Walk the Walk: Walking in Love
Sunday Morning, June 14th, 2026

Those who know Jesus walk like it.

Walking the walk is only done in love. Without love, there is no walk.

Jesus did not command us to love only when it feels natural, easy, or deserved. He commanded us to love as He has loved us - with compassion, sacrifice, patience, truth, and actions.

You preserve a path by walking on it. 👣

• Places where life and death could be decided by the direction you walk in.

• The prophet Jeremiah cried out on God’s behalf:
Ask for the ancient paths. Ask where the good way is and walk in it. (Jeremiah 6)

• But those who heard him refused to walk in them. The ancient paths of obedience to the Lord and His commands became lost, and they would soon be hauled off into exile.

• The question for us is:
Will we do more than hear the Word?
Will we obey (shema) it?

• To examine the way we walk, we have explored two ideas so far:

Week 1: Walking in the light - coming out of any darkness we have grown comfortable in so we can enjoy fellowship, a living breathing relationship with God.

Week 2: Walking in obedience - the engine of growth for this special relationship, mimicking the walk of Jesus, who was completely obedient to every word of the Father.

• Last week we ended with the idea that obedience moves us from intentions of love to realities of love.

• To continue walking in the same way Jesus walked, and in obedience to His most important command, we must be seen, remembered, and known as people who walk in love.

• On the night Jesus would be betrayed, He met with His disciples for one last meal. Then He took the position of their servant and washed their feet.

• This was one last lesson on how to walk the walk in God’s Kingdom. He commanded them to love one another as He had loved them.

• Sometimes we can take the idea of having a personal relationship with Christ and make it too personal.

• Knowing Jesus is not meant to become exclusive or isolated.

UnBiblical thinking:
• Just me and the Lord Jesus
• I don't have to be involved with the church
• I don’t need people and their lives and their junk
• Jesus and I have our own good thing going

• We do not have anything going with Jesus if we are not loving others.

• Selfless love does not come naturally. If it did, it would not need to be commanded.

• The word for love here is agape. Its Hebrew counterpart is Ahavah.

• They are grounded not only in feelings of affection, but in actions of affection.

• Agape love describes God’s kind of love:
Loyal
Unconditional
Self-sacrificial
Shown by the way He cares for His people

• Another related word is Chesed, which describes God’s steadfast love that remains faithful even when we do not.

• God shows his love through:
Compassion
Grace
Patience
Faithfulness

• Later, the Word becomes flesh. Jesus perfectly embodies and expresses the compassionate, gracious, patient, faithful love He has eternally shared with the Father.

• Jesus commanded His disciples: Love each other as I have loved you.
They knew what kind of love He meant.

• Love not dependent on emotional feeling or the behavior and faithfulness of the person receiving it.

• How can God command His people to love? Because His love is not about how you feel in the moment. It's about being obedient to the Father and loving people even when they have no business being loved by you.

• That is walking the walk like Jesus did.

1. Walk toward maturity in Christ. 🌱

• We spent time last week talking about growing in our relationship with God. That special closeness with Him is the prize of the gospel for today.
You will have an eternal home with God, but you can know Him well right now.

• We mature in this relationship as we obey God’s commands. And the greatest command we have been given is to express God’s love to the people He cares about.

• God’s love is boundless. By the most incredible miracle, He has adopted us as His sons and daughters and commands us: Show My love.

• Love comes from God. Those who know Him show the love they have experienced.

Measuring Maturity:

• Do you want to know if you are maturing in your faith in a way that pleases God? Ask: What is the quality of my love for people?

• Maturing love shows up in:
Acts of compassion
Acts of mercy
Acts of care
Acts of undeserved kindness

• This is how God showed His love. He sent His Son. Now we live through and become like the Son, doing the things the Son did.

• We were not worthy of the blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins. We were by nature children deserving wrath. (Ephesians 2)

• We did not live in a way that merited mercy. But God sent Jesus for our sins.

• We did not love God first. He loved us. Now a command has been given through Christ: Love one another in the same way.

• Even when they do not deserve it.
• Even when they do not act in accordance with receiving it.
• Even when your emotions do not align with your obedience.
• Love fully anyway.

• God’s love will not be fully complete in us until we walk with Him in glory. But for now, completeness means walking toward maturity.

• My life should be moving toward:
More consistent love
More unconditional love
More patient love

• If we are full of impatience, anger, strife, division, hate, pessimism, or rage toward others, we are not moving toward maturity. We are moving backwards.

• We do not have anything going on with Jesus if we do not love His people.

• We are helpless to walk in love, setting aside our feelings and emotions, without the help of the Holy Spirit.

• Jesus did not say:
Love when you feel like loving.
Love when they show love first.

• We are in Christ and live through Him. Those who claim to know Jesus walk like it and love like it, even at the most inconvenient times.

2. Walking toward restoration. 🤝

• One expression of love that is crucial, but challenging, is walking toward restoration.

• Phones and social media have a feature called blocking.
You can block spam calls and problematic people.

• When you block someone, you do not have to deal with them, their junk, their issues, their negativity, or their harsh words.

• That may be helpful on our phones, but the Body of Christ has too easily embraced the blocking culture of the world toward one another.

• If someone wrongs you, speaks out of line, or you do not gel with them, the easiest thing to do is:
Block them out
Avoid them
Ignore them
Find a new church
Move on regardless of what God wants

• Blocking people says: I am not dealing with them because I do not have to.

• We may read this passage and immediately say:
“I do not hate anyone.”
“I am not trying to harm them.”
“I am not praying for their destruction.”

• But the word hate carries the idea of detesting, rejecting, disregarding, or treating someone as less worthy of love.

• It is not only active hostility, but also a failure to love.

John is asking:
• Are you loving your brother?
• Are you moving toward them with the love of God?
• Are you seeking their good?

Hate does not always look like a clenched fist. Sometimes it looks like:
• Cold distance
• Indifference
• Writing someone off
• Refusing to step toward forgiveness
• Withholding compassion
• Being content with a broken relationship

• If you have broken relationships in your life, as much as it depends on you, strive for full restoration.

• That is the love of God at work, and evidence of maturity.

• We are the body of Christ, and He is the head. The body parts all work together and take orders from the head. How can we take orders from the head if the body parts refuse to work together?

• A great work of God is missing from our lives when we withhold love from our brothers and sisters.

• There are many ways a rift can form in a relationship, and in our flesh, we cannot move on

• Our flesh is focused on self-preservation. But by the power of the Holy Spirit, things can change.

• Galatians 5. The Spirit produces: Love, Peace, Patience, Kindness...

• When you mature in Christ, you recognize it is not you at work.

• You may say:
“I could not forgive this person.”
“I did not want to be in the same room with this person.”
“But I prayed, yielded to the Holy Spirit, and He made restoration possible.”

• Every time the real pain returns, yield to the Holy Spirit again. He brings peace and patience to the heart.

• Unfair acts of love are possible with the Holy Spirit.

3. Walking toward sacrifice. ✝️

• Showing love is a costly action.

• Jesus said there is no greater expression of love than to lay down your life for your friends. John 15

• John recalls those words again:

• Loving well can be costly. It is a living, sacrificial love.

• Love will inconvenience your life for the sake of someone else.

We may think:
• “They should have made better choices.”
• “I should not have to get involved.”

• There is wisdom to know when to give and when to withhold, but there is also an obedience issue.

• If God puts someone in your life to come alongside and serve, and the Spirit is leading you to help, but you come up with reasons why you cannot or should not be involved, you are not acting in accordance with loving God.

• John asks how the love of God can be in us if we refuse to love sacrificially.

• We know the truth that our Father loves in deeds:
Compassion
Grace
Patience
Faithfulness

• Is the direction of your life headed toward sacrificial love?
• Are you showing the greatest of all loves? Love that costs.

• To walk in love is a response to what we have already received.

Thanks for being with us this morning.
If you feel God has spoken to you about the way you're loving others, we hope you'll allow us to spend some time connecting with you in the days ahead. Feel free to come talk with us after the service.

You can send in a prayer request on our website:
https://www.TheChurchofJoy.org/prayer

The most important decision.
If you know you've never fully surrendered your life to Jesus, and you feel that you're far from a relationship with Him, we would love to spend some time talking with you about making the decision to follow Him. Come see us after the service or get in touch through our church website.