ACC ~ John 15 v17

LOVE IS THE FRUIT WE ARE TO BEAR

AUGUSTINE: This [love] is our fruit about which he said, “I have chosen you, that you should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain.” And what he added, “That whatever you shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you,” he will certainly give us if we love one another, seeing that this is the very thing he has also given us in choosing us when we had no fruit, because we had not chosen him. He appointed us that we should bring forth fruit—that is, that we should love one another—a fruit that we cannot have apart from him, just as the branches can do nothing apart from the vine.

Our fruit, therefore, is charity, which the apostle explains to be “out of a pure heart, and a good conscience and sincere faith.” [1] When we love one another, we love God. For it would be with no true love that we loved one another, if we did not love God. For everyone loves his neighbor as himself if he loves God. And if he does not love God, he does not love himself. For on these two commandments of love hang all the law and the prophets: [2] this is our fruit. And it is in reference, therefore, to such fruit that he gives us this commandment when he says, “These things I command you, that you love one another.” In the same way also the apostle Paul, when wishing to commend the fruit of the Spirit in opposition to the deeds of the flesh, posited this as his principle, saying, “The fruit of the Spirit is love.” And then, as if springing from and bound up in this principle, he wove the others together, which are “joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” [3]

For who can truly rejoice who does not love the good as the source of his joy? Who can have true peace, if he does not have it with one whom he truly loves? Who can be long-enduring through persevering continually in good, except through fervent love? Who can be kind, if he does not love the person he is helping? Who can be good, if he is not made so by loving? Who can be sound in the faith without that faith that works by love? Whose meekness can be beneficial in character, if not regulated by love? And who will abstain from that which is debasing, if he does not love that which dignifies? Appropriately, therefore, the good Master frequently commends love as the only thing needing to be commended. Without love, everything else that is good is no help, and you cannot have love without bringing with it all those other good things that make a person truly good. TRACTATES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 87.1. [4]

[1] 1 Tim 1:5.

[2] See Mt 22:40.

[3] Gal 5:22.

[4] NPNF 1 7:354-55*; CCL 36:543-44.