Love - Foundation of Freedom

Intro

What does love mean to you? How do you recognize it—whether you’re giving or receiving it? Many have tried to help us with understanding what love is. We hear it in music, we see it in movies and tv shows. The chorus of song of this one song ‘What is Love’ kept popping into my head as I thought about this sermon. It goes “What is love, baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me no more.”

Don’t worry, the music team won’t let me in.

The implicit sentiment in that chorus is that to hurt someone is not a demonstration of love. I think we can all agree with that but is that all it means to love? So long as you are not hurting someone, you are giving all the love they need. The bible goes further than that. There is a reason Paul starts the fruit of Spirit with love. It is the foundation for every other quality that is listed. To love is to be those other things.

Biblical love isn’t easy; it requires divine intervention. You might be surprised to see not just love, but also the other qualities described as the fruit of the spirit that’s because they require the work of the Spirit of God for us to live them out as in they should. The spirit is needed for us to love, for us to have joy, peace, kindness, gentleness, goodness, patience, faithfulness, and self-control.

And I’m sure you know that love is not only expressed and felt by Christians. Almost everyone wants to be loved. But what sets us apart as Christians is we get to show the world what it means to love the real way. Which means we have to know what it means to love the real way and not only know it, we have to actually show it.

I’ll never forget the time a couple at a church Modesta, and I attended wrote us a check of $1000 when we got married. We didn’t have much then but almost $200,000 worth of debt. No one had ever given us that type of money before. And it left a lasting impression on us. That act of love—sacrificial and undeserved—taught us more about God’s love in that moment than perhaps any sermon ever could because we experienced it.

Love is so significant that Paul declared in 1 Corinthians 13 that nothing matters if we fail to love.

So, where do we start with understanding how to love? We start with Jesus. We’ll start by looking at the love of God that we have been given through Jesus and after that we’ll talk about how we can love the right way.

I’ve got multiple scripture references for us to look at today but the one we will read together is foundation scripture for the series Gal. 5:19-25. Open your bible to Gal. 5:19-25, we’ll read and ask for God’s blessing on the proclamation of his word.

Love of God

We can listen to the classic songs on love, we can read the literatures that contain beautiful prose and poetry about love. They might have some good things to help us understand the nature of love but the love of God that is expressed and shown through Jesus must be our foundation—that’s where we truly learn to love. That is the love which the Spirit of God is producing within us, that is the love that is the foundation of the freedom that we have.

To live out the fruit of love, we must look to Jesus. His life teaches us four key traits of love that helps us understand what it means to love God’s way.

First, His love for us is sacrificial. What does that mean? It means something was given up for us to experience his love.

Picture a firefighter or soldier risking their life to save others. Jesus said it best in John 15:13: ‘No greater love exists than laying down your life for your friends.’ And he didn’t just say it—he did it for us, sacrificing his heavenly home and his very life so we could live. His love is sacrificial.

The Second trait we see about the love of Jesus toward us is that it is undeserving. Here’s what we see in Ephesians 2:4-5 - But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace! That’s undeserving love.

Imagine a parent forgiving their rebellious child, not because the child deserves it, but because love drives them to extend grace. That’s how God loves us—when we’ve done nothing to earn it, He meets us with mercy. It’s a love that goes forth without being called, it’s a love that is laid at the feet of the recipient without charge. A love that is backed by mercy. A love that is undeserving.

Here’s the third trait we see about the love of Jesus, it is consistent. It doesn’t change based on what we have done. How many times have you done what you weren’t supposed to do, and it wasn’t enough to change God’s love for you? Paul says in Romans 8:38-39 -For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The love that God bestows upon us through Jesus is a consistent love. It’s steady. We can say it is unbreakable. It’s like the friend who sticks by you through every mistake, every hurtful word.

Here’s the fourth trait we see about the love of Jesus, it is incomprehensible. It is hard to understand it. Because it is a love that is sacrificial, underserving, and consistent, our minds cannot grasp the reality of such love and the extent of it. Paul prayed for the Ephesian church in Ephesians 3:17-19 for this very thing. That they would comprehend what is incomprehensible. He wrote “I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

He’s praying they would know what is unknowable to the human mind.

God’s love is so vast—long, wide, high, and deep—that we need His help to comprehend it.

These are the traits of the love we have been given by God through Jesus. A love that is sacrificial, undeserving, consistent, and incomprehensible.

Have you ever felt this type of love from someone else? Have you ever shown this type of love to someone else?

Love for Others

The reality is when we think of the love of God, it reminds us of our weakness. It reminds us how far we still have to go. But this is the goal. The is what the Spirit is producing within us.

Will we ever love perfectly like Jesus loves, no. But what it means to be a Christian is to pursue looking more and more like Jesus even if we never arrive in this life.

While we may never lay down our lives in the sacrificial way Jesus did, we can lay aside what we value for the greater good. There are plenty of things that we can lay aside for the good of others. We can lay aside our resources (money, time, possessions), desires (I’d rather sit at home today but maybe it’s best to go to church and to worship Jesus and hang with my brothers and sisters). These are just a few to mention.

Love often means setting aside our comforts—like giving up your weekend to help a friend or sharing your bonus with someone in need. To be sacrificial is to love.

What does it look like to love others when they do not deserve it? To give affection that is undeserving? To love knowing they have done absolutely nothing to be given that love?

I often fail at this. I sometimes don’t show love because I’m unhappy with what someone did to me. I’m unwilling to be sacrificial because they pissed me off. It is hard to love people when you don’t feel like it. But we love sacrificially, even when it is undeserving. To love, is to give it when it hasn’t been earned.

When we let arguments or offenses dictate our actions, our love becomes inconsistent.

Can you imagine if you were loved consistently by those in your life? No matter how much you offend and annoy, they still loved you the same? We’re not talking of simply love in speech but love in action. They did loving things even when they weren’t happy with you.

This is the love that should be produced within us, the love that we should point to as a mark of our maturity in Christ. This type of love must be the pattern of our life.

Love that is sacrificial, undeserving, and consistent.

And when we live out this type of love, we become incomprehensible to those who might be watching. They will fail to understand why and how we are able to love as we do. We might even be a laughingstock. But that’s okay because we are reflecting Jesus truthfully.

It’s important to add that love is not just what you do, it is who you are. That is what we say about God. God does not merely do loving things, he is love, he’s a loving God. Meaning, love emanates from him, he does not grudgingly do loving stuff, but he does them because he cares. It then becomes a reflection of who he is. The act is not separated from the person.

Love does not call us to do loving things while being an unloving person.

I can do things that are perceived as loving but not have a loving disposition toward you.

Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 13 that without love, even the greatest spiritual acts are meaningless.

Giving away all my possessions to the poor is a loving thing to do but I can do it without love in my heart, I can do it simply because it’s a thing to do, I can do it because I want people to think well of me, and not because I deeply care about the poor. It becomes a selfish act rather than a selfless act.

Conclusion

This love is hard. But this is the standard that we must pursue.

Living a life of love is essential. It is so important that Paul wrote in Romans 13:8 - Do not owe anyone anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. That’s profound isn’t it.

We owe love to others, we owe it to love people, and in loving them, we are loving Jesus.

That’s what Jesus said in Matthew 25. He tells us that when we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, or visit the imprisoned, we’re doing it for Him.

Imagine living your life feeling unworthy of love, carrying shame from your past. But then you’re introduced to the depth of God’s sacrificial, undeserving, and unchanging love. That love then changes your outlook on life. And you begin showing the same love to your family and friends. Becoming a living example of God’s grace.This may feel daunting, but here’s the good news friends, love isn’t self-made—it’s the work of the Spirit transforming us from within. This is just merely a picture of what we are chasing after.

If you’re like me, you may need to confess where love has fallen short in your life and invite the Spirit to renew your heart.

We need God’s help. We can’t love sacrificially on our own, we can’t give love that is underserving on our own, we can’t love consistently on our own, we can’t give love that is incomprehensible on our own.

It is the Spirit of God who equips us to love like Jesus. Through Him, we can love sacrificially, undeservingly, consistently, and even incomprehensibly.

Will you this week pray to God to produce this love within you