Sunday message · Wrestling with Love series
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Message Summary
In the fifth week of Wrestling with Love, a series on the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5:16–23, Pastor Phillip Santillan turns to gentleness. It is easy to love people who look, vote and talk like us, he says, but hard to love those who are different, and each of us is hard to love too. Just as some fruits at the store are more popular than others, everyone wants love, joy and peace, but few think much about gentleness.
Culture pictures gentleness as passive, overly submissive or wimpy, and few people call themselves gentle. But gentleness is not a laid-back temperament, Phil says; that is just personality. Gentleness comes from God. He points to Martin Luther King Jr., who at 27 came home in 1956 to find his house bombed and an angry, armed crowd gathered outside. King calmed them, urging them to put away their weapons, meet violence with nonviolence and love their enemies. That was not weakness, and King drew his strength to be gentle from Jesus.
Gentleness is an expression of love modeled by Jesus. It has the strength to get its own way but chooses otherwise. As Phil puts it, “I would rather make a difference than make a point.” In Philippians 2 Paul describes Jesus, who, though he was God, gave up his divine privileges, took the humble position of a slave and died a criminal’s death on the cross. Gentleness, strength under control, lays down its rights, especially when it has been wronged.
Gentleness grows through humility; in the New Testament the two rarely appear apart. Phil confesses that he struggles with pride, which makes it hard to admit we are wrong, keeps us holding grudges and resisting change, and blinds us to our own faults. Titus 3:2 calls believers to be gentle and show true humility to everyone, and everyone means everyone. In Matthew 5:5 Jesus flips the world’s script: not the strongest or wealthiest but the humble and gentle will inherit the whole earth.
Gentleness cannot be produced by effort, since it is not in our nature to be selfless and forgiving, as any toddler shows. The church often just says stop sinning, but Galatians 5:16 gives the remedy: let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Phil says we grow in gentleness by submitting our lives to Jesus and living by his Spirit, day after day. He reads one commentator’s warning signs of a life lacking gentleness, including harshness, grasping, vengefulness and uncontrolled rage. Jesus does not demand perfection, the commentator adds, but a gentle spirit should be at least imperfectly present and growing.
When that feels overwhelming, Jesus invites the weary to come to him (Matthew 11:28), to take his yoke and learn from him, because he is humble and gentle at heart. A yoke often paired an experienced ox with a young one, mainly to teach the younger to listen to the master’s direction. Likewise, we learn gentleness by being yoked to Christ, surrendering to his humility and learning to hear and obey the master’s voice.