By: Ronald Lloyd

It is comforting to read the fruit of the spirit I Galatians 5:22-23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”   Love is the seed and root of the spirit’s fruit.  Love is the basis of obedience.  The author of the Galatian letter, in I Corinthians 13:1-13, says that acts of kindness without love are meaningless.  How well we know this!

 

Saints, sons of God, are to speak, “---the truth in love.”  See Ephesians 4:15.  god is pleased with acts of love according to Hebrews 6:10, “For God {is} not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister.”

 

Problems can be resolved in love.  Division occurs in the absence of love between saints.  Restoring that love will avoid division.  When division grows and persists this is not because God’s plan of love cannot restore harmony.  The difficulty lies within ourselves.  Application of the Lord’s counsel in Matthew 5:22-26 and 18:15-22 will restore harmony in personal disputes.  Personal problems often blossom into division in the local church, with factions formed around the principals.

 

Saints are enjoined to love truth and to act according to truth.  But as Shakespeare said, “Aye! There’s the rub!”  Pilate said it this way in John 18:38, “--What is truth?  And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault {at all}.”  Pilates’s subsequent actions suggest to me that he was disinterested in an answer to his question.  The Lord had answered in verse 37.

 

Pilate  had a problem.  His solution took the easy, the comfortable approach for himself.  It is human nature.  We do the same thing with everyday problems.  On balance it is not a bad approach.  It is not the approach taken when spiritual concerns are at hand.

 

I must first recognize the problem.  I will determine within myself how important it is.  Deciding it is not major I will not base future actions upon my mis-givings.  I will lay it aside.  I err if I decide it is major but I will be stoic or I will grin and bear it.  The matter will influence my actions.  When the occasion arises that others may have a problem with the object of my concerns this pre-disposition may well emerge.  I will act based on history, not on the current problem.  Love will have very little to do with actions. 

 

Love of God’s word will result in a labor of love.  Labors of love may be tiring but it is the kind of fatigue that brings satisfaction.  It resolves problems.