The Love of Christ: Obedience, Joy, and Real Sacrifice

From the sermon preached on April 26, 2026

The love of Christ is not a feeling that lifts you above the hard parts of life; it is the thing that holds you steady inside them. In John 15, Jesus tells his disciples that his love produces something real and measurable in a person's daily life: obedience, fullness of joy, and a willingness to sacrifice. That is what this sermon explores, and it is what this post unpacks.

The love of Christ produces obedience, and that might be the sentence that most people misread. Obedience sounds like rules, like obligation, like someone watching over your shoulder. But in John 15:9–10, Jesus frames obedience as the natural result of understanding what his love actually cost. "As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love."

The word "abide" just means to remain, to stay put. When you understand what Jesus went through for you and you respond by following his word in your daily life, something stays intact in the relationship. There is no noise between you and him. The love of Christ produces obedience not because someone demands it, but because love that deep tends to change a person.

Pastor Greg illustrated this with a simple image from parenting. He described asking one of his kids, over and over, to clean up before dinner. Half an hour later, nothing has happened. He finds it funny sometimes and frustrating other times, but the real point is this: if ordinary parental love creates an expectation of response, how much more should the love of Christ (shown through a man sweating drops of blood before going to a cross he could have walked away from) create a response in the people he loved?

That is what Luke 22:39–44 shows. Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, knew exactly what was coming. He prayed that the cup might pass from him, and his body broke under the pressure; a physical condition called hematidrosis caused him to sweat what appeared to be drops of blood. He did not call down angels. He said, "Not my will, but thine be done," and walked toward the cross because of his love for the Father and for us.

One honest step you can take today: pick one area where you know what the right thing is, and do it anyway, not to earn anything, but as a quiet act of trust that the one who went to the cross for you actually knows what he is doing.

Joy in difficult times is one of those phrases that can sound hollow, especially if someone is handing it to you from a place of comfort. But this sermon earns the right to say it, because it comes with a real story. A pastor friend of Pastor Greg's watched his wife, Susanna, go through cancer treatment. Four kids. Uncertain outcome. And in a Facebook post from partway through the journey, there was Susanna, IVs in her arm, hair falling out from the treatment, and smiling. Her husband's caption described being overwhelmed by the joy she had during that time.

Joy in difficult times is not the same as happiness, and the distinction matters. Happiness runs on what is happening around you: you walk out of church and find a flat tyre, you are unhappy. You drive to the petrol station and see the price per litre, you are still unhappy. Happenings drive happiness up and down. But joy in difficult times is something underneath all of that. John 15:11 puts it plainly: "These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full."

Full. Not half-full. Not enough to get by. Full.

Romans 5:1–5 explains the mechanism. When a person has been justified by faith, two things happen. First, they have peace with God: the hostility between a person and their Creator is resolved. Second, they gain access to the peace of God: the settled assurance that what Christ is doing in your life is for your good, even when it does not look like it. The love of Christ produces obedience, and that same love becomes the source of joy that circumstances cannot drain.

That is what Susanna had. And about a month and a half after that post, the final update came through: she was cancer-free. But the joy Pastor Greg was pointing to was not dependent on that outcome. It was present in the middle, when nothing was resolved.

One honest step: the next time a happening threatens to swallow you, try asking a different question. Not "why is this happening?" but "what is underneath this that does not move?"

The sacrifice of Jesus Christ does not just sit in the past as something to be thankful for on Sunday. In John 15:13, Jesus says, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." He says this right before warning his disciples that the world is going to hate them, not because of anything they have done, but because of him. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ created a dividing line, and once a person has crossed it, the world responds differently to them.

Pastor Greg told a story that is not polished but is very true. He was inviting people to church by going door to door. Completely harmless, he thought. He turned a corner and heard someone yelling. Sure enough, it was aimed at him. The man had the invitation in his hand and was furious. Pastor Greg walked over, kept it calm, explained who he was and that he just wanted to invite people to church. You would have thought he had dropped something dangerous in that letterbox. The man threw the invitation on the ground.

Pastor Greg picked it up, said "Have a nice day, God bless you," and kept walking. His point in telling the story was not to complain, and not to hold the man's reaction against him. The point is that the man was not really angry at Greg; he was angry at Jesus. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and what it represents about the exclusive nature of truth, is genuinely confronting to people who have not accepted it. And Matthew 7:14 says the way is narrow, and few find it.

The sacrifice of Jesus Christ also calls for a response in return. Not a matching sacrifice of dramatic proportions, but a quiet willingness to keep going in the face of rejection, to keep showing up with a loaf of bread or an invitation, to let the love of Christ be the reason you get up tomorrow.

One honest step: the next time someone pushes back on what you believe or who you are, ask whether they are actually reacting to you, or to something much older and much more important than either of you.

This section draws from the core teaching of John 15:1–17. Here is how the passage frames two very different sources of stability:

Gisborne sits at the edge of New Zealand, a place that sees the sun before anywhere else in the world and carries the weight of a community that knows what hard looks like. Whether you are in Mangapapa, Kaiti, Makarori, or anywhere across the Tairāwhiti Region, the questions this sermon raises are not foreign ones: What keeps you going when the circumstances do not cooperate? Where does your stability actually come from? Bay Light Baptist Church meets Sundays at 10:15am at Mangapapa School Hall, 5 Rua Street, and Pastor Greg is the kind of person who would rather sit across from you with a coffee than hand you a pamphlet. No pressure, no obligation. Just an honest conversation.

The love of Christ is not a concept for people who have everything sorted. It is the thing that held a man steady in a garden while his body was breaking under the weight of what was coming, and it is the thing that keeps Susanna smiling through cancer treatment. It produces obedience not through guilt but through gratitude, joy not through circumstances but through a source that does not run out, and a willingness to give rather than only receive. As 1 John 4:19 says simply: we love him because he first loved us.

If you want to understand more of what Bay Light believes before you show up, explore it here to read through the vision and beliefs.

When you are ready to take a next step, come and hear Pastor Greg preach in person; plan your visit below to know exactly what to expect.