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JACKSON, Tenn. — Aug. 20, 2021 — A Christian’s capacity to love others grows as he or she exercises love, 51���� President Samuel W. “Dub” Oliver said Aug. 20.

“The more you love God, the more you are able to love others,” Oliver said. “And that outpouring of love for others will cause you to love God all the more.”

Oliver’s fall convocation address in G.M. Savage Memorial Chapel on the topic of love was the seventh in a series on the virtuous life. Previous convocation messages by Oliver have covered courage, justice, prudence, temperance, faith and hope. Convocation is a formal chapel service that marks the beginning of the new school year.

“I want to remind us as we begin a new academic year that the virtuous life isn’t automatic,” Oliver said. “It is developed. It is the fruit of contemplation, experience and practice.”

Oliver’s message was based on the university’s theme verse for the 2021-2022 academic year, 1 Corinthians 13:7: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” In 1 Corinthians 13, Oliver said Paul was describing “agape” love, a self-sacrificing type of love that is not based on feelings but on the will.

“Today, we are urged by the pattern of this world to spend our resources and seek fulfillment in material things, through pleasure and through expressive individualism,” Oliver said. “That is not the love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things. Ultimately, what the Apostle Paul here speaks of is not any one particular virtue or grace, but that which is the root and spring of all virtues and graces, and which to possess is to be both like God and in God.”

Love, Oliver said, is a fruit of the Holy Spirit and is a response and way of living made possible by God’s grace. It is not simply a gift but a way of being and relating.

In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul exalts faith, hope and love, Oliver said, but holds love up as the greatest of the three. The reason for that, he continued, is that while faith and hope are enabled by God’s grace, God does not “believe,” and the Bible never says that God “hopes.” God does love, however, and so do believers.

“Thus, love’s being and existing is tied to God’s very self, and in loving, believers participate with God in a special, unique, even reciprocal way,” Oliver said. “Love, grounded as it is in God and an eternal characteristic of God’s commitment toward all who bear his image, is the one disposition that believers share most fully with God.”

Oliver challenged the Union community to be an example to the world in how they love one another, pointing to the early church’s model of love that made it distinctive in the world. He said love is the way to victory now, as it was in New Testament times that were marked by struggle and setbacks.

“It is not the absence of problems, but how we deal with them, that determines our continued growth toward the full experience of blessing,” Oliver said. “Problems and differences are not the end of love. They are an occasion for love. …

“What the world needs, what Union needs, what every family needs, is more agape love.”

The full address is available at .