What Does Love Look Like?

So we're 1 Corinthians 5.

Open up your Bibles.

Would you get there? We're gonna read this chapter.

see what Paul has to say.

Um, I, I, I would assume that many of you came here and, and what you appreciated about our environment was, I mean, I hear from you, you know, I hear, I hear from many of you, like you love how free it is here that you, you know, there's no one breathing down your neck.

It doesn't feel stiff.

There's not legalism here.

No one's, no one's telling you what to wear.

Heck I can wear genie pants and you know, no one's saying anything about it.

I attended a youth group when I was 13, and I was asked to leave because I wasn't wearing a skirt.

It was a very legalistic environment, and that did a lot of damage to me as a young girl.

There's not that happening here, you know? And I love that.

I love that you have freedom to worship and express yourself, and we love that.

That's what we want here.

However, that does not mean, that freedom that you feel and appreciate does not mean we're just a random gathering of people who love the Lord, right? We are a church, and that means something.

We are a church, and a church, the church, the church is a specific thing that we don't get to define.

And we've talked about this.

Last year, I preached out of Ephesians 4.

We talked about church, God's way.

And why would you do church, God's way? Because church is God's thing.

It's not our thing.

We didn't create it and we don't get to define it.

And the church has definition and the church has structure given to us by scripture.

There's accountability here.

There are people here responsible for what happens here and accountable to what happens here.