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Love

Where does love come from? What is the origin of love?

Hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Romans 5:5

We have been immersed in the Holy Spirit. That is our reality based on our faith in Jesus. We keep receiving more and more of the Holy Spirit.

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Prov. 13:12). But as we wait for this hope to be fulfilled, the love of God is “poured out into our hearts” (literal translation). Note how the first three of the “fruit of the Spirit” are experienced: love (Rom. 5:5), joy (Rom. 5:2), and peace (Rom. 5:1).

Before we were saved, God proved His love by sending Christ to die for us. Now that we are His children, surely He will love us more. It is the inner experience of this love through the Spirit that sustains us as we go through tribulations. The outpouring of God’s love for them has told them so.

“In our hearts” locates this outpouring in their organ of thinking and feeling (as the heart is viewed in the Bible).

“Through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” makes believers’ experience of God’s Spirit the vehicle by which they hope in confidence of sharing God’s glory.

Source: Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 527.

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