What is Real Love?

On Sunday evening, Benjamin Preiser was a guest preacher who spoke on the first of the fruits of the Spirit – the fruit of real love. Benjamin Preiser is currently a Pastoral Fellow at University Reformed Church in East Lansing, MI.

Preiser opened his sermon by acknowledging that there is a great deal of confusion today, in defining what Biblical love is, and what it looks like when it is rightly expressed. There is a danger in thinking that the definition of love doesn’t particularly matter, or that people can define love in whatever way they want. But love is something defined and actual, related to the character of who God is. And so it’s important to understand what this real love is, especially since the Bible indicates that this love is intended to be produced within us.

After reading Galatians 5:22-23, Preiser brought in a number of other Scripture passages to help explain the meaning and practice of love, including 1 Corinthians 13. In his sermon, he aimed to explain the answers to three main questions. First, what is love? Second, what does it mean that God is love? And third, what does it look like for us to live this love out?

Preiser helpfully summarized that love involves three components. First, love involves genuine affection, which he argued for by pointing to the affectionate love that the apostle Paul expressed toward the Thessalonian church in his first letter to them.  Second, love involves a certain mindset (spoken about in Philippians 2). And third, love is inherently active, and requires an engagement of the will. Love is also a summation of virtue, that is associated with all other good things.

When Preiser than explained what it means for God to love, he pointed out that love cannot just be an uncontrollable passion or feeling. Otherwise, God would be helplessly driven about by the coming and going of this passion. Instead, the type of love that the Bible refers to – God’s love – is a love that God chooses to express. He loves sinners, not because it has come upon him unexpectedly, as a passion – but he loves sinners because he has chosen to, out of the wellspring of his own goodness.

This, then, informs how we love others. We are intended to love what God loves, in the way that God loves. This means that we love Him. We love our neighbors. We even love our enemies. We seek their good, in reliance on the Spirit who is working this love in our hearts. The willpower and efforts of man cannot produce the love of God. Being able to love as God loves is a gift, and a fruit of the Spirit that he pours out on us, through faith in Christ.

This sermon series on the Fruit of the Spirit is taking place on Sunday afternoons at Fellowship Reformed Church in Mt Pleasant, MI.  To hear the full audio of the sermon, please use the link above. It gives the full picture of what real love looks like. You won’t regret it.