The Fruit of the Spirit is Love

The Fruit of the Spirit is Love

By Andrew Murray, Absolute Surrender

Love Is God’s Gift


Without this,  we cannot live the daily life of love.


How often, when we speak about the consecrated life, we have to speak about temper.

Temper is a proof whether the love of Christ is filling the heart or not. 


Jesus Christ said, 

"As I have loved you ... love one another." 

And He did not put that among the other commandments, but He said in effect:

"That is a new commandment, the one commandment:

Love one another as I have loved you."


It is our daily life and conduct that the fruit of the Spirit is love. 

From that, there come all the graces and virtues in which love is manifested: 

joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness; no sharpness or hardness in your tone,  no unkindness or selfishness; meekness before God and man. 

You see that all these are gentler virtues. 


In Colossians:


"Put on therefore as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering."


I have often thought as I read those words that if we had written them, we should have put in the foreground the manly virtues, such as zeal, courage,  and diligence. 

But we need to see how the gentler, the womanliest virtues are specially connected with dependence upon the Holy Spirit. 


These are indeed heaven graces. They never were found in the heathen world. 

Christ was needed to come from Heaven to teach us.


Your blessedness is longsuffering, meekness, kindness: 

your glory is humility before God. 


The fruit of the Spirit that He brought from Heaven out of the heart of the crucified Christ, and He gives in our heart,  is first and foremost - love.


Let a man be what he will,  you are to love him.

Love is to be the fruit of the Spirit all the day and every day. 

If a man does not love his unlovable brother whom he has seen, how can you love God whom you have not seen?


You can deceive yourself with beautiful thoughts about loving God. 

You must prove your love to God by your love to your brother; 

That is the standard by which God is in your heart, you will love your brother.  

The fruit of the Spirit is love. 


We talk about grieving the Spirit of God by worldliness and ritualism and formality and error and indifference, 

but I tell you, the one thing above everything that grieves God's Spirit is this want of love. 


Let every heart search itself, and ask that God may search it. 


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