It was during a challenging season in my pastorate of the First Presbyterian Church of Mount Holly.  Things were going well, really, it was just crazy busy.  And there were, at the time, lots of pastoral care concerns going on in the congregation.  Two were, at the moment, quite acute.  The first was a ninety-six-year-old grandmother who was nearing the final days of her life.  The other situation was a member, struggling with an addiction use disorder.  During the course of the day, I had the opportunity to visit with both.  At the home of the benevolent grandmother, the space was meticulous, kept clean by the woman’s daughters and a legion of helpers.  You see this particular woman was, for lack of better words, a saint.  The type that always helped out cheerfully, she had been a fixture at the church, always one to give a helping hand or an encouraging word. Although her life was ebbing away, she was still able to speak, choosing to share words about her love for God and her family.  Even though she was near to death, there was a holy peacefulness about the entire home.  Later in that day though, I was called to visit a man who’d been mightily struggling with an opioid addiction.  His house was unkempt, to say the least.  There were even dog messes in the house as he wasn’t allowing his pet to go out.  It was a mess of wrappers and cans and dirty dishes and newspapers.  It was deplorable, really.  Now, thankfully, I do want to report that that young man, he got better and is doing quite well.  I run into his parents at the Sports Page from time to time and they’re always glad to share with me the positive things their son is doing these days.  There really are happy endings, thanks be to God.  But what stood out to me that day most clearly was the contrast.  The stark difference between the two homes.  One, a spectacle of dirt and mess and sadness, the other a pinnacle of cleanliness and joy, even in the face of loss.

I recalled that contrast while reading our verses from Galatians this morning.  There, Paul gives us a pretty good run down of things both good and bad.  And the difference between the two lists is just as shocking as the difference between those two homes on that day long ago.  It shouldn’t’ surprise us that Paul places these two very divergent lists beside each other.  Throughout Galatians we are given a contrast between a lot of things.  Resurrection and death, good and evil, light and dark, freedom and slavery are all talked about in turn in this letter to the Galatian Churches.  It helps to remember that these churches are Paul’s babies.  He planted them.  Was there as they were birthed; it was his effort that saw them out of their infancy into an era of growth.  But, in his absence, people have come along and confused the church with some terrible theology.  Choosing to reject the totality of grace, these people wanted Christians to maintain the Jewish law, even after their baptism.  But Paul was convinced, that it was either entirely by grace that we’re saved or that we’re not saved at all, not really.  And so, Paul writes furiously and, at times, pointedly, in order to help the Galatian churches right their wrong beliefs.  And what Paul is always desirous of doing is building stable communities that are equipped to share the gospel with everyone.  Just as Paul himself was an evangelist, so too did he arrange churches to spread the good news.  And Paul was convinced, works-based righteousness was no way to reach the promised land of faith in Jesus Christ.   In fact, Paul wants us to take in this contrast between goodness and wickedness so that we will always hew to the Godly side of things.  Yes, Paul believes, he’s lived the truth of a resurrected life and he wants others to experience the joyous fruit of the Holy Spirit.

And to that end, Paul wants us to experience the fruit of the Holy Spirit.  One thing should be pointed out before we get into the actual list of things Paul enumerates as God’s blessings.  While the list of debauched items are each individual things, we should note that the fruit of the Holy Spirit encompasses them all.  By that I mean that the list of the things the world gives becomes kind of like a “pick your poison.”  In contrast, the fruit of the Holy Spirit while distinguishable, comes to you in one heaping portion.  That is to say that when the Spirit is present, all of these wonderful things are there with you.  It is the case that the good far outweighs the bad.

So, what is the fruit of the Holy Spirit?  Well, to begin with, it’s love.  Makes sense, right.  After all, of the three theological virtues recorded in First Corinthians 13, love is listed as the ultimate one.  And for good reason.  But the fact of the matter is that we’ve got a whole lot wrong about love these days.  Unsurprisingly, in this era of obsession with self, love is all about a feeling, an experience that you get to receive.  I mean, it shouldn’t go without being said that one of the most successful Marvel television adaptations deals with a bad-guy character named Loki.  Thanks to the madness of the multiverse, Loki exists is several different forms one of whom is a woman.  Guess what?  He falls in love with her.  It’s a great example of narcissism played out in front of our eyes.  And love should be about as far removed from narcissism as black is from white.

Love in the modern context is about elevating us and giving us access to the feelings and experiences we want to have.  But, biblically speaking, love is something else entirely.  To begin with, we remember from first John that, “God is love” which helps us make sense of why this word is listed first in our fruit of the Holy Spirit.  Love, biblically speaking, isn’t so much a feeling or an experience, those come along with it but they aren’t love directly.  No, in the Bible, love is an action.  A verb.  As in to love something is to see you in action for that thing.  Love isn’t a self-seeking experience; it is instead one where we shed that which is precious to us in order to please someone else.  It’s why the Bible points at Jesus Christ laying His life down on the cross as the ultimate act of love.  There, an innocent man accepted a guilty verdict and hung, crucified for six long hours in the hot desert sun, dying.  But He laid down His life for us and for our salvation so that we could escape the penalty for our sins.  That’s a kind of love that John’s Gospel talks about, saying, (John 15:13) – “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”