving. Especially in a church Faith Church’s size and smaller. But I know I’m far from perfect. I know that some people are harder to love than others. I get it…love doesn’t come easy for everyone.
Check back tomorrow, as we’ll keep talking about how to grow love in our lives.
Our culture has many ideas about love. Here’s a great medley of some famous love songs. How do these songs describe love?
So many love songs. What is your favorite?
How does our culture describe the word “Love”?
I LOVE Pizza! Really?
What does someone mean when they say they love pizza? What they are doing is sharing their opinion. They actually mean they LIKE pizza. If they have too much pizza too fast, their opinion might change. But that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with getting sick of pizza.
My mom’s sister-in-law’s family owns a local fruit company, and I worked there as a part-time job in high school. It was pretty amazing watching all those shiny apples come down the line. They look so good, and we were allowed to eat them. I love apples, and they were amazing. But after a few weeks or months of picking apples nonstop off the line, packing apples, boxing bags of apples and cleaning the conveyor machines. Guess what happened? Yeah, I got sick of apples. I never really loved apples after all. I liked them, and my opinion changed.
So when our culture refers to love, it actually often really means “like.” Imagine how love songs would change, if we swapped the word “like” when the song originally uses the word “love”?
So what is love?
Love mentioned here in the fruit of the Spirit passage (Galatians 5:22-23) is the word agape. Maybe the best way we can distinguish agape from our culture’s description of love is to think for a minute about the time Jesus used the word agape when he said “Love your enemies.” Was he talking about a feeling? An opinion? About liking them?
Do you feel good about your enemies? Do you like them? No! No one does. That’s why they’re our enemies. But when we live in line with the way of Jesus, though we have deep struggles with our enemies, we are to love them.
We agape our enemies. What is this word agape? 1 Corinthians 13 describes it best. In the next post, we’ll learn what how agape helps understand love.
Engaging Scripture 