Wow...well it's been a while since I last posted. Life is busy getting ready to graduate from high school and enroll in college. I guess I just have not had time, but I feel like I may not have had anything to say for a while. But I have something to say now.
I want to talk about the Fruit of the Spirit and more specifically love. Paul speaks of the Fruit of the Spirit in a section of scripture named "Life by the Spirit", which is Galatians 5:16-26. In verse 16, he says if you live by the Spirit, you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. If you are a Christian, this is what we should be aiming to do; we should be living by the Spirit so we bring glory to the name of God and do not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.
Paul says in verses 22-23, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law." Then in verse 26, "Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other." When I consider these verses, a couple things come to mind. Firstly, I want to become that way. As a Christian, that is obvious to me. I want to live the way God tells me to live. I want to live by the Spirit; therefore, I want to have the attributes (fruit) of the Spirit. The second thing that comes to me is that Paul could have said "But the fruit of the Spirit is love" and just stopped there. If we have love, we will have joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, and we will not become conceited, provoking and envying each other. It is as simple as that. We are not talking about any kind of love either. We are talking about "agape" love. This is the love that we associate with God. God has a love that is unconditional; nothing can be done to make Him love us less, and nothing can be done to make Him love us more. He loves us. As Christians we try to be like God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. With that thought, why should we not love the way they do. We should have an agape love towards everyone, and with that agape love, we will have the fruit of the Spirit.
