Love in Action When We Follow Jesus Lead

Love is often confused with feelings, attraction, approval, or appearance, but Scripture shows something deeper. Pastor Chris Teien explains how real love begins with Jesus, flows through believers, and becomes visible in the way Christians treat others. Discover why abiding in Christ is essential if we are going to love with patience, kindness, humility, sacrifice, and truth.

In This Message

1. Without Jesus, Love Is Empty
   (1 Corinthians 13:1–3; John 3:16; John 15:5–12; Matthew 22:37–39)
   True love does not begin with human effort, personality, or good intentions. This section explains that agape love comes from God, is shown most clearly through Jesus Christ, and must flow from Him through us if it is going to make a lasting difference.
2. Love Is the Evidence of Abiding in Christ
   (John 15:9–12; 1 Corinthians 13:4–7)
   Jesus calls His followers to abide in His love and love one another as He has loved them. Pastor Chris highlights how biblical love is patient, kind, humble, truthful, hopeful, and enduring because it grows from a life connected to Christ.
3. Love Flows from Jesus Through You to Others
   (John 7:38; 1 John 4:7–12; 1 Corinthians 13:8)
   God’s love is not meant to stop with us. This section shows how the love of Christ overflows into everyday relationships, helping believers care for people in every season and circumstance of life.

Helping you apply God's Word and follow Jesus in everyday life. Learn more at ChrisTeien.com and Rockwell.church  Find episode transcripts at Well.faith 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:22

Love. Love is not attraction. Love is not excitement. Love is not easy. So, what is love? Love is patience and kindness. Love is humility and selflessness. Love is sacrifice. It's not what you see in an online post. Or what you hear in a story. It's not a Christ. Or in a distance. Light light. Never failed.

Chris T 1:37

All right, so I'm starting a four-week series on love. Love in action. And some people think, oh, love, we know so much about love already. But everybody wants to feel loved. Everybody wants to know that there's somebody that loves them. Some people get confused about what love is. The video pointed out that it's not a feeling. It's not an infatuation. It's not the stuff that you might see online, you know, those social posts where everybody's life is so perfect. Some of those social posts cause people to be depressed. It's like everybody's got a perfect life but me. But their lives are probably filtered and they're showing you the good parts, not the bad parts. Just like those home improvement shows, actually. Uh, did you know that when they fix the house up and they show you what they've done after whatever 24 or 48 hours of great labor, that they often don't show you all of the house. They don't zoom in on the corners, they don't show you all the unfinished work or all the imperfections or all the things that still need to be done. And that's kind of what it's like in our life is that most of us uh are still imperfect and they're still, God's still working on us. And some of us know that the word says that God loves us, but we refuse to accept that God loves us. So, and because I love to do the right thing at all all the time, I would like to take a commercial break because I was supposed to announce something that I didn't. So the announcement of the Sunday school class in the fellowship hall will start uh a different series instead of Nehemiah. Now they're going to go to Max Lucato's what happens next. And if you need a book for that, ask Carrie, but they're going to start that series next week. There's my commercial announcement. All right, love and action. Love flows from Jesus through us. That is so important to know and to remember that the love that we're supposed to have, the love that we're supposed to show others, isn't one that we come up with on our own. It doesn't come out of our kindness or goodness or uh, you know, just because we're such awesome people, but the love that's effective, the love that makes a difference, the love that makes an impact in other people's lives, or a love that flows from Jesus into you and then out to others. So really the overflow of love. So in this series today, we're going to talk about love and action flows from Jesus through us. Next week is going to be love and action for every season of life and relationship status. February 16th, love and action shapes the next generation, talking about kids and grandkids. And then February 23rd, love and action at work, school, or play. So number one, without Jesus, love is empty. So the Bible uses different Greek words for love. Eros love is a romantic, passionate love associated with physical attraction. This type of love is not used in the New Testament, but is part of human relationships. Then there's Philaio love. Sounds like Philadelphia, right? City of brotherly love. Um, like the love David and Jonathan had for each other in 1 Samuel 18:1. It's a mutual love built on trust and care. Uh there's storge love, that's family love and natural affection between parents and children, between siblings, uh, used in Romans 12.10 when Paul says don't to be devoted to one another in love. And then agape love. So this is this is the type of love that God has for us. Agape love stands out because it is the kind of love that flows from God to us and through us to others. This is the love described in 1 Corinthians 13 that we saw on the screen, and they'll read in a minute. But I thought in gotquestions.org, that site that has lots of great questions and answers about the question was what is agape love? The last paragraph says, Agape love does not come naturally to us because of our fallen nature, we are incapable of producing such a love. If we are to love as God loves, that love, that agape, can only come from its source. This is the love that has been poured out to us into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that is who has been given to us when we became his children. This is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. First John 3.16. Because of God's love toward us, we are able to love one another. So we love because of what God is doing in us, which means that the less time we're spending in God's word, the less time we're spending worshiping the Lord, the less time we spend recharging, like my phone needs to recharge, uh, your phone probably needs to recharge also, uh, then out of that we can love other people. We can have patience with other people. We can do that first Corinthians 13 thing. Uh 1 Corinthians 13:1. If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn't love others, I would only be a noisy gong or clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge, if I had such faith that I could move mountains but didn't love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it. But if I did not love others, I would have gained nothing. So we need to love. Love makes a difference, but it needs to be God's love flowing through us. Sometimes we get motivated to do things and we do nice things, and it seems loving, but actually it's self-serving because we're doing it because we want people to say, Oh, you're such a good person, or you you just do such wonderful things, and you know, we love the praise of others. Um, sometimes love can be a real problem because uh we love ourselves so much. I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit, but uh, if you love yourself so much, then uh you might not step out and do things for God because you're afraid of what people think of you. Uh you should love God and to serve him and to follow him. John 3 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him would not perish, but have everlasting life. And out of this, we remember that Jesus says, I'm the vine and you are the branches. You know, let me just read that whole passage there. I'm gonna go from the English standard version for this one because it uses the word abide instead of remain, and I like the word abide. So Jesus says, I am the vine and you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers, and the branches are gathered and thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as you have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. So that love flows through. Love comes from Jesus, flows through us, and then we can share that to others. So a Sunday school teacher asked her class, what is love? And a little girl said, Love is when my grandma lets my grandpa watch football, but he lets her talk through the whole game. That is love. That is love indeed. So um for some reason we started our our mornings off usually with um way FM or K Love on the speaker on our counter. And so they were talking about love and um all of the different types of love that they um share and experience. And so the guy was like, you know, I love my family, but if I'm trying to watch a show and everybody keeps talking or making noise or kids are playing with stuff, he's like, I leave the captions on my TV so the words go across the screen. So if I'm like watching the game, I can see, you know, what the score is and what the down is. Meanwhile, I'm showing love to my family by by listening, well, watching out of the corner of my eye. So maybe that's a hint that you can show love and also you know see what's going on with the game by using the closed captioning. But there's two different camps when it comes to love. Uh, some think that you know you shouldn't really love yourself, that that's idolatry, and how wrong is that? And other people are like, well, Jesus said that we should love ourselves, so that is an important thing, too. And so think about that. What is love exactly? Um, so in Matthew 22, verse 37, Jesus replied, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. So therefore, Jesus must have expected that we love ourselves, or maybe it's just by default, most people, almost all people, love themselves and care for themselves and feed themselves and protect themselves and think about themselves. But if we're bought with a price of Jesus uh gave his life for us, that God loves us so much that he cares for us, I think that he wants us to have some degree of love for ourselves. As a matter of fact, Psalm 139, 13 says, For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made, your works are wonderful, I know that full well. So to know our worth comes from God, and to know that we can have a degree of love that helps us, that shows God that we worship Him, that we care for Him. Romans 12, 3, do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourselves with sober judgment in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. So if I am really full of pride, I would probably not stand up here. You know, I might want to, might, because I watch sometimes, you know, the video, I see the video of this, and you know, sometimes I I like what I see on video more than others. Some videos I wish would just like disappear forever. It bothers me to no end that you can't edit YouTube videos. I mean, you can cut things out, but you can't go through and like edit it and put it back up like you can with other things. And so it is what it is, and I'm a servant of the Lord, so so I endure it. But you know, if I really loved myself, you know, I might not do that. I might have too much pride to step up. If I'm so in love with myself that I care about what people think of me, I might not be eager to share my faith. I might, because I want to feel love, I might go out of my way to try to get people, uh, people's affirmation. I might try to go out of my way to get people to like me. I might want to do all that I can to um, you know, preserve that and get that more, more than I do because I love God so much that I want his approval. And when I first started in ministry, uh one of the pastors that I worked under, he's like, when you when you serve the Lord, you gotta focus on serving the audience of one. You got to focus first on honoring and doing what's right in Jesus' eyes, and then go from there. Some people will love you, some people will hate you, some people might find a reason that maybe you did something to offend them and now they don't like you. Other people just won't like you because of you. And I literally have had people say, I don't like you because you look like somebody that I used to know and I didn't like them. I I really like dogs, and usually almost every dog likes me. You know, almost every dog and I have an immediate connection, but there's been some that just don't. And then I found out that it's because there was somebody that looked like me that wasn't nice to the dog. And so it wasn't me, it was the dog's experience. But what is our experience? And what is our experience when it comes to our self-worth? Do we really feel God's love? Do we accept it? Galatians 2.20 says, I've been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. So instead of focusing on self-love, we can focus on the love that God has for us and how he cares for us and how he loves us. So Philippians 2, 3 says, Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, rather in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interest, but each of you to the interests of others. Biblical love is others focused, but it doesn't mean neglecting care. So we value ourselves as God's creation, we care for our bodies and souls, and we live the identity that Christ gave us. Second Corinthians 5 14 says, Christ's love compels us because we are convinced that one died for all, therefore all died, he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and was raised again. So Billy Graham says, We are to love, said, we are to love others as Jesus loves us, putting their needs above our own, sacrificing when necessary, and showing grace and kindness at all times. So it's Groundhog Day, and I don't know who we have now. Do we have Puxitanny Phil or Puxitanny Pete? I don't know what his name is anymore. So, but I don't know if you ever saw that movie. You don't have to see the movie, but it was a movie where um this reporter guy kind of gets stuck in a time loop, and each day he kind of starts out doing the it's this it's the same day over and over again. And first he's angry about it, and then he starts to take advantage of it because he knows what's gonna happen. And then he starts, he kind of fallen in love with this girl, but he starts to learn new skills. He focuses on personal growth. He's like, if I'm gonna be stuck here in this time, then maybe I'll learn how to play the piano. So he starts with no knowledge and over many repeated days becomes a skilled jazz pianist, impressing the town at ground at the Groundhog Day celebration. He turns into an ice sculptor. He learns how to speak French, he learns medical skills and saves a man from choking. Uh, he becomes generous and kind. And um, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie. Um, there is an interesting thought, though, that maybe the movie's not really about love. Maybe it's not about improving your skills, you're becoming a better person. Maybe it's about buying life insurance. Because every day he sees Ned Ryerson who tries to sell him a life insurance policy, and he always says no. But if I remember right, the day he finally buys the policy is the day the next day kind of breaks the breaks the pattern of being stuck in the time loop. But if you are trapped in a time loop or you have your life now, what are you doing to become better? What are you doing to become more skilled? What are you doing to become uh to showing your love through the way that you care for others and the things that you do, the things that you say, the way that you are encouraging? Number two, love is the evidence of abiding in Christ. Love so I read in um John 15 about abiding in Christ, but as we think about how when we abide in Christ, uh we won't bear any fruit unless it's through him that we do see how love flows from Christ through us and makes a difference in our life. AW Tozer says, God's love in us is not meant to be stored up but poured out. The more we give his love away, the more we experience it ourselves. Greg Laurie says the closer we are to Christ, the more his love will flow through us to others. We are called to be his hands and feet, reaching the world with his love. So love is flowing through us. In 1 Corinthians 13 4, it says love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way, it is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wrong. It does not rejoice about injustice, but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. So this love that we're supposed to have is not natural to most people. There are many people that rejoice about injustice. I know that you know people have all sorts of different ideas on immigration and things like that. And I don't I'm not an expert on immigration, I don't really know everything about immigration. But and maybe they've done this, I'm not sure. But I wish there was some way to figure out, maybe they already have. Uh, you know, who are the criminal threats that are destroying neighborhoods and destroying places or, you know, have ill will towards the United States? Who are those immigrants? Because they need to go back to wherever they came from. You know, that's obvious. But what about the people that maybe they were being chased by gangs, and if they go back to where they came from before, they'll be killed or they'll be homeless or they won't have anything. I'm sure there must be some way, you know, that we could work through a system somehow to help those people. And I know that we have a system that was already established, and I really don't know, you know, if people were forced over the border or they just came. I don't know all the details, but I knew do know that I just wish there was some way that we could figure out how to help true people or people that are truly needy, that want to assimilate and you know become part of you know what's going on in our country, and you know, have them help them to have an opportunity to pursue the American dream. And maybe, maybe they're already doing that. I don't know. But it's just sad. It's just sad that there's people all over, uh, some even born here in America that just go through really hard stuff in life. And I wish we could fix it all. I wish that the church had the resources to fix it all and to just make it better. But back to John 15, 9, as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love. So if you keep my commandments, you'll abide in my love. Well, Jesus' commandments are to love God and to love others. So to abide in his love, so that we will experience his joy. Number three, love flows from Jesus through you to others. John Piper says, love is not something we generate on our own, it is the overflow of Christ's presence in our life, in our lives.

unknown 21:17

D.

Chris T 21:18

L. Moody said, a Christian is a vessel of Jesus' love. If we are full of him, we will naturally spill over into the lives of others. So we have this great opportunity to be used of God. And we know that again, 1 Corinthians 13:8, prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless, but love will last forever. Love will last forever. Jesus said in John 7 38, Whoever believes in me, as the scripture said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. And part of that is love. First John 4 7, 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. God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the World so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God, but if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us. So what does that expression of love look like in all the different relationships of life and all the different statuses and seasons of life? So what does love look like to the widow or widower? What does love look like to the single person who wonders if God has someone special for them? What does God's love look like to the single person who is more than happy to be single and would like to stop hearing from other people that, oh, you should date so-and-so and get married because they have the spiritual gift of being or the gift of being single? Um, what does it look like in the young years of life? What does it look like in the middle years or the fall of life? What does that look like? Next week, we'll look at love and action for every season of life and relationship status.