Love: Overcoming My Ego Series

Last Sunday, we began a series devoted to bringing the change into our lives that we’ve always longed for. It’s a series devoted to explaining, promoting, and advocating living life with the fruit of the Spirit. Ask the person sitting next to you if they know the fruit of the Spirit. If not, here they are: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:22-23).

Today, I want to speak on how you can become more loving. We will look at each of the fruit of the Spirit in turn over the course of the summer. I want to offer you hope that you can become a more loving person and that life can be more fulfilling.

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

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. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:1-13).

Certainly, this is among the most beautiful passages in all of the Bible. It is difficult to overstate the importance of love or our need for love. Love is the third most frequently searched-for word in the dictionary. And Christianity, in particular, offers a unique angle of love, an exclusive angle that had we not possess Jesus’ words on love, we would be utterly hopeless. It’s Jesus who tells us that all the commands of the Bible can be reduced to loving God and loving others: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40). And it’s Jesus who tells us to love our enemies: “But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…” (Mathew 5:44).

The Power of Love

In preparation for this message, I read an interesting article called, The Power of Love, written by Ellen McGrath, and in the opening two paragraphs in this article, she has this to say:

Love is as critical for your mind and body as oxygen. It is not negotiable. The more connected you are the healthier you will be, both physically and emotionally. The less connected you are the more you are at risk. It is also true that the less love you have the more depression you are likely to experience in your life. Love is probably the best antidepressant there is, because one of the most common sources of depression is feeling unloved. Most depressed people do not love themselves, and they do not feel loved by others. They also are very self focused making them less attractive to others and depriving them of opportunities to learn the skills of love.

McGrath highlights the importance of love by telling us that love is like oxygen.

Three Misconceptions to Satisfying Love

I want to offer three obstacles that I need to clear out of the way for you to hear God’s Word on love. Giving and receiving love is challenging for us because we cannot hear the Bible’s message on real love. Think of these as removing snow from your driveway so you back out of your garage on a snowy day.

1. Romantic Love is Everything

Our American culture has idolized romantic love. This myth says, “Romantic Love is Everything.” From the earliest of ages, our little girls and boys are taught that sexual and romantic love is what you are really looking for. We tell them, “If you find this kind of love, everything else is life will be fine.” We try to build our marriages and relationships on purely sexual love or romantic love, but no relationship can be supported by sexual/romantic love alone. If you build your life on erotic/romantic love alone, all you really have is a one-dimensional model of love. In the end, you’ll find this unsatisfying. Now, surely God created sex and wants us to enjoy in its proper boundaries. The Bible points to a higher and more satisfying love than sexual love or romantic love.