Category Archives: Holy Spirit

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The fruit of the Spirit — Galatians 5:22-23

At a time when many teachers and members of churches misunderstood grace, John Wesley rightly emphasized that salvation by grace is a transforming experience. That is, we do not earn salvation by behaving righteously; rather, we are saved from sin by God’s power and therefore able to live more righteously.

Wesley’s insight fit well a central emphasis in Paul’s theology. Paul emphasized that it is God who saves us in Christ, that it is God who gifts us by his Spirit to minister to one another, and God who empowers us by the Spirit to live for him. In other words, Paul’s theology focused on God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This did not mean that Christians had nothing left to do; rather, it meant they had power in Christ and by the Spirit to do what they should.

Not everyone was so convinced that Christ’s transforming power was sufficient. Specifically, some insisted on imposing their own culture’s customs on new believers in Galatia. Paul warned his Galatian converts that we are saved not by our works, not by our own flesh, but by God’s Spirit (see Gal 3:5). It is the context of such an extended argument in his letter to Galatians that he speaks about the Spirit’s fruit. He contrasts here the “works of the flesh”—which are sinful (Gal 5:19-21)—with the “fruit of the Spirit,” against which is no law (5:22-23).

Works of flesh are what we can do in our own strength; fruit of the Spirit comes from a new nature and new identity in Christ. God had promised to someday empower his people to obey his commands by putting his Spirit within them and making them new (Ezek 36:26-27). The fruit of the Spirit exhibits the reality of this promise. God has not only given us a new identity, but also the renewal of the Spirit in our lives so we can learn to believe that new identity, to act out of who God has called us to be rather than out of what we had been in our own strength alone.

We do not nail fruit onto trees; it grows there, based on the nature of the tree. As Jesus pointed out, good fruit grows on a good tree; the nature of a tree determines the nature of its fruit. When God’s Spirit comes to live inside us (when we accept Christ), he gives us a new character in his own image. Second Peter 1:4 speaks of being made partakers of the divine nature. This does not of course mean that we become God or become omnipotent or lose our humanity; it means instead that we are transformed into his likeness, into what we were designed to be. The fruit of the Spirit is the moral character that flows from Christ’s image placed in us. In the language of John 15, as we dwell in him, fruit grows on us because we as branches are connected with the vine.

Paul lists nine examples of this fruit, but pride of place goes to the first fruit on his list, love (Gal 5:22). Paul has been explaining that love is the chief commandment and characteristic of the Christian life (5:13-14). Now he emphasizes that it flows naturally from God’s presence in our lives, and we can choose to depend on him to bring forth that fruit in our lives.

All of this fits Paul’s emphasis in Galatians. Such love fulfills the law (5:13), and no law legislates against the fruit of the Spirit (5:23). Those who are led by the Spirit are not subject to the law (5:18), but that is not because grace ignores holiness. Instead, once Christ lives inside us, we live for God so that we live even more purely than the law would have demanded. We fulfill God’s will now because we want to, because God has given us a new heart. Paul’s point about the fruit of the Spirit is that God gets the credit, because it is his work in us that makes us into what he wants us to be. If we believe God to save us from sin’s penalty, we can also believe him to save us from its power. Christ completed that work (5:24); we now learn to appropriate it by faith.
(Adapted from my article originally for the A.M.E. Zion Missionary Seer; see further discussion in my book, Gift & Giver, published by Baker)

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Will gifts like prophecy and tongues pass away?

Paul says that spiritual gifts like prophecy, tongues and knowledge will pass away when we no longer need them (1 Cor. 13:8-10). Some Christians read this passage as if it said, “Spiritual gifts like prophecy, tongues, and knowledge passed away when the last book of the New Testament was written.” This interpretation of 1 Corinthians 13 ignores the entire context of 1 Corinthians, however: it is a letter to the Corinthians in the middle of the first century, and they had never yet heard of a New Testament in the middle of the first century. Had Paul meant the completion of the New Testament, he would have had to have made this point much more clearly–starting by explaining what a New Testament addition to their Bible was.

In the context we find instead that Paul means that spiritual gifts will pass away when we know God as He knows us, when we see Him face to face (13:12; when we no longer see as through a mirror as in the present—cf. 2 Cor 3:18, the only other place where Paul uses the term). In other words, spiritual gifts must continue until our Lord Jesus returns at the end of the age. They should remain a normal part of our Christian experience today.

A broader examination of the context reveals even more of Paul’s meaning in this passage. In chapters 12-14, Paul addresses those who are abusing particular spiritual gifts, and argues that God has gifted all members of Christ’s body with gifts for building up God’s people. Those who were using God’s gifts in ways that hurt others were abusing the gifts God had given for helping others. That is why Paul spends three paragraphs in the midst of his discussion of spiritual gifts on the subject of love: gifts without love are useless (13:1-3); love seeks to edify (13:4-7); the gifts are temporary (for this age only), but love is eternal (13:8-13). We should seek the best gifts (1 Cor. 12:31; 14:1), and love gives us the insight to see which gifts are the best in any given situation–those that build others up.

The context of Paul’s entire letter drives this point home further: Paul’s description of what love is in 1 Cor. 13:4-7 contrasts starkly with Paul’s prior descriptions of the Corinthians in his letter: selfish, boastful, and so on (1 Cor 3:3; 4:6-7, 18; 5:2). The Corinthian Christians, like the later church in Laodicea (Rev. 3:14-22), had a lot in their favor, but lacked what mattered most of all: the humility of love.

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The purpose of spiritual gifts – 1 Corinthians 12-14

The Corinthian church was like much of the American church today: socially stratified, individualistic, and divisive. Although Paul commends them for their pursuit of spiritual gifts (1 Cor. 1:5, 7), he reproves them for a deficiency far more serious: they lack love, the principle that should guide which gifts they seek (1 Cor. 12-14; 1:10).

Spiritual gifts are for building up the body (1 Cor. 12), and love must coordinate our expression of spiritual gifts (1 Cor. 13). Thus prophecy, a gift that builds up others, is more useful publicly than uninterpreted tongues (1 Cor. 14). Gifts, including prophecy, are no guarantee of spiritual  commitment, and one may prophesy  falsely or even submit to the Spirit’s  inspiration without being committed to Christ (Matt. 7:21-2 3; 1 Sam. 19:20- 24).

Paul reminds his friends in Corinth that they experienced  ecstatic  inspiration in Greek  religion before their conversion, and points out that the message of Christ,  rather  than inspiration in general,  is what matters  (1 Cor. 12:1-3). Communicating the content of God’s message, rather than how ecstatically one speaks it, is the important thing. This  principle applies not only to tongues-speakers and prophets, but to well­ meaning preachers who mistake enthusiasm for anointing while delivering empty speeches  devoid of sound scriptural teaching.

Paul then reminds his hearers that all the gifts come from the same Spirit (1 Cor. 12:4-11) and that the gifts are interdepen­dent (12:12-26). Paul ranks the leading gifts (apostles, prophets, and teachers) and then lists other gifts without ranking their importance or authority (12:27- 30). Paul urges this church to be zealous for the “best” gifts (that is, those that will best build up the church; 12:31), especially prophecy (14:1). Thus it is appropriate to seek spiritual gifts, but we choose which gifts to seek by determining which gifts will help the body of Christ most. That is, we let love guide our choice (1 Cor.  13).

Paul covers this point in some detail. Even if we had all spiritual gifts in their ultimate intensity, we would be nothing without love (13:1-3). The gifts will ultimately pass away, but love is eternal (13:8-13). While noting the priority of love over spiritual gifts, Paul describes the characteristics of love (13:4- 8a). Many of the characteristics he lists (for instance, not being boastful) are precisely the opposite of characteristics he earlier attributed to his readers (see 5:2; 8:1).  Thus while the Corinthian Christians were strong in Spirit-led gifts, they were weak in Spirit-led character. For this reason, Paul needed to emphasize the importance of the gift of prophecy, which edifies the whole church, over uninterpreted  tongues, which  edifies  only  the speaker ( 1 Cor. 14). Although Paul focused on what would serve the church as a whole, he was careful not to portray tongues negatively (14:4, 14-19, 39). He exercised this caution even though he could not have known that some later Christians, contrary to 1 Corinthians 14:39, would despise the gift.

The relevance of Paul’s words to the Corinthian churches raises the question of whether Paul would have applied the same argument to all churches in his day. As many Pentecostals and charismatics note, some of his specific restrictions on gifts may have applied to the excessive situation in Corinth rather than to all churches. If, as is likely, most Corinthian house-churches seated only forty members, I suspect that the dynamics of spiritual gifts would apply differently there than in a congregation of two thousand members, where more limits would be necessary, or in a prayer meeting of five members, where fewer would be necessary.

Likewise, in churches today where spiritual gifts are suspect, prophecy would edify the church no more than tongues would, because even the purest prophecy, approved by other trustworthy prophets, would only introduce division.

Some  charismatics insist  that  the  public  function of all the gifts, including tongues  and  prophecy,  is so important that we should pursue them ( 1 Cor. 12:31; 14:1) even if it splits a church. Other charismatics, however, recognize that this view misses Paul’s whole point. The purpose of the gifts is to make the body of Christ stronger, and if public use of gifts would divide a non­ charismatic congregation, charismatic members should honor the unity of the body first and foremost. This is not to say that they should not work through appropriate channels to bring the congregation to greater biblical maturity in the matter of spiritual gifts.

But while gifts are very important and biblical, they are not the most important issue in the body of Christ. The greatest sign of maturity is love.

 

(Adapted from Three Crucial Questions About the Holy Spirit, published by Baker Books.)

 

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How can we hear the Holy Spirit accurately?

The Holy Spirit passes on Jesus’ words as clearly as Jesus passed on the Father’s. We should be able to hear Jesus’ voice as clearly today as his disciples did two thousand years ago and­— since we see things in light of the resurrection— understand his message better. Of course, Christians have often abused the promise of hearing God’s voice, hearing instead only what they wanted or expected to hear. What objective guidelines can help us learn sensitivity to the Spirit and enable us to hear God’s direction accurately?

First of all, the Spirit does not come to testify about himself; He comes to testify about Jesus (John 15:26; 16:14).  He brings to our remembrance and explains what Jesus has already said (14:2 6). What the Spirit teaches us is therefore consistent with the character of the biblical Jesus, the Jesus who came in the flesh (1 John 4:2). The more we know about Jesus from the Bible, the more prepared we are to recognize the voice of his Spirit when he speaks to us. Knowing God well enough to recognize what he would say on a given topic can often inform us what God is saying, because God is always true to his character. But be warned: those who take Scripture out of context thereby render themselves susceptible to hearing God’s voice quite wrongly.

Second,  the Spirit  does not  come  merely  to show us details such as where to find someone’s lost property, although the Spirit is surely capable of doing such things and sometimes does them (1 Sam. 9:6-20). Nor does the Spirit come just to teach us which sweater to put on (especially when it is obvious which one matches) or which dessert to take in the cafeteria line. The Spirit does, however, guide us in evangelism or in encouraging one another (for example, Acts 8:29; 10:19; 11:12.)  The  Spirit  also comes  to reveal God’s  heart  to us,  and  God’s heart  is defined in  this  context as love  (John 13:34-35; 15:9-14, 17). To walk in Christian love is to know God’s heart (1 John 4:7-8; see also Jer. 22:16).

Third, it helps if we have fellowship with others who also are seeking to obey God’s Spirit. In the Old Testament, older prophets mentored younger prophets (1 Sam. 19:20; 2 Kings 2:3-8). And among first-generation prophets in the early church, Paul instructed the prophets to evaluate each others’ prophecies, to keep themselves and the church on target (1 Cor. 14:29). Spiritual mentors or peers who are mature in their relationship with God and whose  present walk with  God  we can trust can seek God with  us and provide us a “safety  net” of sorts.

If we feel that the Spirit is leading us to do something, but recognize that much is at stake if we are wrong, we may do well to talk the matter over with other mature Christians. Proverbs advised rulers that wisdom rests in a multitude of counselors, and that advice remains valid for us as well. In the end, we may not always settle on  the counsel  others  have given us— like us, they too  are fallible— but if they are diligent  students of the Scriptures and persons of prayer, we should humbly consider their counsel. God sometimes shows us things for the church that others may not yet see; at the same time, God may well have shown some of our brothers and sisters things we have not yet seen.  I have a few spiritual mentors and peers whose counsel I especially treasure and whose wisdom time has consistently (though not always) vindicated.

Many of us as young Christians were intrigued by the frequent experience of supernatural guidance from the Holy Spirit. While most of us who have learned to hear the Spirit in that way still experience such guidance regularly today, after a number of years, sensitivity to the Spirit’s guidance in that form becomes almost second nature and thus becomes less of a focus than it once was. Nor is this guidance, exciting as it may be to one discovering it for the first time, always the most important form of guidance God’s Spirit gives us.

By this method of hearing the Spirit, we might help someone in need, because the Spirit specifically directed us to do so. But many of us have also learned to hear God’s Spirit exegetically, as the Spirit has spoken in the Scriptures.  By hearing the Spirit’s voice in Scripture, we might help that same person in need simply because Scripture commands us to do so.  But perhaps the  deepest sensitivity  to the  Spirit comes  when  we learn  to bear the Spirit’s fruit  in our  lives­ when our hearts become  so full of God’s heart that we help that person  in need because God’s love within us leaves us no alter­ native. All three forms of guidance derive from the Spirit and from Scripture. Yet where  needs  clearly exist, God’s  character that we have discovered  by means of Scripture and the Spirit is sufficient to guide us even when we have no other  specific leading of the  Spirit  or  scriptural mandate, provided neither the Spirit  nor  the  Bible argues against it. It is when the Spirit has written the Bible’s teaching in our heart that we become most truly people of the Spirit.

(Adapted from Three Crucial Questions About the Holy Spirit, published by Baker Books.)

 

 

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The Holy Spirit reveals Jesus to us: John 16

Jesus had been telling his disciples that the Spirit would further explain the teachings he had given them – not make up new things that had little to do with the Jesus they had known (1 John  4:2-6), but to teach  them and explain what Jesus had already  begun  to reveal (John  14:26; compare Neh. 9:20; Ps.143:10;  perhaps Prov. 1:23).  In John 16, Jesus explains further how  the  Spirit would  carry on  Jesus’ mission. (John intends this promise for his readers, not just for Jesus’ first hearers [see 1 John 2:20, 27].)

John 16:1-11 encourages persecuted Christians by telling them that those  who drag them  into  court  are themselves  the ones on trial, because God is the ultimate judge. In God’s courtroom,  the Spirit is their “Paraclete” (translated variously “comforter,” “counselor,” “advocate”), a term  which often  meant  a “defense attorney” (1 John 2:1). In the same way, the Spirit testifies along with us as a witness for Christ (John 15:26-27) and prosecutes the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment  (16:8-11). Everything that Jesus says the Spirit will do in the world, Jesus himself had done  (3:18-19; 8:46; 15:22).

In other words, the Spirit carries on Jesus’ mission of revealing the Father, in a sense mediating Jesus’ continuing presence, so that by the Spirit Jesus continues to confront the world as he did personally two thousand years ago. Of course,  the Spirit does not reveal Jesus in a vacuum; when Jesus sends the Spirit to convict the world,  he sends  the Spirit,  not  directly to the world  itself, but to us (16:7, the Spirit is sent “to you,” that is, to Jesus’ disciples). The Spirit continues to confront the world with the person of Jesus through our proclamation of him.

Just  as the  Old  Testament prophets knew  God  well before they proclaimed him, our proclamation should flow from a deep and intimate knowledge of God. The Spirit not only empowers us to proclaim Jesus to the world but testifies to us about Jesus for our own  relationship with him (16:12-15; see also Eph. 2:18; 3:16). The Spirit will take the things of Jesus and  reveal them  to us, glorifying Jesus as Jesus himself glorified the Father (John 16: 14-15; see also 7:18, 39; 17:4). As soon as he returned to them after the resurrection, Jesus gave his followers the Spirit so that they could continue to know him (16:16; 20:20-22).

Jesus promised that whatever the Spirit would hear, the Spirit would make known to the disciples (16:13). To someone reading the Fourth Gospel from start to finish, this promise would sound strangely familiar. Jesus had just told his disciples, “I have not called you slaves, but friends, because a slave does not know what  the master  is doing,  but whatever  I have heard from the Father, I have made known  to you” (15:15). Friendship meant many different things to people in the ancient  Mediterranean world, but one aspect of friendship about which moralists often wrote was the intimacy that it involved: true friends could share confidential secrets with one another. As God said to his friend

Abraham, “Shall I hide from Abraham the thing which I am about to do?” (Gen. 18:17).  Moses, too, as God’s friend, could hear his voice in a special way (Exod. 33:11; Deut.  34:10). Jesus was open with his disciples about  God’s  heart,  and promised that the Spirit would  be as open with  the disciples after the resur­rection as Jesus  himself  had been  before the resurrection. Ancient philosophers emphasized that friends shared all things in common; Jesus explained that all that belonged to the Father was his, and all that was his would be the disciples’  (16:14-15). In the context, Jesus especially intended God’s truth (16:13). They would know the heart of God.

 

(Adapted from Three Crucial Questions About the Holy Spirit, published by Baker Books.)

 

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Rivers of living water in John 7:37-38

Jesus’ promise of rivers of living water in John 7:37-38, referring to the coming of the Holy Spirit (7:39), is exciting in any case.  But it is especially exciting if one traces through the rest of the Gospel the contrast between the true water of the Spirit and merely ritual uses of water by Jesus’ contemporaries.

John’s baptism in water was good, but Jesus’ baptism in the Spirit was better (1:26, 33).  Strict Jewish ritual required the waterpots in Cana to be used only for ritual waters to purify, but when Jesus turned the water into wine he showed that he valued his friend’s honor more than ritual and tradition (2:6).  A Samaritan woman abandons her waterpot used to draw water from the sacred ancestral well when she realizes that Jesus offers new water that brings eternal life (4:13-14).  A sick man unable to be healed by water that supposedly brought healing (5:7) finds healing instead in Jesus (5:8-9); a blind man is healed by water in some sense but only because Jesus “sends” him there (9:7).

The function of this water is suggested more fully in John 3:5.  Here Jesus explains that Nicodemus cannot understand God’s kingdom without being born “from above” (3:3, literally), i.e., from God.  Some Jewish teachers spoke of Gentiles being “reborn” in a sense when they converted to Judaism, but Nicodemus cannot conceive of himself as a Gentile, a pagan, so he assumes Jesus speaks instead of reentering his mother’s womb (3:4).  So Jesus clarifies his statement.  Jewish people believed that Gentiles converted to Judaism through circumcision and baptism, so Jesus explains to Nicodemus that he must be reborn “from water.”  In other words, Nicodemus must come to God on the same terms that Gentiles do!

But if Jesus means by “water” here what he means in 7:37-38, he may mean water as a symbol for the Spirit, in which case he is saying, “You must be born of water, i.e., the Spirit” (a legitimate way to read the Greek).  If so, Jesus may be using Jewish conversion baptism merely to symbolize the greater baptism in the Spirit that he brings to those who trust in him.  The water may also symbolize Jesus’ sacrificial servanthood for his disciples (13:5).

So what does Jesus mean by the rivers of living water in John 7:37-38?  Even though we will deal with background and translations more fully later, we need to use them at least briefly here to catch the full impact of this passage.  First, in most current translations, at least a footnote points out an alternate way to punctuate 7:37-38 (the earliest Greek texts lacked punctuation, and the early church fathers divided over which interpretation to take).  In this other way to read the verses, it is not clear that the water flows from the believer; it may flow instead from Christ.  Since believers “receive” rather than give the water (7:39), and since they elsewhere have a “well” rather than a “river” (4:14), Christ may well be the source of water in these verses.  (This is not to deny the possibility that believers may experience deeper empowerments of the Spirit after their conversion.)

Jewish tradition suggests that on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, priests read to the people from Zechariah 14 and Ezekiel 47, which talk of rivers of living water flowing forth from the Temple in the end time.  Jesus is now speaking on the last day of that feast (7:2, 37), probably alluding to the very Scriptures from which they had read (“as the Scripture said,” 7:38).  Jewish people thought of the Temple as the “navel” or “belly” of the earth.  So Jesus may be declaring, “I am the foundation stone of the new temple of God.  From me flows the water of the river of life; let the one who wills come and drink freely!”

Normally (as we will point out below) one should not read symbolism into biblical narratives, but the end of John’s Gospel may be an exception, a symbol God provided those who watched the crucifixion.  (John uses symbolism a little more than narratives normally do.)  When a soldier pierced Jesus’ side, water as well as blood flowed forth (19:34).  Literally, a spear thrust near the heart could release a watery fluid around the heart as well as blood.  But John is the only writer among the four Gospel writers to emphasize the water, and he probably mentions it  to make a point: once Jesus was lifted up on the cross and glorified (7:39), the new life of the Spirit became available to his people.  Let us come and drink freely.

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Baptized with fire — Matthew 3:11

One modern denomination in the U.S. is the “Fire-Baptized Holiness Church”; many other Christians also happily claim to be “baptized in the Holy Ghost and fire.” We know and appreciate, of course, what they mean; they mean holiness, and holiness is essential. But is that what John the Baptist means by “fire baptism” in this passage? Fire is sometimes used as a symbol of God’s consuming holiness or of purifying trials in the Bible; but when fire is conjoined with the image of baptism in the New Testament, it has to do not with mere purification of the individual, but with purifying the whole world by judgment. (Judgment is the most common symbolic application fire in the Bible.) Rather than cross-referencing to other passages that use the image of fire in different ways, we ought to examine what the “baptized in fire” text means in its own context. We ought to use the passage itself before jumping to a concordance.

The context is a call to repentance, and much of the audience promised this fire baptism was unwilling to repent. John the Baptist was immersing people in water as a sign of their repentance and preparation for the coming Kingdom of God (Matt. 3:2, 6). (Jewish people used baptism when non-Jews would convert to Judaism, but John demanded that even religious Jewish people come to God on the same terms on which Gentiles should; cf. 3:9.) John warned the Pharisees about God’s coming wrath (3:7), and that unless they bore fruit (3:8) God’s ax of judgment would cast them into the fire (3:10; cf. 12:33). Fruitless trees were worthless except for fuel. But chaff was barely even useful as fuel (it burned quickly), yet the chaff of which John spoke would be burned with “unquenchable”—eternal—”fire” (3:12).

In the verses just before and just after our verse, “fire” is hellfire (3:10, 12). When John the Baptist speaks of a baptism in fire, he uses an image of judgment that follows through the whole paragraph. Remember that John’s hearers here are not repentant people (3:7). The Messiah is coming to give his audience a twofold baptism, and different members of his audience would experience different parts of it. Some may repent, be gathered into the barn and receive the Spirit. The unrepentant, however, would be chaff, trees cut down, and would receive the fire!

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Will gifts like prophecy and tongues pass away? — 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 in context

Paul says that spiritual gifts like prophecy, tongues and knowledge will pass away when we no longer need them (1 Cor. 13:8-10). Some Christians read this passage as if it said, “Spiritual gifts like prophecy, tongues, and knowledge passed away when the last book of the New Testament was written.” This interpretation of 1 Corinthians 13 ignores the entire context of 1 Corinthians, however: it is a letter to the Corinthians in the middle of the first century, and they had never yet heard of a New Testament in the middle of the first century. Had Paul meant the completion of the New Testament, he would have had to have made this point much more clearly–starting by explaining what a New Testament addition to their Bible was.

In the context we find instead that Paul means that spiritual gifts will pass away when we know God as He knows us, when we see Him face to face (13:12; when we no longer see as through a mirror as in the present—cf. 2 Cor 3:18, the only other place where Paul uses the term). In other words, spiritual gifts must continue until our Lord Jesus returns at the end of the age. They should remain a normal part of our Christian experience today.

A broader examination of the context reveals even more of Paul’s meaning in this passage. In chapters 12-14, Paul addresses those who are abusing particular spiritual gifts, and argues that God has gifted all members of Christ’s body with gifts for building up God’s people. Those who were using God’s gifts in ways that hurt others were abusing the gifts God had given for helping others. That is why Paul spends three paragraphs in the midst of his discussion of spiritual gifts on the subject of love: gifts without love are useless (13:1-3); love seeks to edify (13:4-7); the gifts are temporary (for this age only), but love is eternal (13:8-13). We should seek the best gifts (1 Cor. 12:31; 14:1), and love gives us the insight to see which gifts are the best in any given situation–those that build others up.

The context of Paul’s entire letter drives this point home further: Paul’s description of what love is in 1 Cor. 13:4-7 contrasts starkly with Paul’s prior descriptions of the Corinthians in his letter: selfish, boastful, and so on (1 Cor 3:3; 4:6-7, 18; 5:2). The Corinthian Christians, like the later church in Laodicea (Rev. 3:14-22), had a lot in their favor, but lacked what mattered most of all: the humility of love.