The Fruit of the Spirit Is Love

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. JOHN 13:34

It would be easy to read Murray’s teaching on the deeper life and come away thinking it is chiefly about private experience: surrender, filling, rest, the inner chamber. The second address in Absolute Surrender exists to correct exactly that impression. It is called The Fruit of the Spirit is Love, and in it Murray insists that the surest test of any claim to be filled with the Holy Spirit is not power, not feeling, not gifts, but love.

A searchlight

Murray begins by distinguishing two ways of thinking about the Spirit. Under the Old Testament, he says, the Spirit often came upon people for revelation or for power to do God’s work, but did not dwell in them. Many Christians, he feared, want only that older gift — power for service — and know little of the New Testament gift of the indwelling Spirit, renewing the whole life. When God gives the Holy Spirit, Murray writes, “His great object is the formation of a holy character.”

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. GALATIANS 5:22–23

So he offers the verse as a searchlight. Has it been our experience, he asks, that the more we have of the Holy Spirit the more loving we become? If our thoughts about the Spirit and our experiences of the holy life have not made us more loving, something is wrong with them. That is a test that cuts through a great deal of religious excitement.

Because God is love

Why is love the first fruit? Because the Spirit is the Spirit of God, and God is love. Murray drew out what this means in one of his characteristic sentences: “God has no selfishness, God keeps nothing to Himself.” It is His nature to give. He pours life into every creature, glory into the angels, and His own love into His redeemed children. The Father gave all things to the Son; the Son gave Himself for the world; the Spirit is the living love of God overflowing into human hearts.

And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. ROMANS 5:5

If this is who the Spirit is, Murray argued, He cannot be less a Spirit of love when He comes to dwell in us than He is in God. He cannot change His nature.

The badge

Murray noticed that before Jesus promised the Spirit in John 14, He gave the new commandment in John 13. The order is not accidental. The Spirit is promised to people who have been commanded to love one another as Christ loved them. And Christ gave them a badge by which the world would recognise them.

By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. JOHN 13:35

Murray asked a painful question. If the world were asked whether it had seen the church wearing the badge of love, what would it say? He feared it would say that what it had heard of the church was quarrelling and separation. He was not writing as an outsider. He had lived through bitter controversies in his own denomination and knew the divisions of the church at close quarters.

A cracked vessel

One of the most memorable images in the address concerns unity. A vessel that ought to be whole, Murray said, cannot be filled if it has been broken into pieces. You can dip a little water into a fragment, but if you want the vessel full, it must be whole. He applied this to the church: one of the great reasons God cannot bless His people as He would is the want of love among them. If we want the fulness of the Spirit, we must be willing to be melted together.

Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling. EPHESIANS 4:3–4

This takes the pursuit of spiritual blessing out of the realm of private experience and plants it in the congregation, the family, and the difficult relationship. A Christian who seeks the fulness of the Spirit while nursing a grudge against a brother is, on Murray’s reading, asking God to fill a cracked vessel.

Love conquers self

Murray’s deepest reason for insisting on love was that nothing else can defeat selfishness. Self, he says, is the great curse, whether in relation to God or to others. Sin made the human race selfish — Adam blaming the woman, Cain killing his brother — and selfishness cannot love. Christ came to restore love to the world, and the Spirit is sent to banish the selfishness and envy and pride that sin brought in.

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. 1 CORINTHIANS 13:4

He was very practical about where this love is tested. It is tested in temper, in speech, in the way we treat those who irritate or oppose us. He called love the fruit of the Spirit all the day and every day. And he made a solemn link with prayer: if we want to pray with power and to see the Spirit poured out, we must first be at peace with one another.

What this chapter guards against

This teaching is a safeguard for everything else in Murray’s writing. Any doctrine of surrender, filling or holiness that does not issue in love has gone wrong somewhere. It is possible to be earnest, disciplined and devout and still be hard, critical and cold. Murray knew that the people most eager for the deeper life are sometimes the least pleasant to live with, and this address is his warning to them.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 1 CORINTHIANS 13:1

It also corrects a narrowness that can creep into any movement. Murray loved and worked with Christians of many traditions, and he believed the Spirit’s love reached across the lines that divide believers. The vessel is not a single denomination. It is the whole body of Christ.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Apply Murray’s searchlight: has your growth in religious knowledge and experience made you more loving? Answer honestly.

2. Identify one person you find hard to love. Pray for them by name every day this week, and do one kind thing for them.

3. If there is a broken relationship with another believer that you could help to mend, take one step toward it.

4. Watch your temper and your tongue for a day as a test of the Spirit’s fruit in you. Confess what you find.

5. Before you next pray for spiritual blessing, ask whether you are asking God to fill a cracked vessel.

A PRAYER

Holy Spirit, You are the love of God poured into my heart, and I confess how little of that love the world has seen in me.

Search me. Show me where my religion has made me hard, critical or cold.

Conquer my selfishness. Make me patient, kind, free of envy and pride, loving even those who oppose me.

Melt Your people together, and let us wear the badge of Christ’s love before the world. Amen.