June 14

Read: Galatians 5:22-25

The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us (Romans 5:5).

The Fruit Of The Spirit Is Love

When God fills us with His Holy Spirit, He seeks to make us like himself in love. The Bible tells us that “the fruit of the Spirit is love.”

Our English word is a term of many meanings — someone has said that love covers everything “from Heaven to Hollywood.” But the New Testament uses the specific word agape to tell us of God’s love. It means caring — caring till it hurts.

In The Call to Holiness, Frederick L. Coutts tells the story of a Bible translator working among the Bantu of the Congo basin. He was searching for the native equivalent of the love of God when he heard a mother crooning over her child. When asked to explain the meaning of the word she was using the mother replied: “White man, that word means that when I think of what will befall my baby girl when she grows up, it hurts me.” The translator had his word. That is how God cares for us.

God loved so much that He gave. Dr. E. Stanley Jones has reminded us that we may understand this love by writing our own names into John 3:16. “God so loved Albert Harper, that he gave his only begotten Son, that if Albert Harper believeth in him, he should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

But can it be that this is the love of God that is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost? Only in our Lord do we see that love perfectly, but to us also God gives this gift of heaven, this first fruit of the Spirit. It is incredible but true.

My soul breaks out in strong desire The perfect bliss to prove; My longing heart is all on fire To be dissolved in love.

— Wesley’s Hymns