Love, the Greatest Spiritual Fruitनमूना

## God is Love If I asked you if you wanted to be fruitful in your Christian life, I doubt you’d say “no.” Every believer wants to be fruitful. But what does “fruitful” look like? The well-known passage of Galatians 5:22-23 tells us clearly: it looks like “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” We could spend a great deal of time on each of these, but in this devotional experience, we will give our full focus to the fruit of love . If this is missing in the Christian life, it’s no Christian life. Love permeates the pages of the Bible. Love plays a major role in this cosmic drama, from the first string of words in Genesis to the concluding glories of Revelation. In love, God creates the world out of nothing; in love, he will recreate the world for his glory. God justifies the sinner in love, and in love, he sanctifies the saints. From beginning to end, Scripture has a thread of love woven throughout. But why? Why is love so crucial and so threaded throughout the Bible? Because, as 1 John 4:16 tells us, “God is love.” Though this sentence is small, its wonder is anything but. Notice that the verse does not say, “God has love.” Rather, it says, “God is love.” This may seem like a minor point, but it is crucial for us to understand the God we worship. When we talk about God’s being—who he is— theologians have long used a crucial word in describing God— simplicity . In its most basic terms, the idea of simplicity means that God is not made up of parts like you and me. For example, I have two arms, a nose, countless hairs, a beating heart, and a few thousand other body parts. All of these “parts” come together to make up my body, but none of them defines me entirely. So, while I hope this does not come to pass, I could lose a body part and still be me. God is not this way. God is not composed of parts such that he could lose part of him and remain himself. God does not have love; God is love. Love is not a “part” of God you can cut off or replace; love is essential to God’s very being. Moreover, this is true of all of God’s attributes. God does not have holiness, but God is holy. God does not have knowledge but is all-knowing. This is why the theologians of old used to say, “All that is in God is God, and nothing in God is not God.” So, when we use the word simple , we mean to say that God’s essence is not composed of parts but is simple and unified. Why does this matter? Because you and I need to know that God did not gain the ability to love his children—which naturally implies that he could lose that ability. He is love and, therefore, cannot operate without love toward us. God won’t stop loving you—nor will he stop loving the world. It would be outside of his nature. And we also need to know that when he develops the fruit of love in us, it is not a transaction where he simply gives us an item today that he can take away tomorrow. As he makes us more like himself through the power of his Spirit, he changes our nature to be more like his. He makes who we are more loving. Today, rest in this: God loves you not because he has to and not because he gained the ability to, but because love is who he is. On top of that, he’s truly able to make you more loving. Change is truly possible for you. As you lift your eyes toward him and set your mind on him, remember his transforming presence of love can make you a person of love.