People say, "Killing is wrong, but what if so and so circumstance happens?" Then would killing be justified?  They say the same about lying and stealing:  Should you steal to provide for the poor?  Should you lie to avoid hurting someone?  The same dilemmas could be imagined for cheating on a test, on taxes.  But who ever wondered if there was ever a wrong situation to love?  Like, love is right, except when this or that happens, then it's not justified.  But love is always justified; love is always right.  That's why love is God--God is love. 

The problem lies in people's wrong or incomplete definitions of the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, meekness (gentleness), self-control.  Is there any situation ever where these would be inappropriate?  Is it ever really appropriate to lose one's patience?  Or for one to forsake goodness even for a moment?  Can anyone imagine a situation where meekness would be censured by God?  Again, man is not the measure of all things, therefore if any man, by his pseudo-wisdom, would say that yes, there are situations where firmness, for example, would be needed instead of meekness, is he not misunderstanding the nature of meekness?  Was the Lord firm?  It has been said that His rebukes were terrifying yet He said of Himself, "I am meek." 

There has been a steady attack on words throughout this century and especially in the last fifty years or so.  Take love for example.  What do we love?  Well if anyone were to sit in a high school hallway and list everything that students love, he would have to have a dump truck to carry the notebooks he would fill up.  It's the same with adults: we love fishing, we love football, we love ice cream, we love Sudoku, we love our wife, we love children, we love Fridays, and we love God.  Yet we mean something different with each of these statements.  Or maybe not so different.  The human heart is fallen to a level of self-worship, which is idolatry.  We tend to estimate a thing's value based on what it does for us, whether that thing is a TV dinner or a grandparent.  Most of the time, when we say we love something, we're really saying, I love myself, and you are good for me, therefore I love you.

 Is Jesus again not the supreme example of true love, and the correction of our self-love?  He is God in the flesh.  God is self-existent, that is, uncreated.  He needs nothing, and exists in and exudes perfect joy and contentment.  If He did not, and needed man or any other thing for His happiness, then that thing would be His God, making Him no God at all.  Incidentally, this is why we cannot be gods, because we do seek outside ourselves for ultimate happiness.  Our joy and peace do not reside within us; God needs nothing to complete Him.  Yet He loves us, so there can be no trace of selfishness in His love for us.  So His love stands in direct opposition to our love, both for Him and for each other.  It is true that when a man and woman meet and fall in love, they neither one love the other as much in that moment as they will after years of commitment, for love grows in us, or it shrinks.

 Love does not grow in God, for again, God is love.  He is the Source of love and therefore life, for the only creative power in the universe is love.  But there are evil things created, aren't there? No, there are good things perverted.  For good is the original, evil is the copy.  This brings us back to the ideas we began with.  When someone says, you can love too much.  They are wrong.  They may be right if their particular version of love is the action word, but we can never love truly too much or else God would implode upon Himself and there would never have been anything, for everything we count as real and tangible is only an idea in the mind of Christ. 

We begin to see that the fruit of the Spirit is always at all times needful.  Can we imagine a world anywhere where these would not be the highest aspirations of a noble soul?  Indeed the very essence of nobility?  Further still, when Christ does away with the present earth by melting the elements with a fervent heat and again creates a new heaven and earth, will the fruit of the Spirit cease to be?  Will love no longer be needful?  That could never be!  Paul says, "Faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love."  Love is the greatest by far, for it alone is eternal.  When the risen Lamb is on His throne in the heavenly city, what need will we have of faith?  For, faith is the evidence of things unseen.  Or again, what use will we have for hope?  For He is the desire of all nations.  Our hope will be fulfilled.  On the other hand, love is never quenched.  Love grows through all eternity.  So the fruit of the Spirit is eternal.  The reason the fruit is eternal is because the Spirit is eternal.

So we go back to the beginning, Is it right to steal in such and such a case?  Is murder always wrong?  I don't know.  These are the devil's questions.  One thing I do know, Love is always right.  Patience is always timely.  Joy is always, peace is always, kindness is always, gentleness is always, goodness is always, and self-control is always.  Love covers a multitude of sins.  Jesus said the whole law is summed up in this:  Love the Lord with all thy heart, and love thy neighbor as thyself, on this all the law and prophets hang. 

So, when in doubt—love.