Pastor Sean invites us to examine how we embody the fruit of the Spirit by beginning with Love; it all begins with Love.
References
Galatians 5:16-17
Here’s my instruction: walk in the Spirit, and let the Spirit bring order to your life. If you do, you will never give in to your selfish and sinful cravings. For everything the flesh desires goes against the Spirit, and everything the Spirit desires goes against the flesh. There is a constant battle raging between them that prevents you from doing the good you want to do.
Galatians 5:19-21
It’s clear that our flesh entices us into practicing some of its most heinous acts: participating in corrupt sexual relationships, impurity, unbridled lust, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, arguing, jealousy, anger, selfishness, contentiousness, division, envy of others’ good fortune, drunkenness, drunken revelry, and other shameful vices that plague humankind. I told you this clearly before, and I only tell you again so there is no room for confusion: those who give in to these ways will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Galatians 5:22-24
The Holy Spirit produces a different kind of fruit: unconditional love, joy, peace, patience, kindheartedness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. You won’t find any law opposed to fruit like this. Those of us who belong to the Anointed One have crucified our old lives and put to death the flesh and all the lusts and desires that plague us.
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“Love ought, therefore, to be the primary disposition of the Christian life. The eight other virtues or dispositions that follow in Paul’s list might best be understood as amplifying and further specifying what is entailed by this way of love. In short, these other eight dispositions, taken together, characterize a life lived in, by and through God’s love…
In this sense, love is much like light, which, when passing through a prism, breaks into its component color.”
— Philip Kenneson, Life On The Vine:
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“A rugged commitment to be for and with someone unto Christlikeness for as long as it takes.”
— Scot McKnight