Words To Live By "Love Is Love" | November 2 2025 (Part 2)

When you open up your Bibles and turn with me to the letter of

first John, Letter First John. We were into that letter quite

extensively during the summer, if you remember, and we are back

into it just for today. We are carrying on in our series

Words to Live By. And just a brief warning to you,

particularly to your parents, to the parents, some of the

material going to be covering in this message will be sensitive

to young years. And so it anyway just just a

little, just just a caution to you.

I'll be very careful with my language, but the same time it

is a very sensitive topic. So I want to give you a heads up

about that. We are looking at words to live

by. So pithy sayings, slogans that

have become popular in our culture, that have gained some

traction and in fact have have such an emotional punch that

they can have quite an impact in the way that we think, not just

in the world in general, society in general, but as Christians as

well. And as we looked at last Week, 2

2 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

Corinthians chapter 10, the apostle Paul tells us how

important it is for us to take captive every thought and make

it obedient to Christ. He's talking about the arguments

that we hear. He's using military imagery, and

he's saying we need to tear down strongholds.

And what he means is we need to tear down.

He defines strongholds as arguments, claims that are made

in our culture that may or may not necessarily line up with the

Word of God. And what we need to do is we

need to take captive those thoughts that we have and bring

them into conformity with the purpose of God's will.

And so that's what we're doing in this particular series.

And today we're looking at one sane, a popular sane.

And it's this Love is love. Love is love.

I remember the very first time that I saw those 3 words put

together. It had quite, quite an impact on

me, actually. It was in a Starbucks cafe, and

it was on a chalkboard. Love is love, right there on the

counter with a little rainbow underneath.

And I realized, you know what? That's a powerful saying.

That is a very, very powerful scene and so we want to take a

look at it. This has become really the

flagship slogan or argument for Front front that has arisen from

the LGBTQ plus community. And really what it's saying is

what it's trying to communicate. Is that all forms of love are

equally valid and beautiful, regardless of your gender,

regardless of your orientation of the people that are involved.

That same sex love is just as legitimate as heterosexual love,

and it should be accepted and celebrated.

In other words, if you were to summarize it, it's Don't judge

love. Now I resonate with that

personally in the sense that there's some good intentions

behind this statement. There is a universal human

experience that we all have of love.

Who does not want to be loved? We all want to be loved, and we

all want to experience the joy of actually giving love to

another person. Think about it.

In this statement, there's a recognition that love is

powerful. It's one of the most powerful

and beautiful forces on this planet, and there's a real

desire to want to protect it, to preserve it.

How could it ever be wrong for people to love each other?

I mean, think about that. How can we be against love,

especially as Christians? So I think it's good for us to

kind of ponder this for a bit. How could we or how could

anybody stand in the way of two people that simply want to love

one another? You know, this brings up a lot

of theological issues for us as well, particularly as they

relate to the character of God. Because if we were to ask the

question, why would God make someone gay and then deny them

the right to follow through on their desires?

Why would he do that? Why?

Why would God create someone who has desires that they're not

allowed to fulfill? It seems unfair.

It does. And think about that.

It almost makes more sense theologically to just admit love

is love, right? So we need as Christians, as

followers of Jesus Christ, to take captive every thought and

look at these ideas and to see how do they line up with the

Word of God. Now we're back into the letter

of first John, and we're going to be looking at just a few

verses, chapter 4, starting in verse 7.

So we're going to look at 7:00 to 12:00.

And the reason why we're in first John, is this letter, this

little letter, letter leather, little, little, little leather,

better 46 times the word love is used in this letter.

And then just these verses, verses 7 to 12, the word love

shows up 13 times. This is the most concentrated,

concentrated passage of love in the whole entire Bible.

And that's why we're going to take a look at this to help us

to formulate our thoughts and to approach this particular saying.

So if you remember, John wrote this letter in order to do a

couple of things. 1 he wanted to reassure every single one of us

of God's love. The God is love and he loves

each one of us. But also, John is writing to

give us criteria to evaluate what Love Actually is and what

it means to actually be a follower of Jesus Christ, an

authentic follower of Jesus Christ.

So, Father, we pray that as we approach Your word that you

would meet us this morning, that you would visit us, that You

would open our eyes to see wonderful things from Your law.

Help us to love You more and more through Jesus Christ, we

pray. Amen.

First John chapter 4, starting at verse 7.

1 John 4 · chapter mention

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from

God. Everyone who loves has been born

of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not

know God, because God is love. Just pause there.

John is talking about where love comes from, the source of true

love, and it comes from God. And he says, you know, let us

love one another. Awesome.

We should be doing that. Why?

For love comes from God. When we're loving as God loves,

it's a sign that we are connected to God.

We're connected to that, to that, to that vine and producing

that love. If we're not loving the way God

loves, it's a sign that we're kind of outside of of his

outside of relationship with him.

As continue on verse 9. This is how God showed his love

among us. He sent his one and only Son

into the world that we might live through him.

Love is not something that is just spoken, it's demonstrated.

God just does, doesn't just say hey I love you.

He actually shows us that He loves us.

And how did He show us? By sending his one and only Son

into the world, that we might live through him.

He sees that apart from him we are perishing.

Apart from him we are headed toward destruction.

But He sends his one and only son to come into the world that

we might live, that we might find life and live through him.

OK, verse 10. And this is the crux of the

matter. This is love.

You ready? Not that we love God, but that

He loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our

sins. This is love, not that we love

God. In other words, if we're going

to look at where love comes from and our definition of love, we

don't define love. We don't, we don't look at our

own behavior, what we how we love in order to define what

love is. It's saying no, no, it's not how

we love. It's actually how God loves us.

That's how we know what love is, and it shows it here.

He sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

If we were to look at what love is, love is an act of self

denial. It's an act of sacrifice on

behalf of another person, and not just any person, but this is

a sacrifice on behalf of someone who's unlovable, who's

undesirable. God is saying this is the

standard, this is the Plumb line.

This is what we're looking at when we're talking about what

pure love is. Love is a holy thing and that's

why if we were to jump back into chapter 3, verse 16, talking

about what the standard is, it says John says this is how we

know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life

for us. That's the standard.

This is how we know what love is.

Jesus laid down his life. It's the ultimate demonstration,

ultimate picture that God gives us.

This is what love is. And then it follows when he

says, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and

sisters. And this is where John goes.

Actually, if we're back to to verse 11 in our text, it says,

dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one

another. So what John is saying is that

this is how God loves. And so because of that, because

we're following him, we're gonna love like he loves.

Now, none of us love exactly how God loves, but this is the

standard that he sets. And he says, come, come, follow

me and let's love as Jesus, as Jesus loves.

And then in verse 12, he finishes by saying no one has

ever seen God. But if we love one another, God

lives in us, and his love is made complete in us.

In other words, though we don't see God when we love like He

loves, somehow He's revealed in our midst, followers of Jesus

Christ, that God's design for our lives is that we would be

tangible expressions of him. We would make God tangible in

our world simply by the way that we love.

Because the way that we're loving is not the way the world

loves, but this is the love that comes from heaven, comes from

God himself. And so he's revealing himself

through our acts of love. It's pretty cool thought.

And John says that his love is actually being made complete in

US, that that that how he has loved us is meant to be spread

through the whole world through our actions for the way that we

deny ourselves and to care for others, even those who are

undesirable and unlovable. It's a beautiful thing.

He wants to spread His glory, His beauty, His Majesty, His

character throughout the whole earth through the way that we

love as His people. So if we were to summarize all

this, what we're saying is, is that Love Is All about God's

love. That's what love is.

Love Is All about. Our Love Is All about how God

loves us. And this begins, if we were to

think about it, to unveil what I call the grand deception behind

a saying like this. Love is love because we have

taken. We have taken something that God

has created and redefined it. That's essentially what's

happened. We are taking something that God

has created that has boundary lines based on how He has

defined it. And we've said there's no

boundaries on this. We're lifting the boundaries

off. We don't want any restrictions

on love. Now, I don't know about you, but

there's some of that that's very appealing.

I would even say something very liberating about that.

No constraints, just laugh. Just love.

That was the original deception that took place in the garden is

why I call it the grand deception.

It's connected to that original lie that came when Eve was

looking at that fruit, if you remember, in the garden, and it

looked desirable and she knew that she was not supposed to eat

of it. But what did the serpent do?

Defying God's authority, kind of stepping on his goodness and

basically saying, hey, you know what, this look, you have a

desire for this, and because you have a desire, you should have

it. That was the great lie.

And so that deception is being played out even here and now.

You know, we think about the sexual revolution was

essentially a turn away from God.

At its core, it was a turn away from God.

What God says about sex and love.

We got something better. Alfred Kinsey, known as the

father of the sexual revolution. He was trying to liberate sex

from morality. That was his primary, He's a

sexologist primary goal, liberate sex from morality.

And this is and he taught that sex is a normal biological

function, acceptable in whatever form it's manifested.

That was his main point. Now to do this, he had to do

something. He had to reduce the.

He had to reduce sex to that moment of enjoyment in the act

of sex, reducing it right down to that moment of enjoyment and

saying, claiming that all moments of enjoyment and sex are

equal, no matter where it happens or how it happens,

Whether between married persons or unmarried persons, between

people of the opposite sex or the same sex, between adults and

children, between strangers or with prostitutes, even between

humans and animals. That was his point.

All are equally acceptable. Love is love.

And that might seem radical to, to, to to our ears, but this is

kind of the movement we see a shift that is happening in in

our culture. Most of you will know Woody

Allen, writer and filmmaker. He had a family with Mia Farrow.

And Mia brought an adopted daughter into that relationship.

So she became Woody's stepdaughter.

Well, Woody fell in love with his stepdaughter and had

intimate relations with his stepdaughter, eventually

separating Mia and marrying that daughter.

Great social outcry took place. I remember that.

But even within the the film industry there was a great

outcry. Like people were saying, OK

enough, you know how what what is going on here?

Well, to Woody, it was no big deal.

This is, this is how he put it. He said the heart wants what it

wants. There's no logic to these

things. You meet someone and you fall in

love, and that's that. In other words, love is love.

Love is love. If I have a desire, that means

that I've meant to fulfill that desire right back to the garden.

In other words, our feelings of love rule everything.

Now, biblically speaking, there's a clash going on because

we know, as our text says, that God is love, but the opposite

isn't true. Love is not God.

God created love, any designed it within particular boundaries

in order for our flourishing. When God, when love becomes the

ultimate, when it becomes God to us, that's when things start to

unravel and fall apart. Sometimes love is beautiful as

it is. Sometimes love is wrong.

Love in some forms can be sinful.

That's really the point. And there is a line that is

crossed, and I think it's important for us to just talk

about where that line is. This kind of love is acceptable.

This kind of love isn't acceptable.

Where does love feel to be love? Where do we draw the line?

Where would you draw the line? Is it between consenting adults

or would that line be open to between adults and children?

Between humans and animals, some may think that this is really

wild, but when God is sidelined from the picture, from this

whole discussion, we begin to slide.

We're returning back to our Pagan roots, and you can

actually see this happening in our culture.

It is becoming harder and harder to have a good argument to

defend. Why pedophilia and BE and

bestiality should remain criminal prevalent in Rome and

Greece before Christianity hit the scene.

It was only when the Christian reality came that those things

were now deemed out of bounds. That's not how God loves, but

without God, without the word of God, that Plumb line disappears

and we don't know where to draw the line.

That's part of the problem. You know, if we if we draw the

line at consenting adults, then is adultery OK or is pornography

OK? Like where do we draw that line?

That's why we have to continue to go back to God's word that

gives us that standard that describes to us what love is

really all about. If we were to pop back to

chapter 2, verse 15 and 16, John says this, do not love the world

or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world's love

for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world.

The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of

life comes not from the Father, but from the world.

The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will

of God lives forever. He's saying that there are

certain things that we should not love, do not love the world.

And when he talks about do not love the world, he's not like

world is actually in in John's letters is used three different

ways. We can talk about the world in

terms of the physical world, you know, the planet and we know

that in scripture we are to love and care for the planet.

So that's, that's not what he's talking about.

Also, world can refer to the people in the world.

And we know in scripture that we are to love our neighbors,

ourselves, or even to love our enemies.

So we know that that's not what we shouldn't love people of the

world. But there's another love that

John's referring to, and that is the fallen humanity, the desires

that have gone off the rails really under the control of the

evil 1. And he's saying this.

This is where we draw the line. Whenever our desires come up

against or are confronted by the will of God, we know those

desires are inappropriate. In fact, this is what the

Apostle Paul speaks about in Romans chapter 1.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

He says there are dishonorable desires that we have,

dishonorable passions, and we need to recognize those, those

as such, those desires, those passions, and this is really the

point, don't come from God. They come from the world.

They come from the world. And so we need to be able to

distinguish what those what those really are.

So let's go back to the question, Why would God make

someone gay if they cannot follow through on their desires?

Why would he do that? Well, a secondary question could

be asked. Why would God make someone

selfish if they're unable, if they're, if they're not allowed

to follow through on their selfishness?

You see where I'm getting at? Because we have a desire for

something doesn't mean that those desires are right or

should be acted on. In fact, God never made anybody

gay. God doesn't make anybody

selfish. All of the brokenness that we

experience in this life can be all tied back to the fall that

took place in the garden. Every single one of us.

We're collectively responsible. God isn't responsible for that.

It's not responsible for our brokenness, but here's a God of

grace who wants to meet us in the midst of our brokenness.

And This is why I just want, I want to just just talk about the

grace of God for us who are broken.

And we are all broken in so many ways.

The reason why there there is a reason why God is against

certain forms of love, and His primary reason is because He

loves us. He loves you and This is why

he's against certain forms of love.

Contrary to popular belief, God is not trying to hold good stuff

back from us. That is not his intention.

That's what the Evil 1 convinced Eva of.

And that moment when she fell, when Adam and Eve fell.

The God's holding out on you, God, God, what God is doing is

he. There are certain things that

may look good to us and things that we desire, but God, out of

His great love and mercy and grace, wants to keep us from

those things because He knows to embrace them means that we're

going to perish out of His deep, great love for us.

He knows the boundaries. He knows what's going to bring

us life and what's going to bring us to death.

There are always consequences when we turn from God's design,

and particularly when we turn from God's design for sex.

Always consequences. His design for sex is for a man

and a woman within a covenant marriage relationship.

That's his design, so let's just take a look at a few things.

Pornography. What are the consequences of

pornography? I mean, we, we can go into a lot

of details. I'm just kind of skimming the

surface here. It decreases our capacity for

emotional and physical intimacy. It leads to greater social

isolation and self centred behaviors.

These are the consequences God's trying to save us from.

What about premarital sex That can lead to feelings of

insecurity, mistrust, comparison with others, and a higher

likelihood of divorce? If we do marry, what about

adultery? It divides human hearts and

brings untold sorrows to our deepest relationships.

What about marriage, A Christian marrying a non Christian?

That's also a boundary line that God says do not be unequally

yoked. So he says when when a Christian

marries a non Christian, this is going to bring a significant

amount of tension into that relationship and it's going to

lead to a compromise either of our love for our spouse or our

love for God. Something's going to lose out.

God's trying to protect us from that.

And what about same sex sexual relations?

You know, statistics show that LGBTQ plus individuals are two

to three times more likely to experience depression, anxiety,

and substance abuse compared to heterosexual individuals, and

they face significantly higher risk of suicide attempts even in

the most tolerant and affirming societies in our culture, like

the Nordic countries. Do you know who reports the

highest levels of happiness and satisfaction?

People in traditional covenant marriages who have a shared

Christian faith and are involved in the community.

God knows us and we're just talking about the consequences

on the on you know, the in the here and now.

We're not even talking about the consequences of Scripture refers

to that have the eternal consequences of being outside of

his Kingdom. Love is love is not just wrong,

it's it's dangerous. It's dangerous talk.

It needs to be defined in and of itself.

It stands the way that it stands is dangerous.

So when we're being told to not just tolerate but to celebrate,

we need to be very, very careful.

We need to be careful. We want to love, love, love, but

love in the way that God calls us to love.

And that's why Jesus has a church on this planet, the

Church of Jesus Christ. We were meant to be a beacon of

that love. So the church is meant to be a

place where everyone would want to be.

How do we do that? How do we do that?

How do we love as God loves? I want to just give you a couple

of things as we close this message.

Number one, we need to make so when when we look at people

outside of the church, we want to be very, very careful not to

impose our Christian morality on other people.

That is not what the church is about.

We are to love them with the love of Jesus Christ.

Their behavior is secondary. That's not even an issue we need

to be dealing with. You just think about it.

If you if you, if you're a parent and you have a child and

you lose your child in a, in a, you know, a highly populated

event, what do you do? What are the first things that

come through your mind? All you wanna do is to make sure

that your child is OK. You want a restoration between

that child. You.

You. You and you and your child.

You're not concerned, right? I hope you're not concerned.

Maybe you are. Maybe we need to talk about

this. But that OK.

I want to make sure that while they're lost among all these

people, that they're going to be polite, that they're gonna

follow the rules, they're gonna be really nice to people, and

they're gonna do the right thing.

Are you thinking about, you're not even thinking about that?

All you want to happen is for that child to be restored to

you. And it's the same thing when it

comes to people outside of the church who are not followers of

Jesus Christ. God's heart for them is that

they be restored back to Him as their heavenly Father.

How they live that's that's secondary.

Once they receive receive God's love and embrace the way of

Jesus Christ, then we'll talk about what a life, what, what

living for Christ looks like. But an initially that's not our

that's not even actually not even our business.

That's her her heart orientation toward people outside the

church. Now, what about inside?

So much that could be said here, but we as a people, we need to

continue to encourage one another to live faithfully to

God's Word, to to, to, to be, to be mutually encouraging one

another to be faithful, to remain faithful.

What does that mean? That means that we need to be

honest. We need to we need to confess

our sins to one another. We need to be real with one

another. We we need to not be shocked

when someone shares the challenge that they have with

their own wayward desires. Why?

Because we should be able to fully identify with any other

individual. Because we ourselves, we got, we

got. Our desires may not be the same

as theirs, but we were nonetheless.

And so we're fellow strugglers. We're fellow sinners.

If you're if you're here today and you would, you would see

yourself as part of the LGBTQ plus community.

I wanna just assure you something.

You are most welcome here. You are most welcome here, and

while we cannot affirm anything that God does not affirm, we do

affirm you. We will affirm you God loves

you. He cares about you and He has

offering grace to you to each one of us in order to live in a

way where God becomes more important than our desires, that

he becomes our number one desire.

That is the kind of support that each one of us needs no matter

what struggle we might have. And all of us have those

struggles. So if you're here today and you

and you are you're experience that pull that that struggle, I

I've got nothing but good news for you.

God loves you and cares for you and His grace is ready to meet

you Today is it is a community of faith.

We cannot buckle under the pressure of the society.

That is not going to be helpful. We can't go soft.

We need to uphold what it means to be faithful, but at the same

time, we do it with a tremendous amount of humility and respect

and love for our brothers and sisters in Christ.

We don't want to redefine love. That's not helpful.

But what we do want to we want to uphold what Love Actually is

and to encourage one another in that way.

Jesus Christ is the one we're following.

And I want to, I just want to close this message by talking

about Jesus for a moment, because he is the one who

actually, if you think about it, he's God in the flesh, God who

who who clothed himself in flesh and came and humbled himself as

a man to walk among us, but he came to serve us.

Think about that. The God of the universe, he

created all things. He's come now to serve us.

It's just the most mind blowing thing.

And He lived that life and bore our sins in His flesh on the

cross. Everyone of our wayward desires

had been asleep like they've been nailed to the cross and

brought to the grave. And when He rose from the dead,

He was conquering every single one of them on our behalf.

In other words, there is nothing that cannot be forgiven in him.

Not a thing. And we can stand before him

wholly and righteous, even when our desires are screaming and

going the other direction. He's got us covered.

Like seriously, Hallelujah. And and this is a beautiful

thing. He has sent His Holy Spirit to

dwell within us, to give us the strength day by day to choose

God over our desires that are contrary to His will.

And that grace is real. It is real.

Grace is God's unmerited favor. But it's more than that.

It's power. It is power.

And that power is accessed when we receive His grace by faith.

You know, we were saved by grace through faith.

We were healed by grace through faith.

We were directed by grace through faith.

Our faith activates that grace in our lives.

And if we will believe, yes, this is what's true.

And I'm choosing you, God, even though I feel like I'm powerless

to do differently. He's gonna meet you and he's

gonna meet me in the midst of that.

So I just wanna, I just wanna close.

I just wanna encourage you to just, to just to close your

eyes. Just have a moment with God

right now. And if you're currently in the

midst of an intense struggle with sexual brokenness, I just

want to say the Lord sees you. He knows you, He loves you, He

cares for you, and He wants you to come to Him now.

If you are the victim of sexual abuse, the Lord wants you to

know that He sees you, He knows you, He loves you.

He wants to bring healing to you.

If you have a loved one who you know is struggling in any of

these areas and it pains you to see it, the Lord wants you to

know that He sees you, that He knows you, that He loves you.

He's saying He's inviting you. Come to me.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will

give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn

from me, for I am gentle and humble and heart, and you will

receive rest for your souls. My yoke is easy and my burden is

light. Just receive it.

Lord, I pray. We pray that You would pour out

your grace upon us where we need it the most, Lord, where there

is hurt, where there is temptation, where there is

struggle, Lord, where there is confusion.

We pray that you'd meet us in that place and reveal the God

that you are through Jesus Christ.

Bring healing, bring wholeness, Bring hope, bring encouragement,

bring your strength to us as we follow Jesus.

It's in His name we pray. Amen.