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Love Is | Week 5 | Full Service · Rewind

Rock Point Church

72 min

Pastor Bill Bush · Dec 19, 2022 · 5 min read · 72 min listen

The big idea

Without love, nothing else you say, know, believe, give, or accomplish matters — love is a command, a conduct, and a commitment, not a feeling.

In this message

The big idea
Point 1 of 7Love is a command, not a feeling
Point 2 of 7Love is a conduct — something you do, not just feel

Point 3 of 7Love is a commitment — a daily choice, not infatuation
Point 4 of 7Without love, nothing you say, know, or believe matters
Point 5 of 7Without love, giving and accomplishing don't matter either
Point 6 of 7Love is the greatest because without it, faith and hope collapse
Point 7 of 7A garage-gym mistake shows how one missing piece ruins everything
Take it into your week
Transcript

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Scripture in this message

1 Corinthians 13
1 Corinthians 14:1
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
1 Corinthians 13:13
John 3:16
1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Rewind AI drafted the Big Idea and some point headings shown here from the sermon transcript. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Pastor Bill Bush · Dec 19, 2022 · 72 min watch · 2 min read

Love Is | Week 5 | Full Service

In this message

Big Idea
Key points
Application

Scripture in this message

1 Corinthians 13
1 Corinthians 14:1
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
1 Corinthians 13:13
John 3:16
1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Big Idea Key points Application

Big Idea

Without love, nothing else you say, know, believe, give, or accomplish matters — love is a command, a conduct, and a commitment, not a feeling.

Real love isn't a feeling you fall into — it's a choice you climb into, a command God gives, a conduct you practice, and a commitment you keep. Paul tells the Corinthians that words, knowledge, belief, generosity, and even great accomplishments mean nothing without it, because love is the very essence of who God is and the only thing that gives faith and hope any lasting power.

Key points

1
1Love is a command, not a feeling
Pastor Bill points out that God commands us to love, and you can't command a feeling — trying to demand feelings from a spouse or child never works and usually backfires.
2
2Love is a conduct — something you do, not just feel
Drawing on 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 and quoting C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, he explains that acting in love actually changes how you feel toward someone, while acting harshly increases dislike. He ties this to praying for people who frustrate you rather than praying on them.
3
3Love is a commitment — a daily choice, not infatuation
He contrasts falling into infatuation with climbing into love, using the bubble-gum illustration (the sweetness fades, but real love keeps going after the flavor is gone). He cites 1 Corinthians 14:1's charge to let love be the highest goal and reads a regretful breakup letter to show what happens when love is really just a contractual, feelings-based arrangement.
4
4Without love, nothing you say, know, or believe matters
Working through 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, Pastor Bill shows that eloquent words, deep knowledge, and even strong belief accomplish nothing without love — even demons believe. He applies this to online arguing and culture-war Christianity, saying love unlocks a willingness to hear truth, but truth alone never unlocks love.
5
5Without love, giving and accomplishing don't matter either
He explains you can give without loving, but you can't love without giving — and giving from fear, obligation, or control just breeds resentment instead of blessing. He tells the story of Charles Francis Adams writing 'a day wasted' about fishing with his son, while the son called it the best day of his life, showing how the same act can be empty or meaningful depending on love.
6
6Love is the greatest because without it, faith and hope collapse
Reading 1 Corinthians 13:13, he asks why love outranks faith and hope, and answers that without love there is no hope, so faith becomes pointless. He points to John 3:16 and imagines how depressing the gospel would sound if God had merely 'really liked' the world instead of loved it, showing that Christmas and the cross are the ultimate proof of God's love-in-action.
7
7A garage-gym mistake shows how one missing piece ruins everything
He describes building a Smith machine backward with a friend's help — it looked perfect but was useless because one part was reversed, forcing them to disassemble everything. He applies this directly: you can get every other part of your life or relationships right, but without love the whole thing still doesn't work.

Love isn't a feeling. Love generates feelings

Application

Pastor Bill's charge is that if you don't love, nothing else in your life will actually work — so choose to love on purpose, starting this Christmas.

Act your way into loving feelings
If you struggle to feel love for someone, don't wait for the feeling — start acting in loving ways toward them, and let the action shape the feeling, as C.S. Lewis described.
Pray for people who frustrate you
Instead of praying on someone who bothers you or your spouse, pray for them; it changes your own attitude even if nothing else changes.
Check your motive when you give or serve
Ask whether you're giving out of fear, obligation, or control instead of love, and recommit to giving because you love the person or the church, not to get something back.
Stop arguing to be right and choose relationship instead
In online debates or family conflicts, quit defending your own insecurity and anger, and lead with love before truth, since truth alone won't open anyone's heart.
Take a quiet moment to reflect and take communion
Pause the Christmas busyness this week to ask whether you've truly embraced God's love, and whether that love is showing up in how you treat the people around you.

Take it into your week

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Scripture in this message

From the transcript
“the things we've been talking about the last few weeks in first Corinthians 13 is when you hear the actual topic, we talk, yeah, that makes sense. I agree with that”
From the transcript
“chapter 14, the end of this chapter on love, the very first statement in chapter 14 verse one, it says this, let love be your highest goal”
From the transcript
“I'm gonna go back to verse one through three. We skipped that if you notice. We started in verse four of this passage. I wanted to save one through three to this”
From the transcript
“here's what he says in the first three verses. He says, listen. And remember, he's talking to a church that was successful in all these things, but they weren't really successful”
From the transcript
“If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but I didn't love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clinging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy and if I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains but I didn't love others, I would be nothing”
From the transcript
“verse 13 of chapter 13 says this. These three things will last forever. Faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love”
From the transcript
“Can I imagine three six John three sixteen if God didn't love us? How would he say that? Instead of for God so loved the world? For God so really liked the world”
From the transcript
“I wanna read verse four through seven, which defines love. But if God is love and Jesus defines love, every time it says love in these verses, I'm gonna put Jesus in there instead”

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

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Day 1

Pastor Bill opened with a simple but disarming observation: you cannot command a feeling. You can't tell someone to feel happy, feel confident, or feel in love — and have that actually work. So when God commands us to love, He must mean something deeper than emotion. That's where 1 Corinthians 14:1 comes in — 'Let love be your highest goal.' Not your highest hope, not your best feeling on a good day — your goal. Something you aim at, return to, and choose. This reframes everything. If love were just a feeling, we'd be off the hook whenever it faded. But if love is a command — something God calls us to choose — then it belongs in the same category as any other act of obedience. Which means it's available to us even when it's hard. Even toward the person who frustrates us. Even in the middle of a difficult season. This isn't discouraging news. It's actually freeing. You don't have to wait until you feel warmly toward someone before you act lovingly toward them. The choice comes first. And as Pastor Bill pointed out, that choice is made possible not by trying harder, but by going deeper — into the reality that God has already chosen to love you, not because of who you are, but because of who He is.

For reflection

Is there a relationship in your life where you have been waiting to feel love before choosing to show it? What might it look like to make the choice first?

Pray

Pray for the willingness to treat love as a goal you pursue rather than a feeling you wait for.

Day 2

Verses four through seven of 1 Corinthians 13 are some of the most quoted lines in Scripture — read at weddings, printed on greeting cards, familiar to almost everyone. But Pastor Bill's point about love as conduct gives these verses fresh weight. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love does not envy. Love is not proud. Every single one of these is a verb in disguise — a way of acting, not just a way of feeling. That means love is visible. It shows up in tone of voice, in what you do with an afternoon, in whether you stay in a hard conversation or walk away from it. It shows up in whether you choose to keep a record of wrongs or let something go. Pastor Bill mentioned going fishing with your kid and not calling it a wasted day — that's love as conduct. That's verses four through seven lived out on a Tuesday. The good news here is that this kind of love is not reserved for people who naturally feel warm and generous. It's available to anyone willing to act it out. And here's what Pastor Bill made clear: when you choose to act lovingly toward someone, it changes both of you. Conduct shapes the heart. The choice to love, made repeatedly, becomes something that grows in you. You don't have to feel it first — but you may find yourself feeling it eventually.

For reflection

Which description in verses four through seven feels most like a stretch for you right now — and what would one small act in that direction look like today?

Pray

Pray for the courage to let love be something others can actually see in how you act this week.

Day 3

A noisy gong. A clanging cymbal. These are not gentle images — they describe something loud, insistent, and ultimately empty. And Pastor Bill's point was direct: when we speak without love underneath the words, that's exactly what people hear. Not the content. Not the argument. The hollow ring. This hits close to home in a world that rewards whoever speaks loudest or most confidently. We are surrounded by voices — online, in politics, even in Christian spaces — that are technically correct but land with a clang because the love isn't there. Pastor Bill was honest that often what drives those voices isn't really a concern for truth. It's insecurity. It's needing to win. And people can feel that, even when they can't name it. The invitation here isn't to go silent or stop having convictions. It's to ask a harder question before you speak: Is love the foundation of what I'm about to say? Not sentimentality — love. The kind that actually wants good for the other person, that's willing to be misunderstood, that doesn't need to come out on top. Words spoken from that place carry a different weight. They reach people. And in this Christmas season, when there is so much noise — so much performance, so much pressure to say the right things — the most powerful thing you might offer someone is a word that is simply, quietly, rooted in love.

For reflection

Think of a recent conversation where you said the right things but felt like they didn't land. What was underneath your words — and what might have been different if love had led?

Pray

Pray for awareness of what is underneath your words before you speak them today.

Day 4

Pastor Bill didn't let knowledge or faith off the hook. Even prophecy, even mountain-moving faith, even understanding God's secret plans — without love, it adds up to nothing. That's a stunning claim. We tend to think of theological knowledge and strong faith as the marks of a mature believer. And they can be. But they can also become armor for insecurity, or a way of keeping people at a comfortable distance. The online argument Pastor Bill described is a perfect picture of this. Someone who is technically right, citing chapter and verse, but whose real goal is to defend their own ego — that's 1 Corinthians 13:2 in real time. Truth delivered without love doesn't set people free. It just makes them feel small, or judged, or tired. This isn't a case against knowing Scripture or holding firm convictions. God absolutely calls us to know Him and His Word. But knowledge has a purpose — it's meant to serve love, not replace it. When what we know about God becomes something we use to feel superior rather than something that softens and opens us, something has gone sideways. The check Pastor Bill offered is worth sitting with: When I share what I believe, am I genuinely hoping it helps this person — or am I hoping it wins the point? That's not a comfortable question. But it's a loving one.

For reflection

Is there a belief or conviction you tend to lead with in a way that distances rather than connects? What would it look like to let love set the tone instead?

Pray

Pray for humility — that what you know about God would make you more open to people, not less.

Day 5

This may be the most surprising verse in the passage. Even giving everything — even the ultimate sacrifice — gains nothing without love. Pastor Bill was clear: it's entirely possible to give out of obligation, out of fear, out of a quiet desire to be in control, or out of a need to be seen as generous. And when that's the engine, the giving is real but the love isn't. This matters because it means that generosity is not automatically love. You can write the check, bring the meal, show up to serve — and still be doing it for yourself. The question is what's underneath. Is it a freely given choice? Or is it driven by guilt, or by the image you want others to have of you? Pastor Bill's point wasn't to make giving feel more complicated or to cast suspicion on anyone's motives. It was to invite a deeper kind of freedom. When love is actually the foundation — not obligation, not performance, not fear — giving stops being a burden and starts being a joy. You stop keeping score. You stop waiting to be thanked. You stop resenting what it cost you. That kind of giving is only possible when you've first received love you didn't earn. When you know you are loved not because of what you give but because of who God is, giving becomes an overflow rather than a transaction.

For reflection

When you give — your time, resources, or energy — what is usually driving it? What would it feel like if love, not obligation, were the reason?

Pray

Pray for freedom from obligation-driven giving, and for love to be what moves you toward generosity.

Day 6

Everything Pastor Bill preached in 1 Corinthians 13 has a backstory, and John 3:16 is where it lives. 'For this is how God loved the world: He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.' This is not a verse about our love — it's about His. And Pastor Bill's application is worth sitting with: God loves us not because of who we are, but because of who He is. That changes everything about the command to love. If love were something we had to manufacture on our own — dredged up from somewhere inside us — most of us would run dry fast. But that's not what's being asked. We are not the source. We are recipients first. The love we're called to give is not self-generated; it flows from something we've already been given. This is what makes Christmas more than a season of warmth and tradition. Pastor Bill made the connection plain: God sending Jesus to the cross is the ultimate proof that love is not a feeling but a choice, a commitment, a sacrifice. God didn't wait until the world felt lovable. He acted first. As we move through this season, the invitation isn't to feel more Christmas spirit. It's to receive, again and more deeply, the love that arrived in Bethlehem — and to let that be what fills us and flows out of us.

For reflection

How deeply have you actually received the truth that God loves you because of who He is, not what you've done? What would shift in you if that settled in more fully?

Pray

Pray to receive God's love more deeply — not as a concept, but as something personal and real.

Day 7

After a week with this passage, it's worth stepping back and sitting with the whole of it. Words, knowledge, faith, generosity, sacrifice — none of it counts without love. And love is not a feeling you catch or lose. It is a command, a conduct, and a commitment. That's the shape of what Pastor Bill laid out, and it holds together. The Christmas season has a way of exposing exactly this tension. There is so much doing — so much preparation, so much giving, so much gathering — and it is entirely possible to get all of it right on the outside and miss the one thing that makes it matter. Pastor Bill's question is worth carrying into every room you walk into this week: Is love the foundation here? Not the performance of love. The real thing — chosen, covenantal, rooted in the love God has already shown us in Christ. This isn't a call to perfection. Love, the way 1 Corinthians 13 describes it, is a direction — something we aim toward, return to, and grow in over a lifetime. The point isn't to have arrived. The point is to keep choosing. If this week has stirred something in you — a relationship that needs attention, a habit that needs to change, a question you're not sure how to answer — don't sit with it alone. Bring it to God, and bring it to someone in your community who can walk with you.

For reflection

As you look back over this week, where did you most clearly feel the pull to choose love — and where did you want to avoid it? What does that show you about where you're growing?

Pray

Pray for love to be the foundation — not just during Christmas, but in the everyday choices that follow.

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

Pastor Bill opened this message with a claim that might stop us in our tracks: that love is not something we fall into — it is something we choose. Let's take a few minutes to sit with that idea before we dig in.

Discussion questions

1
In 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, Paul lists some remarkable things — angelic speech, prophetic knowledge, mountain-moving faith, even giving everything to the poor — and says that without love, all of it amounts to nothing. What do you think Paul is trying to protect by making such an extreme claim?
2
Pastor Bill pointed out that because love is commanded in 1 Corinthians 14:1, it cannot simply be a feeling — you can't command a feeling. What difference does it make to think of love primarily as a choice rather than an emotion, especially in relationships that are strained or difficult?
3
Pastor Bill described love as a conduct — something action-oriented that actually changes both the person giving it and the person receiving it. How does that idea show up in what 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 describes love doing?
4
Pastor Bill drew a distinction between truth delivered with love and truth delivered without it — suggesting that truth without love often ends up just defending our own insecurity rather than reaching anyone. What do you think makes it hard for people to hold truth and love together at the same time?
5
In 1 Corinthians 13:13, Paul calls love the greatest of faith, hope, and love. Pastor Bill connected this to Christmas, saying God's love in sending Jesus is the foundation of all our hope. How does seeing love as the root of hope rather than just a virtue among others change the way we might think about what we're actually celebrating at Christmas?
6
Pastor Bill suggested that the starting point for choosing to love others is not trying harder but going deeper — receiving the reality that God loves us not because of who we are but because of who He is. As we head into the busyness of the Christmas season, where might that kind of received love quietly reshape the way we show up for the people around us?

Pray together

Receiving God's love as the foundation — and asking Him to let that love flow outward into every relationship and moment this season

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Love Is

Week 5 · 5 messages

Where these passages are preached

1 Corinthians 13 1 Corinthians 14 John 3

Explore related topics

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