Love First | Follow - Walking in the Way of Jesus | Sunday May 17th, 2026

``So let me ask you, where are you content in being near to the kingdom but maybe not fully surrendered to the king? What currently receives your deepest affection? What currently receives the allegiance of your heart? Is it yourself? Is it somebody else? Is it your country? Is it your ideology? In what ways are you tempted to use spirituality and knowledge, influence, visibility to protect or elevate yourself? Do you see yourself as a church goer, meaning you're a good person, and everybody should acknowledge that. Right? That you're trying hard, you're just trying to be good. Sincerity will not save you. [00:40:40] (46 seconds)  #SurrenderToTheKing

Obedience earns closeness to God, religion says. Whereas the gospel says, obedience flows from closeness with God. That religion says, I hide my failure to preserve my image, where the gospel says, I confess my failure because my identity is secure. Religion says, I change so that God will accept me. The gospel says, God accepts me in Christ and therefore changes me. Do you see it? It's a subtle but incredibly important shift because one will lead us away from God and one will lead us to God. And what we see is that God has come down in that and that the leading is by his love and by his grace. [00:40:03] (37 seconds)  #ClosenessNotPerformance

When we act in love, we're revealing what God is like, and you can only do that when you receive God's love. And that's what's wonderful about God, is his love always comes before ours. It's always first. Ephesians two says, God, who is enriched in mercy, because of his great love for us, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in our trespasses. Dead people do not initiate rescue. God's love acts first. It awakens first, and it restores first. We love because he first loved us, and God has proved his own love that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Do you know how much God loves you? [00:41:48] (42 seconds)  #GodLovesFirst

There was still law before the fall. Right? Like, before Adam and Eve sinned, they knew what sin was supposed to what would be. It would be disobeying god. It would be a declaration against his goodness. It would be separating ourselves from his love. You see, we were created to receive the love of god, to reciprocate the love of god, and to have the love of god flow out all around us. That is how god's glory would spread. So when he says, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it. He's saying, receive my love and buy it my power, show it to one another and take that into the world. [00:22:01] (40 seconds)  #MadeToMultiplyLove

What Christians say is that there's no way I can get to God, so God came to me. We've also described it as being not a religion, but a relationship. It's almost become cliche And and and and gives kind of this sense of moral superiority in a way. Right? It's not really a religion. It's a relationship. At the same time, both of those things, this idea that God comes towards us, that we might engage him in a relationship, gives us the true nature of who God is and the intention behind all of his actions. [00:16:17] (35 seconds)  #RelationshipNotReligion

Because to say I see God's love behind all of his actions is to open up ourselves to transformation. And we just don't like change. Right? That's why a lot of people a lot of people choose religion out of a sense of control in order to not change. Problem with that is that when we fail at those things, we tend to hide, not repent. Right? That if we think that I've just I gotta keep myself kind of away from God's love, that when we screw up, we'll get super defensive or we'll just run and hide. Whereas transformation in God's love produces honesty, vulnerability because you know this, that God's love, if that is who God is, is always an invitation to return to him and experience his grace. [00:27:31] (52 seconds)  #GraceBreedsHonesty

Love is the interpretive center of the kingdom, not performative religion, not ideological certainty, certainly not institutional preservation. It is rather experiencing the love of God, responding with love, and showing that love to the world around us. We've been working through some of the various antagonistic interactions that Jesus is having in the days leading up to his crucifixion. He has offended people. Jesus was offensive. You know, he was most particularly offensive to was the religious people. Right? Because he's describing something, God being something that they have no idea to understand. [00:18:24] (41 seconds)  #LoveIsTheCenter

Let me finish with this. Just a couple of truths around what this means. Religion tells you that your identity comes from what you do. What does the gospel tells you? It tells you that your identity comes from who you belong to. Religion says that God will love a better version of me. Gospel says, God loved me while I was still broken. Religion says, I repent so God won't reject me. The gospel says, I repent because God welcomes me. See, the reason we repent is because we've been given the opportunity to experience God's kindness. [00:39:28] (35 seconds)  #IdentityInBelonging