I Wanna Know What Love Is

6 · The pastor grounds the theological claim of God's prior love in John 3:16 and develops the meaning of being 'beloved' through domestic illustrations—parent and newborn, mother and child's drawing, military father and child

John 3:16, perhaps the most famous verse in the Bible. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. God so loved the world, the world that had turned away from him, that he sent his Son to die in their place for their sins, to cover our wrongs, to restore our relationship, to restore what we lost in the beginning.

And in Christ then, according to the language of Ephesians, that kind of phrasing occurs again and again in Ephesians, in Christ, in Christ, in Christ. In Christ, we are saved. Beloved, right? This is the image of a father holding his newborn child in the hospital. This is the image of a mom who takes the drawing of a toddler that the toddler is so proud of, hands to their mom, and the mom takes it in love.

She's not evaluating it in terms of objective art, like, well, your shading's a little off here. She's accepting it, rejoicing in it, putting it on the fridge. Or sometimes we have this, you know, maybe a father who's a military service member whose son or daughter follows them into military service. After they get through basic, right, there's that handshake of affection and love that so much is wrapped up in.

7 · A personal story about the pastor's conversation with his 3-year-old son after correction illustrates the tautological nature of God's love—God loves us because he loves us, not because of what we contribute

I think of it this way. I've got a 3-year-old, and we had a difficult moment, had to do some correction. I don't know if you experienced that with your 3-year-old. Had to do some correction, and I circled back a few minutes later, and I kinda got down on his level, and I was like, hey bud, do you know that Dad loves you? Do you know that I love you? And he's like, yeah, I know you love me.

So I was like, okay. But I took it a step further, and I said, hey buddy, why do I love you? And he looked, and he kinda thought about it for a second, and he looked back at me, and he goes, because you love me.

And I thought, that actually is incredibly profound, because he's getting something, that I still love him when he's bad. I still love him as my son. Sometimes we'll laugh at him when he gets angry, because it's funny, and we're supposed to be correcting him, but he's doing funny things. But I don't love him because he contributes a whole lot to our household income. Right?

I don't— he's the opposite. I don't love him because of how useful he is in our household. He is not useful. Anything he tries to help with takes twice as long and ends up messier. I love him because I'm his dad.

I love him because I love him. And that is what Ephesians is telling us about the love of God for us. We are beloved as children. Not because of how much we can do, not because God needs us, not because God wants something from us. God does not love us because of how much we contribute to his plan or how much we've accomplished in our lives, or because of how we look, or because of our economic status or social status.

God loves us in Christ because he loves us. He loves us because he loves us. That is what Paul is saying in Ephesians 5:1.

8 · The pastor applies the theological foundation by posing diagnostic questions to Christians about whether they start from God's love or their own lack, then addresses non-Christians with the claim that only God can fulfill the love-need, and warns that placing God-sized expectations on human relationships crushes those relationships under impossible weight

And so let me just ask you this, Christian, do you start thinking about love from the place of being loved by God? Or do you kind of wake up going, oh man, I need to find love somewhere. I need to get out there and see love and experience love because I just don't have any. Or do you wake up every day knowing that God loves you as a dearly beloved child? Do you wake up secure in that love? And if you're not a Christian, look, let me encourage you, this is what you're truly looking for. And this is where you're not gonna find anywhere else, no romantic kind of relationship, no even father-son, daughter-child relationship will do this for you.

And by the way, when we, take that desire for love that's meant for God and we don't fulfill it in God, what happens is that whoever we place that desire on, we end up crushing them. Because you get married and you think this person will complete me, spoiler alert, they don't. They do not complete you, and a year later you're like, unbelievable, right? Or this child is gonna give my life meaning. But ultimately they can wander, right?

They're a wonderful child, but they're not gonna do, what they were never designed to do or created to do, which is fill your heart with the love of God that you were made for.

9 · The pastor transitions from the source of love (God's prior love for us) to the nature of love itself

All right, that's the first point. Second point, the nature of love. Now, in the world, love is a feeling or experience. So let me quote another great American philosopher, that great rock band Foreigner, in saying their probing question, "I wanna know what love is." "I wanna know what love is." All the Gen Xers are like, are singing it in their heads right now.

But notice this, notice the chorus goes, "I wanna know what love is, I want you to show me. I wanna feel what love is, I want you to show me." So they're not looking for something objective. What Foreigner's looking for is what America is looking for. They are looking for a feeling. They wanna feel in love.

And this is why we say things like, "I'm falling in love with someone," right? Or, "I fell out of love with someone." Or, "I just don't love you anymore." Or, "Love surprised me." Or, "I can't help falling in love," right? I was listening to a pop song recently where the author of the pop song was basically like, "Look, you're still doing all the things you did in the beginning," that made me love you, but now my things have changed and I don't feel the same things, and so I'm gonna have to say goodbye. And you're just kind of like, oh man, what a tough spot for this guy. He doesn't feel like he's in love anymore, so therefore he should, you know, he needs to find a relationship that will really fulfill him.

And then I kind of backed up and went, wait a second, okay, let's break this down. This other person, right, his partner, is doing what they always did, presumably being nice and kind and et cetera and loving him, but he doesn't feel the same way anymore. So the problem is he needs to leave now, right? You're realizing, wait a minute, this is rampant in American culture.

10 · The pastor makes the sermon's central theological correction: biblical love is primarily action, not feeling

And this is where the Bible comes with such helpful kind of correction. In Christ, love is not a feeling or experience primarily, it is an action. It is coupled with feeling and emotion, but it is expressed in action. And so if you have the emotion without the action, the Bible says that's not really love. And you see this definition, "And walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us," right? This word walk is an active word.

We're not standing still, we are moving.

11 · The pastor expounds Ephesians 5:2 to establish Christ's crucifixion—not romantic gestures or celebrations—as the Bible's defining image of love

And what does walking in love look like?

Sorry, apparently I have the weirdest shaped ear. They've tried, specialists, to develop microphones that'll stick on my ear. Scientists are still hard at work. I believe there's a laboratory devoted to it, but they have not succeeded yet. What does walking in love look like?

Well, this is where the scripture helps us. It looks like this: walk in love Paul provides an example: "As Christ loved us and gave himself up for us." So the image of what love looks like is not an image of some guy handing flowers to a girl or a high school guy with an elaborate promposal, which I just disagree with wholeheartedly, but— or even, you know, a glorious, beautiful wedding. That's not the Bible's picture of love. Instead, the picture of love in the Bible, if you're to look up love in the scriptures, is a picture of a man beaten and bleeding and hanging on a cross. The Bible says that is what love looks like.

And in the Bible, love is spoken of as an action. Love does things. And when we begin to understand that, we begin to understand biblical love.

12 · A personal story about the pastor's grandmother calling his grandfather 'viejo' (old man) illustrates that love is proven by actions (making favorite meals, providing care) rather than words or feelings

Now, for years, with— again, going back to my Spanglish— for years I misunderstood and didn't understand the real meaning of the word viejo until I took high school Spanish. I ran across it in high school Spanish and I was like, I don't think this word is— do you guys have the right definition for this? Because I thought it meant honey or dear, right? I thought that's— it was— I thought it was a nice thing to say to somebody. And it was because my grandmother would call my grandfather viejo. And so she would bring him his dinner and say, like, here you go, viejo. And he would say, oh, thank you.

Or he would be ornery or grumpy and want something, and my grandmother would kind of roll her eyes and say, ay, viejo, and go help him anyway, but still help get him— he wanted to go watch the construction workers in the front of the house. You know, we would take him over there. And I thought it was just this term of endearment that my grandmother had for my grandfather instead of realizing it, she was just calling him an old man the whole time. Just, hey, old man, here's your dinner, old man. I'll take you over there, old man.

And the reason I misunderstood it is that her actions were very much love. Her actions were, yeah, she made his favorite meal. Yeah, she's helping care for him as he's aging and getting older. Yeah, his mind is going and he's forgetting things, but she cares for him and about him anyway. Right?

That's what love looks like. Not, you know, the meaning of this thing she keeps saying to him, but what she actually did. And in the same way, we as Christians are called to imitate Christ by acting love. Not just speaking love or feeling love, but acting love. And Paul gives a lot of examples of what this looks like.

He's using these these two verses to summarize really the last section of Ephesians. And so love looks like— it looks like a lot of different things. But for example, in verse 28 of chapter 4, love looks like working hard at a job so you have something to share with other people who are in need. That's what love looks like. Or verse 29, love looks like encouraging and building one another up with our words and refraining from things that tear other people down.

That's what love looks like. Or verse 32, forgiving one another, being kind to one another, loving one another. That is what love looks like, not simply having warm fuzzy feelings.

13 · The pastor directly addresses men who might be disengaging during a sermon on love, reframing biblical love in masculine terms by pointing to military sacrifice

And let me just say this. I think a lot of guys, if I could talk to the guys in here for a second, a lot of the guys, once we start talking about love in church, they're just kind of like, ah, geez, their eyes glaze over. And no offense, guys, but a bunch of you guys are there right now. You guys are there right now. You're like, great, great message for my wife. Give me the stuff I got to do.

And here's the thing I think you've got to get about love. Love being an action is incredibly helpful as a guy. Because I think the US Army is one of the most loving places in America, which everybody in the Army is like, what are you talking about, man? You haven't met my commanding officer. This is not what I experienced, right?

But here's what I know, man. Every service member I've met would lay their life down for the service member next to them. Them, right? The people in their squad, the people in their unit, they're like, I will, I will, I will put my body and life on the line for you. That's what the Bible says love is.

That is what the Bible is talking about. It's not this mushy-gushy feeling that just bubbles up and creates butterflies in your stomach. It is what Jesus did for us. So let's get into this.

14 · The pastor marshals Romans 5:7-8 and 1 John 4:10 to establish the radical, counter-intuitive nature of Christ's love: it was directed toward enemies with nothing desirable in them

How strong then is Christ's love for for us, what does it look like? How far does Christ expect us to go in loving others? Well, look at Romans 5:7-8. Romans 5:7-8 says this. One will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Now look, was there anything in us making God fall in love with us? Is there anything in us making those fuzzy feelings, those butterflies in God's heart? No, was anything in us even desirable? No, we were sinners, we were enemies, but God set his love on us. And then he loved us, not just with a feeling, but with an action, with a sacrificial offering of himself for us.

That is what love looks like. 1 John 4:10, "In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." The offering for our sins.

15 · The Casablanca illustration demonstrates the radical inversion biblical love requires: what American culture sees as tragedy (sacrificing personal desire for the good of others) is actually triumph when love is defined as action for others' good rather than pursuit of one's own feelings

Look, my dad's favorite movie is Casablanca. Anybody else, any other Casablanca fans? My dad, if you are around Casablanca, around my dad for a while, my dad will make you watch Casablanca if you're just in friendship or relationship with him for a long time. And so as kids, we'd have to watch Casablanca. And I thought Casablanca objectively is a good movie. It's a good movie, but a tragedy, right? That's what I thought growing up. Casablanca is a tragedy because the main guy— spoiler alert— well, spoiler alert, but it's like 70 years old.

So I have no sympathy for you if you haven't seen the movie. But everybody knows that the famous last scene in Casablanca where Humphrey Bogart's in the trench coat and he's walking away from the airplane and the music soaring and he's and he's got this sad but resolved look in his eyes, and he's walking away from the girl, right, from his one true love, right, that he met years and years earlier, and they lost touch, but now they've found each other, but she's remarried to this revolutionary in World War II, and so he's trying to get them out of the country, but he really just wants to take the girl for himself, and so you have all this stuff going on, and in the end, in the end, he lets the girl go. No, he sends the girl on her way. He protects her husband, And he does this not just for her, but for the good of her husband and for the good of everybody else in Europe as he tries to resist this Nazi occupation. And it's a tragedy, right?

And so I thought, why is this my dad's favorite movie? It's got the saddest ending ever. Until I began to understand the movie. Casablanca is a tragedy to Americans in the 21st century. Because love, if love is a feeling, the loving action is to take the girl and keep the feeling.

But Casablanca is a triumph according to Ephesians 5 because he loves the girl and basically, because he loves her, lets her go for the good of herself and others. And according to Ephesians 5, that's a triumph. That's not a tragedy. And then you begin to see, okay, I understand why that could be your favorite movie, right? It is a triumph.

16 · The pastor crystallizes the sermonic move from cultural to biblical definition of love, stating the controlling claim clearly: love is Christ-patterned action for others' good, not merely internal feeling

And so what we've gotta do, brothers and sisters, is we have to stop thinking of love just as a feeling, an emotional charge devoid of action, where the Bible says love is an action directed in the pattern of Christ for the good of others. And that is what we're called to imitate and pursue.

17 · The pastor applies the action-based definition of love to marriage (stop measuring feelings, start measuring sacrificial action), family (creating atmosphere of service), church (moving from consumer satisfaction to sacrificial service), and the broader world

And so think of how this could apply just in all the different areas of life, right? In marriage, maybe you think, okay, man, my wife or husband doesn't make, doesn't create that old spark anymore, you know? And you're taking lots of measurements internally. Do I feel, how do I feel when I see them? You know, when I got a text message from them years ago, I used to feel all, but I don't feel those feelings anymore. Instead, look at what the Bible calls love. Look, are they laying their life down in service for you? That's love.

Are you caring for them and encouraging them when they need to be encouraged? That's love, right? And spend far more time evaluating how we love others rather than how they make us feel. That's what the Bible would call us to do. Or in family, the kind of atmosphere of our kids and the tenor of our family, is that an atmosphere of love, but not just warm fuzzies, but actual service and care for one another.

This applies very much to churches. In Ephesians 4, this is the immediate context. I hear a lot of Christians say things like, "I love my church," right? "I love my church." And what do they usually mean when they say, "I love my church"? They usually mean that when I go to church, it makes me feel good, and I love the way the church makes me feel.

I love the way that guy teaches. I love the The sound of the worship team. I love the donuts. I like the old donuts better, but these donuts are okay, you know, or whatever. That's normally what they're referring to.

But Ephesians 4 says this: Do you love your church? Then serve it. Do you love your church? Then forgive one another. Do you love your church?

Then lay your life down for one another. That's how you know if you love your church. And even the world around us is not the immediate context of Ephesians, but it could be applied all over the place, to our workplaces, and jobs, and neighborhoods.

18 · A targeted pastoral word to singles reframes mate evaluation from 'how do they make me feel?' to 'what do they do?'—specifically, do they demonstrate sacrificial love toward others, which predicts how they will treat you

And let me just say this for singles really quick. This is just a for-free thing for singles. Our world very much measures potential spouses or mates primarily through the lens of how they make you feel. Now, please don't marry somebody you don't like, okay? So I'm not saying that. You just gotta be like, well, objectively they seem fine, so let's get married, I guess. We're not doing arranged marriages, that's, no fear, but that's the exclusive lens through which we view romantic affection.

How do they make me feel? But scripture would say this, what do they do? Not just what do they tell you about how they feel, but what do they do? Do they sacrifice in love for you and for other people in their life, 'cause pretty much, The way they treat other people in their life is gonna be the way they treat you. Look for somebody who loves according to the Bible's definition of love.

19 · The pastor transitions to a third major contrast between cultural and biblical love—this time concerning the telos or end of love

Alright, fourth, I skipped point number 3, but fourth, the end of love. Now this is where, again, we really start to see the divergence between the world and being in Christ. In the world, the ultimate goal of love is a self kind of end. A glory internally that shines and shimmers around you, right? You feel fulfilled with a family and it's glorious, or you have a perfect wedding day and it's glorious, right? The highest purpose of love is the way that it makes you feel or what your experience is.

20 · The pastor expounds the phrase 'a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God' to establish that Christ's love for humanity has God's glory as its ultimate end

But in Christ, the end of love is actually pointed back to God. Look at verse 2 again. Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Christ's love, when he laid his life down, was aimed at us, but we're not the final target of his action. We're not the end of his action, right? Jesus gives himself for us. So please don't hear what I'm not saying. You are in Christ deeply loved, deeply cared for, truly cared for, right? It's for you, but it's not to you.

It's done unto God the Father. This act of love for us is also an offering and sacrifice to God. And you might think, well, that's a bit selfish, isn't it? I mean, Jesus is just pointing back to his own, to God's own glory. Well, this is not incredibly selfish.

It's incredibly beautiful. 'Cause go back to Genesis. The Bible says that God is love. And before the world began, Father, Son, and Spirit existed in this perfect harmony of love. Rivalry, no conflict.

And Scripture says that the Spirit shines the light on the Son, and the Son magnifies the Father, and the Father rejoices in the Spirit and the Son. So when God creates human beings in his image, he makes them to reflect that glory, that Trinitarian love. So God, in overflow of love, creates us to love him, and he loves us. And you see how it just keeps going. Back and forth and back and forth.

And as it goes back and forth, it's something more glorious and beautiful than it would have been otherwise.

21 · An art installation illustration makes the abstract theological point concrete: love directed toward God (lights meeting) creates something more beautiful than love directed into the void (lights shining into nothing)

A few years ago, there was this really cool border art installation between the US and Mexico where they had these big giant lights that would shine in the sky, and you could take the light and just shine it into no— nothing. And it was kind of like, hey, cool, that's a cool light. But if all of the lights shone toward one another, they would make like a light bridge over El Paso, Juárez, like across the border, which is really cool. And then when the lights intersected, here's the really cool tech part of it, when the lights intersected, you could talk to the person on the other end of the border. So all of a sudden, everybody on either end could talk to each other when these lights kind of line up in the sky. And they created something more beautiful than just shining a light off into the darkness. And similarly, when God loves us and we love God, it creates this beautiful, majestic, powerful thing that we were made to participate in that we'll never find shining a light out into the darkness by ourselves. I think my ear is getting worse. Is my ear getting reshaped progressively as we go?

Let me know.

22 · The pastor synthesizes the theological move: God's glory as the end of love is not contrary to our joy but constitutive of it—finding our delight in God's glory is the telos toward which biblical love moves us

So the end of love is the glory of God, but that glory of God becomes our delight and love as well. That's where things are taking us.

23 · The pastor signals the sermon's final major section while also previewing the following week's sermon

All right, one last thing and then we'll wrap up. The boundaries of love. Now this is what we're gonna be discussing next week and following, as we see that God puts boundaries around how love is to be expressed. But in the world, true love means no boundaries, right?

24 · A contemporary example of a pastor leaving his family 'for love' illustrates the world's equation of true love with following one's feelings regardless of boundaries

I saw this recently where a pastor that I didn't know well but was kind of acquainted with, He had been married for a number of years. He had 3 or 4 kids, and he basically came to his wife and said, look, I don't love you anymore. I need to be true to myself, and I need to leave our marriage. But I still do love you and the kids, so I want to do this as amicably as possible. And so he basically announces on Facebook, and it was kind of a— it was an interesting post.

Because he's pulling people's heartstrings and basically telling this long story of all of what he's experienced and how he has to be true to himself and he doesn't want to live a lie and how he needs to— and the only way to really live is to leave this marriage and his family. And what was fascinating is a lot of people, but not a ton of Christians, but some Christians, basically commented on his post and said, listen, you know, I know this sounds so hard, but I'm for you. You know, I support you, you know, and I agree you can't live a lie and you need to basically listen to yourself and pursue what you wanna pursue. And for me as a Christian pastor, I mean, I was grieved 'cause I'd kind of known this guy, but I also thought this is how our world thinks. Thinks about love.

25 · The pastor makes the theological argument for boundaries on love: if love is feeling-based, boundaries are oppressive; but if love flows from being beloved by God and is directed toward God's glory, then God's word rightly constrains how we express love

We're willing to affirm, yeah, we like love, the world likes love, everybody likes love. The real difference often comes down to the world basically says, well then, if love is a feeling and an experience, you need to pursue it wherever and however you can experience that feeling. If it's an emotion, you need to do whatever you need to do to maintain and get that emotion. But if love starts from the Christian perspective, if love starts with I'm beloved by God and then called to love others, then it would make sense that out the way we love others is constrained by what would honor and glorify God. I mean, look at verse 2.

It talks about a— this offering of Christ is a fragrant offering and sacrifice to to God, the images of a temple sacrifice. And so when things were offered in the temple, they had to be offered according to what God has given in terms of his design, right? Those offerings were carefully made because they were done unto God. And so our acts of love similarly must be done unto God, constrained and governed by what God says in his word, right? In the next section, I'm gonna give you a heads up and a warning.

There's a long list, it's a lot about sexuality, and there's a long list of stuff not to do, right? No sex outside of marriage, no crude joking, no deception, no greed, no selfishness. And when we look at that from the perspective of our culture, we look at it and think, how can God say no to all those things? How dare he? He is squelching people's pursuit of love.

Or what if these two people, regardless of their background or marital status or gender, whatever, what if they just love each other? Can't we let them just love each other? What's the problem with that? Why do Christians always have to get in the middle of this and be telling people and trying to ruin people's lives by telling them what to do and how to do it? But here's the reality from Ephesians 5.

God is loving. God deeply loves us, and because he loves us, he constrains what we do.

26 · A hypothetical parenting scenario (3-year-old with scissors) illustrates that boundaries are expressions of love, not restrictions on freedom

Look, if I tell my 3-year-old— if my 3-year-old comes to me and says, "I'd like to play with the scissors," and I'm like, "Well, would it make you happy?" And the 3-year-old's like, "Yes, it would make me very happy." Then I go, "You know what? Knock yourself out." You know, there's gonna be blood all over the floor within a few minutes. I am sure, because I know as a father, my love for them means I will constrain what they are allowed to do.

And here's the reality: if they pursue that, right, if they think they love the scissors and they cut and bleed themselves, they will lose their freedom to play with all the other stuff they've got because they're gonna be in the hospital. All of a sudden, their freedom that they're pursuing will end in no freedom at all. And in Christ, because God loves us, he puts boundaries on what and how we love him and love others. Not so that we would be limited in our love, but so that we would be free to love as we were designed and made to love. That's where things are going.

27 · The pastor closes with an extended metaphor contrasting two ways of pursuing love: the world's way (using others as drowning buoys, moving from person to person) versus the Christian way (secure on the raft of God's love, freed to help others without drowning them)

So let me, let me sum this up this way. This is the image I had as, as kind of we're wrapping up right now. The image I had is of Imagine that you're in a crash, a plane crash or a boat crash, and you end up out in the middle of the ocean. And so you end up realizing, okay, listen, it's gonna take a while for the rescuers to get here, and in the meantime, I gotta stay afloat. And so you look around and you go, and Alec is over there swimming, and I think, well, Alec's a pretty strong swimmer.

So I swim over to Alec and I just use him as a buoy, right? And I'm just like, hey man, I'm gonna take a rest. You swim, you tread water for us, man. And after a while, Alec starts getting tired, and he's like, "Oh, man." He starts fading. And I'm like, "Don't worry, Alec.

You got this, man. Keep going, keep going." And then eventually, Alec's gonna sink, and I'm gonna go, "Well, it was good while it lasted." And I'm gonna find somebody else, maybe Deli. "All right, Deli, sorry." And I'm using Deli as a buoy. And that's very much what our world and our pursuit of love is like. We were made to be safe and secure in God's love, and then to live out of that.

But apart from God, all we're left doing is trying to grab onto other people and things around us. And the problem is either they'll drown us or we'll drown them. And then we go to the next person and then the next person and the next person. Here's why Ephesians 5:1 is so glorious. It says, be imitators of God as beloved children.

And then it says, walk in love. So what it's saying is this: you have a raft. On this open stormy sea, God has given you a raft where you are safe and secure in the fact that God loves you. And if you're in Christ, he loves you even unto the point of death, and he will not stop now, and he will not stop tomorrow, and he will not stop for eternity. So you are secure in love, and you don't have to go out grabbing Alec and drowning him, which I'm sure Alec would appreciate.

You don't have to go do that because God has given you a safe and secure place to live from. But then, in light of that, he says, go out and help others. Go out and love others and be a picture of the love of Jesus Christ in this world that so desperately needs it. And that's why Christian love is different from all other love. It's not, I love because I desperately need something from you.

It's, I love because I'm love. I'm loved, and regardless of how you respond to me, still love you, because that's the way God responds to me.

28 · The pastor closes with two diagnostic questions that apply the sermon's argument to believers and unbelievers

So, 2 questions as we end. First, do you know you're loved? And second, will you choose to love today? Do you know you're loved? Look, if you're not a Christian, let me just encourage you. You can keep going from person to person and drowning the people around you or being drowned by the people around you, but you will never be secure until in Christ You are a beloved child. But the good news is, in Christ, you can repent and believe and today find yourself safe and secure. Oh, man, won't you do that today?

And if you're a Christian, let me just encourage you. Don't— the order is so important. Don't try to love others until you see how much God loves you. We're about to sing about that in a second. I'm just going to pray the Lord would minister to that issue.

And then the second question is just, will you choose then to love today? And many of the times we think about love in these big grandiose actions, these grand, you know, a viral TikTok of somebody's expression of love. But love in Ephesians looks way more just like the everyday normal stuff of life, of husbands laying down their life for their wife, of parents laying down their life for their kids, of churches laying down their lives for one another. So the question is this: Jesus has loved you. Will you love the people around you today.

29 · Verbal instruction to stand for closing prayer, transitioning from sermon to worship

Would you stand? Let's pray.

30 · Closing pastoral prayer addressing unbelievers (asking God to reveal his objective love in Christ) and believers (asking God to minister his love to those who don't feel it, grounding their assurance in the objective reality of the cross rather than subjective experience)

Oh, Heavenly Father, Lord, I first pray for anyone who does not know you or doesn't know where they are with you in terms of their faith today, God.

Lord, I pray that they would see the objective love of God for them. Lord, we live in a world of false promises. We live in a world where people say they love us and then do things that are not loving. So, Lord, I pray that you would help us see your love for us in the objective, real truth of you laying down your life for us. And, Lord, I pray that you would break in today through whatever walls that we've put up Lord, sometimes we are afraid to sort of offer ourselves up and be loved by others because we fear that they could hurt us.

And Lord, you're the one person in the world that will never hurt us when we open ourselves to love from you. So Lord, I pray that you would draw any who don't know you to yourself. And I pray that every Christian today, as we end by singing, you would minister to hearts, especially that don't feel loved. That don't feel your affection, that don't feel your nearness. And I pray that you would minister, Lord, through the Spirit, creating an experience of that love for us, but even more through the objective reality that if you loved us so much you'd lay down your life for us, how will you not love us today?

If you loved us at our worst, how will you not love us today? And I pray that that would change us, transform us, and send us out today. Amen.