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The story Ashlyn, how are you doing? You guys are alive on August. It's August, and a church is alive. That's an amazing thing. Well, welcome to church this morning. I am not Zav. I can't wear cutoff shirts in church, but he can't. He's amazing. But I want to welcome you to church this morning as you were sharing there. I love Zav and Lisa and uh had the privilege and honor of investing in his life when he went to Bible college and I was teaching uh at the Bible college in Maui, Hawaii. That's a great place to be teaching the Bible. Amen. Maui, Hawaii. Zav went to Bible college in Maui, Hawaii, and I was his professor. And uh the church that I planted in Eugene, Oregon helped plant this church, and now I am in the great state of California. I live in the great state of California. I'm uh one of the lead pastors at Bayside. It's uh a collection of 12 churches across the Bay Area slash Sacramento region, and then one in Southern California. And Zav called me some months ago and he said, Hey, can you come teach uh while you know I'm on paternity leave? And I said, Of course. It's a great excuse just to come see you guys. So I got to spend time with him and Lisa and their beautiful baby girl, and uh what a what a joy and privilege and what an honor to be here with you this morning. So if you have your Bible, turn with me to the Gospel of John, chapter 13. We're gonna pick up in verse 34. As was mentioned, you're in a series on discipleship. What does it look like to be a disciple or follower of Jesus? If you're new to church, the term disciple simply means a learner or follower of Jesus. And uh we are taking up quite a subject today. Uh I would say probably one of the most definitive and important subjects around discipleship, we're gonna carry this morning. So grab your Bible, grab your notebooks, grab your number two pencil, and let's study God's word. Amen. Lord Jesus, thank you for this amazing day. Thank you, God, that on a summer Sunday in the city of Ashland, Oregon, not a place known for Jesus, not a place known for a move of God, that you are doing a work in the hearts of every person in this room. I pray, Lord, that in an in a culture that has so many things that are grabbing for our attention, even in this moment with our digital devices before us, I pray that we would give you our full attention and heart to hear what you would speak to each one of us today to bring hope, redemption, life, direction, the cultivation of who you want us to become, God. And Lord, may this not just be another Sunday, but may this be a Sunday that our life is forever changed. In Jesus' name. And everyone said, Amen. One of the great theologians in church history was a man named Augustine, and he once wrote in one of his writings these words the single desire that dominated my search for delight was simply to love and to be loved. The greatest reality we have as human beings, and even more importantly, the greatest reality we have as followers of Jesus is the reality of love itself. Every human being wants to be loved by God. Every human being wants to be loved by another person. And every human being desires innately in their soul to love another person. But the problem with the reality of love and the word love and the idea of love in our culture is multifaceted. First and foremost, the problem is that the idea of love has been maligned in our culture by so many cultural narratives that are the opposite of love. So we use the term love, we throw out the term love in such shallow, surfacy, uh misdirected ways. Another problem with bringing up the idea and word love in our time is that we think as Christians that love means we exist in unhealthy relationship structures. A lot of people that are in the church or following Jesus think that when they get into a relationship with another human, that they're to lose themselves in the name of love. So they enter into a relationship and they lose their identity, they lose their purpose, they lose who they are in the makeup of how God is creating them in them uniquely in the image and likeness of God. And it's what's called in psychology differentiation. That every healthy relationship has identity and one's own personal needs. But the problem is that we think we have to separate our own identity and integration with another human being, but both of those should exist in perfect harmony to have a healthy relationship structure. Another problem with the word love and the idea of love in our culture is that we sit in a room like this on a sunny summer Sunday, and we think this message is for you and not for me. We might be around somebody, and we're like, yeah, we just got in an argument, we're in a cycle of humanities problems in our relationship, and this is definitely for you. You need to hear this, but I don't need to hear this. But here's the reality: we all need to hear this, amen. And so we come into a subject like this that's so important and valuable, but we have to unmask the problems that make this such a difficult subject to live out, not to talk about. And Jesus brings us to the subject of love in John chapter 30 13, verses 34 and 35, where he teaches us how we are supposed to love. And if you know anything about the gospel of John, John is basically broken up into two sections. From chapter 1 through chapter 11, John the Apostle writes his gospel about the life and teachings of Jesus around seven miracles and seven I am statements. And from chapter 12 through chapter 21, John's gospel focuses on the last week of Jesus' life, and he prepares his disciples for when he ascends into heaven. In other words, there's going to be a day that I'm not on earth, and when I'm not on earth, here's how my people are to live. And he brings up the most central of subjects in John 13, 34, and 35. But I want to frame this because you don't understand how important this is unless you read through the entirety of this chapter and particularly verse 1. So let me frame the context here. Jesus says in John chapter 13, verse 1, it was just before the Passover festival where you're like, well, I'm not church, what is that? That's a major religious festival. They had three of them every year where millions of people would gather in Jerusalem to worship God. And then the Bible says, Jesus knew that the hour, that's a word that he uses over and over in the gospel for the hour of his death and resurrection and ascension, had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. In other words, he's about to die, he's about to rise from the dead three days later, and he's about to ascend into heaven. And then John says this having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The beginning of this chapter, and really the beginning of the section is Jesus is preparing his disciples for his departure. Is God loved. The Son of God loved his disciples faithfully to the end. So that brings us to these words in verses 34 and 35. A new command Jesus says, I give you. He's teaching his disciples, love one another. As I have loved you, so you must also love one another. Verse 35. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. There's three movements in Jesus' teaching on love in these two verses here in John 13, 34 and 35. The first movement is, notice verse 34, a new commandment. He says, A new command I give you, love one another. And just for sake of emphasis and reminder, Jesus just mentions his love for us. In other words, without Jesus' love for us, we cannot fulfill what he's gonna teach us. Without experiencing the love of God in your life and your heart, you cannot live out or fulfill what Jesus is about to teach us as disciples of Christ. Everything else that Jesus teaches us, and particularly this passage, is only possible because of his love for you. The New Testament emphasizes this over and over again. Romans 8 verse 37. Knowing all these things, we are more than conquerors through him, Jesus, who loved us. Romans chapter 1, verse 5, to him, Jesus, who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood or his death on the cross. God wants to emphasize to you and I that the most important reality and dimension of love in your life is that you experience and know the love of God in your life. But then he says, there's a new command. I have loved you, and there's a new command. And if the think about this with me, I was thinking about this the other day. If there's a new command, there has to be an old command that is similar in nature. And the old command is simply what Jesus said: love one another. This comes from the ancient book of Leviticus, chapter 19, verse 18, where Moses writes, do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people. Don't be a person that's always holding grudges against people. Don't be a person that's always seeking vengeance when people wrong you. But Moses says, But love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. That was the instruction from the beginning. This is an ancient teaching, an ancient command. You remember there in Matthew chapter 22 when an expert of the law, in other words, a great Old Testament theologian, came up to Jesus and he was trying to trick him, and he says, Rabbi, you know, when they tried to trick Jesus, they always talked nice to him. They flattered him. That's what happens when people are manipulative. They will flatter you. Rabbi, what is the greatest commandment in the law? Here's the problem. There were 613 of them. Just following a couple of the teachings of Jesus sometimes is hard, but 613, the expert in the law thought, I'm gonna trick Jesus today. There are 613 commandments in the law of Moses. So he asked Jesus, Jesus, Rabbi, what is the greatest commandment? And Jesus paused and he said, the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God. And the second is like it, Matthew chapter 22, verse 39, love your neighbor as yourself. And those two are harmonious. They go together, they're interconnected that we love God and we love our neighbor. So John is saying there's an old commandment that has a new dimension. There's an old commandment that is similar in nature to a new model or a new standard or a new example for this ancient commandment that is to love your neighbor yourself. And can I just say, do you do I have permission to say this? Amen. Yes? Every single person in Ashland, Oregon, every single person in Medford, Oregon, every single person in whatever city in Southern Oregon you come from, every single person will accept this teaching to love your neighbor as yourself. Nobody's gonna deny this. If they're an atheist, if they hate church and Jesus, if they speak against Christians, there's no person that is gonna deny the teaching of Jesus to love your neighbor as yourself. It is cross-cultural, it is never denied or pushed back against. Because we all innately know this is the greatest thing that we can offer humanity. And so, verse 34, a new commandment. The second movement in this text is verse 34, also, same verse, a new standard. He doesn't just say, a new command I give you to love one another. Notice he says, A new command I give you, love one another as, if you're an English student, comparative conjunction, as I have loved you, so you also must love one another. I want to draw your attention to the fact that he didn't just suggest this. You could. I want to draw your attention to the fact that Jesus did not just invite us to do this. He puts a little more weight behind it. He says, so you must love one another. If you're a follower of Jesus, if you call yourself a Christian, if if you learn from the teachings of Jesus and believe in his death, burial, and resurrection, this is the essence of discipleship to Jesus. You must love one another. But here's the new standard. The ancient command to love one another now has a new standard, or you could say, a new example to learn from the life of Jesus. It's that our love should look like, should model, should exemplify and mirror the way that Jesus loved people in his incarnation. When he was on this earth, when he was living this life, that is the way in which you and I are to love one another. But there's another problem with love that I must bring up. I'm bringing up a lot of problems because I want to give you some answers. Is that when you use the term love, what does that mean? I was an athlete in college and I would always say, I love basketball, right? Because I played basketball, and people are like, I love the LA Lakers, I love the Portland, maybe not the Portland Terra Blazers, they're not so good anymore, but you know, I love whatever sports team, and it's like the term love is so trite and undefined. Like, what does the word love mean? It is it is hard and challenging to define sometimes. I live in the city of Davis, California, where there's a top 10 university called UC Davis in the nation, academic university. Uh 140 countries represented in Davis at the university, 40,000 plus students. Uh it's one of the best science universities in the world. That's why 140 countries are represented. Everybody around the world wants to study particular lanes of science that are top five in the United States as far as an academic research institution. Well, all that to say is I'm around a lot of Gen Zers, Generation Z. You should have heard this at 8:30. They were like, what is going on? We've never heard of anything. And we've had, no, by the way, we've never heard of anything. You're gonna get it in a minute. You've heard of many things, but not these things. So we have we've had 150 interns at my church this year. So I'm around Jen's ears all the time, and uh I'm also uh so honored to be the chaplain of the university basketball team. And one time I was teaching a Bible study, that's what you do as a chaplain, you know, all the the teams that are interested in Christianity or the teammates, or they are Christians, you do a Bible study, and you're just a spiritual encouragement to them. And in some ways, you're a coach outside of their coaches, but that you just encourage them. So I'm teaching a Bible study with a women's basketball team, and then I always ask them questions and they share afterwards, and so one of them was sharing, and they were mentioning another one of their teammates, and they were they said to me, So-and-so always crashes out on the court. And I said to them, What does crashes out mean? Please define it and put it into a sentence so I can understand. So all the time they're using these terms, like they're like somebody walks in the room, they're like, This person's got aura. And I was like, What does aura mean? Or like, this is the new thing. They're always saying, like, what's up, chat? And they look at me and I'm like, I'm not chat. What do you mean, what's up, chat? So there's all these terms that I'm like, what does this mean? And then they use this term unk for anybody who's over 40, which means you're basically old. And the newest one that I had to get a definition for was maxing, gym maxing, Jesus maxing, Bible maxing, church maxing, all the maxing. Is that I'm like, what is going on here? That's much like the word love in our culture. What does it mean? What is going on here? Because we've certainly not done a great job of defining this important term. So there's an Old Testament term for love, and there's a New Testament term for love. Forgive me, I forgot to turn on my clock, so I'm just gonna go as long as I go this morning. Is that okay? You guys good? Zab's in the house, so he can fire me at any point. But the Old Testament term for love is a Hebrew term hesed. Or you might say it's a guttural language. I did six years of biblical languages, hased. And it's such a beautiful term, it's used all over the Old Testament. The problem with this term is it doesn't have one definition. It can be translated loyalty, faithfulness, grace, goodness, kindness, or my favorite definition is steadfast love. And then by the time you get to the New Testament, probably the most conceptual term, the most important term for love in the New Testament is this term agape. And again, this doesn't have one single simple definition. It can be defined as the quality of warm regard and interest in another person. It can be defined as esteeming or affection or an attitude of appreciation resulting from a conscious evaluation, you thought about it, and choice to love another person. So you've thought about it and you said, I'm gonna love you. Now, when you look at all these terms and ideas within the depth and the nuance of the biblical words for love, it is you come to recognize that love in the Bible is not simply defined, it is a multifaceted idea. So let me try to give you a conceptual definition of love in the Bible. You ready for it? You ready? Amen? Okay, and it's not one, it's many. First, love is an attitude, it's an attitude you and I carry as disciples of Jesus. Second, love is a choice. You decide to love someone, you choose to love another person. Third, love has emotions. We like to demonize emotions in Christianity, but the problem with that is the Bible never demonizes emotions. The Bible frames emotions in their proper place, and those are two different things. But I hear people teach on love in Christianity, and they're like, love is not an emotion, and I'm like, what are you talking about? That certainly isn't the case in the Bible because any choice we make, our emotions feel and experience something, especially when we are loved and we express love. Another dimension, a conceptual dimension of love in the Bible is love is viewing people as having great worth in God's eyes. Or you could say love is valuing another person. When you look at a person and you choose to love them, you're placing value on them. Another way this can be expressed, and this is probably one of my top two definitions, is love is seeking the highest good of another person. We seek our own highest good. We're in relationships thinking, oh, I'm gonna like be in a relationship with so-and-so so that they can seek my highest good. But loving like the Bible teaches to love is seeking other people's highest good. And then finally, this is all also in my top two hits definition on love. Love is choosing to regard others as God and Christ regards us. You look at people with new eyes, you see that that God regards them with value and love and worth and attention and death on the cross, and you begin to regard other people the same way God regards you and I. So Jesus here gives us a new command, drawn out from an old command, with a new standard and new example that we are to love one another, notice, as I have loved you. The great question is: how did Jesus love us? And how does Jesus love us? I would submit to you and argue from the biblical text that the central defining reality of love in the scriptures is the cross of Jesus Christ. And from the stories and teachings of the cross of Jesus Christ, there are many characteristics that we begin to surface from the text of scriptures and the teachings of scriptures that teach us the characteristics of how Jesus loved us on the cross. And those characteristics of how Jesus loved us on the cross are our characteristics of how we are to love people in our life and in our cities. I've got 10 of them. So strap on your seatbelt and grab your notebook. These are so important. I would write these down today and take them to the bank as the greatest teaching, not from me, from Jesus, on love that you and I can begin to model toward other people. Ten characteristics of Jesus' love on the cross that become the model and example for our love for other people. Say amen if you're ready. Number one, selfless. Philippians chapter 2, verses 3 and 4. Uh Paul writes these words do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests only, but each of you to the interests of others. Paul is teaching about the death of Jesus as the ultimate example of humility and love. And from this teaching, he says, You in Philippi do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. When we love like Jesus, we don't calculate what's in it for me. Because think about it. When Christ went to the cross, he wasn't thinking about what's in it for me. He was literally being murdered on the cross and taking the weight of human sin and waywardness so that we could experience the love of God. It was a selfless act. And therefore, we begin to mirror that selfless act, not calculating what's in it for me, but pursuing the good of others in a selfless way, not in a way that is selfishly ambitious or full of vain conceit. Number two, sacrificial. John chapter 15, verse 13, the Bible says, Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. Think about it. Jesus on the cross was literally crucified on our behalf. And he calls us friends. Imperfect, flawed. I am imperfect, I am flawed, I've been wayward, I'm full, my life has been marked by sin. Now less and less, hopefully, but all of us, we are imperfect, flawed human beings. And Jesus sacrificed his life for us. Literally. This is the picture of love that we would sacrifice ourselves on behalf of others in a selfless way. Number three, self-giving. Self-giving. Ephesians chapter 5, verse 2 says these words, and walk in the way of love. Just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and a sacrifice to God. So Jesus, the model of love, he was self-giving. Now let me define this because some of these are similar but different. Self-giving is not merely the absence of selfishness. Self-giving is an active, or you could say proactive reality that we take where we do something to value another person. This might look like time or attention or resources or kindness or goodness offered to another person's life. It's kind of like, let me frame it in this way how many of you have read the book, The Five Love Languages? Raise your hand. Amazing book. It sold millions and millions and millions of copies for a reason. Because the premise of the five love languages is that we often love people the way we want to be loved. But the five love languages teaches us we're not to love other people the way we want to be loved. We are to learn how that individual person in their uniqueness needs to be loved. We're not saying, oh, this is how I want to be loved, so I'm gonna love you the same way I want to be loved. It's the the script is flipped to be I'm gonna love you the way you need to be loved. And that's really a self-giving act. That's the way Jesus loves us, and that's the way we are called to love one another. Number four, grace-oriented. Grace-oriented, Romans chapter 5, verse 8 says, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While you were still sinners, I always define that word because we we don't live in a Christian culture, we live in a post-Christian culture, and there's always people in churches that don't understand ancient words like sinners. Sinner basically means anything you do that is opposite of God's design for you. Any way of life, any decision, any choices you've made that are contrary to the nature and design of God for your life. So think about it for a second. All of us have done things contrary to God's design for our life. While you were still sinners, while you were still living your life contrary to God's design for your good and your life and your flourishing, when you were at your worst, Christ died for us. That's grace. That is favor, that is a gift, that is unmerited, undeserved, unearned favor from God, where He literally gives Himself for those who do not deserve it. The opposite of grace culture is shame culture, the opposite of grace culture is cancel culture. And it's sad to say that the Western culture as a whole in the last 10 years has been living with this ideal that shaming and canceling people is a good thing. We need justice, we need to cancel people, we need to put online and for the whole world to know every failure of anybody we don't like. But they forgot the words of Jesus: do not judge lest you be judged. For the same measure you judge another, you'll be judged in the same way. Do you want to know what if you just study the threads of shame and cancel culture? The people who cancel other people end up being canceled themselves. Because we're all failures, we're all flawed, we've all done wrong, we've all made mistakes. And the bad part about this 10-year cultural narrative around shame and cancel culture is it seeped its way into Christianity. Where we begin to think that the Christian message is canceling people, calling out people's wrongs, naming people's failures, shaming people that have done something to us, even putting it online that we didn't like or that hurt us. But the cross is not shame culture, the cross is not cancel culture, the cross is grace-oriented culture. And I would say we need far more of this in our Christian culture. We need to resist the narratives that shape us that are contrary to the teachings of Jesus, and we need to lean in to the words and narratives that should shape us as followers of Jesus. Number five, and I need to pick up the pace. Number five, forgiving. Forgiving. Amen. I agree. Luke 23, verse 34. Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. You want to know when Jesus said this? When the humans that he created as their creator were killing him on the cross. This is radical forgiveness. This isn't forgiveness with qualifications. This isn't forgiveness if you do something to own whatever. This is radical forgiveness. This is not bitter. This is not angry. This is not vengeful. This is not badhearted. This is not, I'm gonna do something bad to you because you hurt me. This is freely forgiving people like Jesus freely forgives us. I have a book coming out in May, and I have a whole chapter on relational wounds. One of the hardest things to navigate as human beings. And the end of the book is what I believe to be the solution. Now there's a myriad of stuff in there as well, but I believe that the heart of the solution is to be a people of forgiveness. I did all kinds of research. There's 10 different things that I name. By the way, I hope I can come here and share my book if Zav allows me to, but that's my personal invitation to myself to come. But but one of the things that I learned is that unforgiveness is bad for you. Ten different ways that unforgiveness negatively affects your life as a human being. We are to be a people that love people through the lens of forgiveness. Sav, is it okay if I come here when my book comes out? Amazing. Thank you, thank you. I'm not trying to promote it, just it was there, forgiveness. Okay. Number six, number six, humble, humble. Another dimension of how Jesus loved us on the cross, Philippians 2, 6 through 8. Jesus, being in the very nature of God, did not consider a quality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in the appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Humility is a mark of how Jesus loved us on the cross. The problem with humility is that we often insist on our own way when we're loving people. Have you ever taken the disc test? It's like, who am I? Like in action. It's like D, I, C, S. Well, the D's, they're like the boss bosses. They walk into the room and they're directing, and they they've got, you know, they've got their bullet points and the to-dos and how to do it, the systems. They're like the bosses. They walk in the room and they're just bosses. I see this at the university with our interns. They'll be an intern, like there's one right now, she's gonna be a lawyer, and uh, you can just see she walks into the room and she likes gifted, she's a boss boss. The eyes, they're like, they're not like dominant, like tell everybody, they're influencing everywhere they go. I think Zav's and I. They're like influencers, not like you know, social media influencers, but but they're like always trying to convince people a vision and like great things, and I'm a high eye. And so the problem with that is that we often insist on our own way, and that is not always the way of Jesus. Anyone with me? Anybody experienced that in your own life? It's good to be self-deprecating because you got to own your own stuff. Humility does not insist on its own way, it does not parade itself, it's willing to grow and learn from errors and mistakes and apologize and to own things, and all of us need more humility in the way that we love other people. Amen. Number seven, number seven, it is not forced. How does Jesus love us on the cross? It is not forced. John chapter 10, verses 17 through 18, Jesus says, uh, the reason my father loves me is I lay down my life. Cross, only to take it up again. Resurrection. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own accord. What is he saying? He freely chose to do this. This was not forced, and love should be freely chosen and freely offered. Some people they're in relationships where love is coercion, where love is manipulation, or where love is obligation under threat. Can I just tell you that's not love? It's not coercion, it's not manipulation, it's not if you don't do this, then I'll do this. Obligation under threat. Love is freely chosen and freely offered. It's characterized by a willingness, not a compulsion. Because if love is forced, that's abuse. And abuse is not love. And so when we are loving in a non-forced way, as Jesus chose to do this, it was freely offered out of his own accord. When we are loving in an unforced way, it leads to an unanxious connection with human beings. We're not stressed, we're not trying too hard, we're not forcing things, we're relaxed, we're chill. We can freely choose to be loved and freely love other people in a beautiful, calm, inviting manner that is not stressed or over-anxious with other people. Number eight, generous. Generous. Do you know there's a myth in relationships? Can I just burst a myth? That when you're in a healthy relationship, it's 50-50. There is no healthy relationship that is 50-50. Because context of life's change. Sometimes it's 70-30. And then it flips in your season and it's 30-70. Sometimes it's 90-10. Sometimes it's 60-40. It's never 50-50. A healthy relationship is a willing to adapt in all situations of life. And I think that's a really important thing. In other words, a healthy concept of love is not focused on strict fairness or minimal duty. It is overflowing in nature. It's not calculated, it's not measuring equivalents, it's not, oh, I'm at 49 and I'm gonna quit doing this right now. Like I'm not doing the dishes tonight because I'm at 49.9%. No, it is overflowing in generosity. 2 Corinthians 8 verse 9, for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that through his poverty you might become rich. It is overflowing in generosity. Number nine, and I'm almost done, unconditional. Unconditional. Romans chapter 5, verse 10 says, For if while we were God's enemies, think about that. Think about your greatest enemy. If we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son. How much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved by his life? This is unconditional love. This is God looking down on us who is wandering away from him, rebelling against him, doing what he told us not to do, and he looks at us without conditions, and he says, Despite your failures, despite your imperfect performance, despite your worst day in relationship to me, I still love you. Maybe you came here this morning and you're discouraged because you've had some of your worst days as a Christian. Maybe you came here this morning and you're like, my performance is really lacking as a follower of Jesus. Maybe you came here this morning and all you can do is ruminate and replay all of your failures. I want you to know that God loves you at your worst. Without condition. In other words, we don't say to people, I will love you if dot dot dot. When we are modeling and reflecting the love of Jesus, but I will add a qualifier to that. This does not mean that love is naive. This does not mean that love enables harm. If somebody is abusing you, you don't stay in that relationship. You don't, sometimes in Christianity, we preach a message on grace or love or how to love, and then somebody is sitting in the church and they're in an abusive cycle relationship, and they think, oh, I just need to go home and be unconditional love. No, you need to be go home, pack your bags, and put up some boundaries because unconditional love is not an ecosystem to continue to be harmed. Because unconscious Love is also a love in a healthy relationship that is not forced or manipulated. So there's not a naivety to this, there's not a you know a boundarylessness to this. No, the thought here is that you love and you're kind and you do not withdraw from another person based on their own failures or imperfections. You don't use withdrawing as a form of punishment. Can you imagine if God did that? Like every day. Every day we're imperfect. And God's like, oh man, you've been imperfect right now, like I'm withdrawing from you. God never does that to us. Then finally, number 10, working toward others' good. Working toward others' good. Romans chapter 15, verses 2 and 3 say, each of us should please our neighbor for their good, to build them up. For even Christ did not please himself, but as is as it is written, the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me. Think about it. When we enter into a relationship, it's often transactional. It's like, I want me to flourish. So here's what you need to do for me. The way that God loves us is first and foremost, I want you to flourish. So here's what I'm gonna do for you. It would be an amazing thing if that was our first response in relationship to people. That it wasn't a transaction, but it was a motivation born out of the love of God in our own life. That we didn't simply love tit for tat, like you do this and then I'll do this, but that we love no matter what they do in response to us. Your goal and my goal is to seek the highest good of another person so that they can flourish in the ways that God created them to flourish. It changes a whole perspective. It's no longer about me flourishing, it's about you flourishing, but even a bigger picture, it's about you flourishing according to how God has designed you to flourish. This is the multidimensional characteristics of how Christ loved us on the cross. And how we are to love people in our life. And let me just real quick read verse 35. You could say the third movement is a new witness. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. When you and I love one another as Jesus loves us, this serves as a witness to the world. People will recognize this, they'll say, they're doing what Jesus did. They're following his example, his model, they're living in his footsteps, they're mirroring his actions and how he loved people. When you think about this model, this is not simply using the word love or acting in a subjective way in love. This is an objective and clearly defined way of loving other people that is exemplified in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The great Bible preacher Richard Baxter once wrote, if they can see you love them, you can say anything to them. May we do that more and more as followers of Jesus. Let us pray. Jesus, thank you. Thank you for this amazing example. Lord, you are calling us to a higher example, a higher standard of loving people. You are calling us to do things that where the our culture and our narratives have dumbed down the reality of love. You are bringing it to its proper place and teaching us what it looks like through your life and death and resurrection. And through this model, as we ask you, God, collectively this morning, help us to love in this way. Through this model, we then are a witness to the world when we love one another like this. God, I pray for us individually that you would help us to do this and help us to be a witness to the world. And help us to also know in a message like this, we might feel so much conviction that we don't recognize that this takes a lifetime to practice and to become models of, that it doesn't happen overnight. So, God, give us grace. I pray, God, that you would help us all to live this out as followers of Jesus. And then I pray that as the story Ashland lives this out in this community and region, that this would serve as a witness. That people from every walk of life would come into this church and believe in Jesus Christ because of the love that is seen in this church and through this church. God bless Histori Ashlyn, bless Savon Lisa, bless all the great things you're doing and the anticipation of fall where all churches begin to thrive again. And I pray, Lord, that you would just bless this fall season. I pray it would be one of the greatest fall seasons that they've ever experienced before in this church's history. We love you, Lord. And if there's any person in here today that has never believed in Jesus Christ, if you're here this morning and you are processing and feeling just a tug in your heart to have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, I want you to know that God loves you. That the Son of God came to this earth from heaven and died on the cross to forgive you freely and fully, past, present, and future, to free you from any guilt or shame of sin and to give you an eternal relationship with God through Jesus Christ his Son. And all you have to do is put your faith in this moment in Jesus Christ. If that's you, would you just pray this prayer with me? Jesus, I believe you are the Son of God and the Savior of the world. I believe that you died on the cross to forgive my sin, past, present, and future, all forgiven when I put my faith in you. And today I put my faith in you. I trust you, I believe in you. I want to follow you and worship you and get to know you from this point forward in my life. In Jesus' name, and everyone said, Amen.