Reverend Tim Coleman | July 5, 2026
What does it actually cost to love the people God has placed around you — not the easy ones, but the ones who test your patience, offend you, or carry wounds you can’t see? On the night he was betrayed, Jesus gave his disciples one final command, and it wasn’t about doctrine or ritual. It was startlingly simple: love one another. This message opens our summer series on the “one another” commands of Scripture, and it starts right where love gets hardest — in the mess of real relationships.
Background and Context
In John 13:33–35, on the same night Judas would betray him and the rest would eventually deny or abandon him, Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, fed them, and then gave them a new command: “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” This wasn’t a soft upgrade to the Old Testament standard of loving your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18) — it raised the bar entirely. “As I have loved you” calls for a sacrificial, others-first love that puts someone else’s honor above your own comfort, even at personal cost. Jesus was clear about the stakes: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Not doctrinal agreement. Not shared causes. Love.
What We Explored
It’s easy to feel spiritually mature in isolation — patient, peaceful, kind — right up until we have to deal with actual people. The moment we leave our own space and interact face to face with others, our “theoretical kindness” gets tested by real-life annoyances. As John Stott put it, holiness isn’t a private, mystical experience — it only exists in relationship with other people. Scott Hubbard adds that true holiness “may begin between God and the soul, but it finds full expression in community.”
C.S. Lewis’s words from The Weight of Glory reframed the stakes: “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” Every person we interact with — however dull or difficult — is either becoming something everlasting and glorious, or something tragic. That truth alone makes love non-negotiable.
The message also unpacked why love has to be commanded rather than assumed. 1 John 4:7–12 roots love in God’s own character — “God is love,” and “whoever does not love does not know God.” That love is meant to be unconditional, not transactional. A story about a man named Fred — a difficult, wounded church attender many people avoided — illustrated this vividly. Years of persistence revealed layers of trauma behind his behavior, and the relationship became one of the most formative in the speaker’s pastoral life. Love, it turns out, isn’t a feeling you wait to arrive. It’s a decision you make on purpose, especially toward people who are hard to love.
Four practical shapes of this love were offered:
- Love makes time for one another — showing up, even in ordinary ways like a weekly golf game, because relationship matters more than the activity itself.
- Love is empathy and attention — truly listening instead of rushing to fix or correct someone.
- Love is grace and patience — extending forgiveness and assuming the best, especially when conflict is inevitable in close community.
- Love is showing up — celebrating milestones, sitting with people in loss, checking in on those who’ve drifted, and praying for one another.
Key Takeaways
1. Love is the identifying mark of Christ’s followers.
Not agreement, not culture, not cause — love is what Jesus said would prove we belong to him.
2. Holiness isn’t found in isolation.
Spiritual growth happens in the friction of real relationships, not in retreat from them.
3. Love is a decision, not a feeling.
Especially toward people who are difficult, wounded, or unlikely to give anything back.
4. Every person carries eternal weight.
Because there are no “ordinary people,” how we treat one another matters more than we often realize.
A Question Worth Sitting With
Who in your life is hardest to love right now — and what would it look like to love them anyway, on purpose, this week?
This Week’s Challenge
Identify one person you tend to avoid, dismiss, or quietly resent. Take one concrete step toward them this week — a phone call, a visit, a conversation — not because they’ve earned it, but because that’s exactly the kind of love you’ve been shown.
Watch the Full Message
Catch the full sermon at westhillchurch.ca or join us Sundays at 8025 Sherwood Drive, Regina, SK.
This post was prepared as a ministry resource for Westhill Park Baptist Church. An initial draft was generated with the assistance of Claude AI (claude.ai), developed by Anthropic. All AI-assisted content is reviewed, edited, and approved by church leadership before publication to ensure it faithfully reflects the message and values of our community.
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