What is Love? (Street Sermon)

Location: City of Fremantle, Town Square

Date: 14th March 2026

Sermon Title: What is Love, and How Can I Find it?

Hello! Citizens of Fremantle! If you could spare me 10 to 15 minutes of your time!

My name is Jon, I’m a Freo boy. Spent most of my teenage years here.

I’m part of this group – we’re called the Forge, we’re basically just a group of regular Christian men, trying to encourage one another to become better men.

Today, we want to ask and engage with the people of Fremantle with this question:

“What is love?”

I think love is something that we all want in our lives. But if I were to ask everyone of you “what is love?” I might get some different answers from everyone! But y’know, love is so important in our world that I think it’d be good to agree on what love really is. And that’s what I’ll talk about today.

I’ll just give a short little speech of what I believe love is, and if you are interested in having a chat with us afterwards, feel free to stick around and chat with us about the topic.

So – a little bit about my personal journey with love.

I wasn’t raised in a Christian household, so I grew up an atheist essentially - but I went to a Christian primary school in Singapore. And in this school, like most schools, they gave us all a school diary.

And at the back of the school diary was this verse from the bible (1 Corinthians 13:4-8) I’ll read it out:

 ⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.⁸ Love never fails.

Wow.

Ladies and gents – I’m not sure if you ever experienced that kind of love before. Maybe this definition of love seems foreign to you because you were in an abusive relationship. Or maybe your parents were unkind towards you. Or maybe your friends betrayed you. But I think we’re ALL thirsting and looking for this love. A love that is patient, kind, not boastful, not dishonouring, not self-seeking, not easily angered, that keeps no record of wrongs.

I’m telling you, my friends, that verse stuck with me. Even though I was under 10 years old, I never forgot that. So before I was 10 years old, I realized that there’s actually a definition for what love is, according to the Bible.

However – it appeared to me, that even though this sounded great, I couldn’t see it in the people around me! I had very harsh, impatient and unforgiving teachers in my primary school.

But I never lost hope of trying to find this love that I heard about at the back of my diary.

And then I moved to Australia for my highschool education. The highschool I went to was extremely left-wing and progressive in its ideology.

There, things got very confusing for me.

I grew up with this definition of love from my Christian primary school in Singapore – but during highschool in Australia, everyone was teaching me that “love is love”!

So, unlike the bible, my teachers and friends started teaching me that there is no real definition of love.

Guys kissing guys? Well, I suppose, love is love.

Y’know I had a gay friend at the time, who was around my age – so he was a minor, maybe 15 to 16 years old at the time. He was sleeping with a man twice his age! But hey – I was taught love is love! So we let him continue.

And I started to believe it myself.

So I made a mistake. I ended up dating a girl my age when I was 18 years old, just for a bit of fun. I told her “I loved her” many times. Though, even when I was telling her “I loved her” I ended up breaking up with her multiple times and leaving her and getting back together with her whenever I felt like it. She was absolutely heartbroken because of my actions. But hey – "love is love"! So, who was to say that I didn’t love her? Or so I thought.

But somehow, I never found that definition for true love during my highschool years either. I guess my search for true love would continue.

After that, I ended up being drafted into the Singaporean military. That was one of the lowest points of my life. I started to fall into a deep depression at this time.

And yeah, I didn’t find love during my time in the military either. I was starting to lose hope of ever finding this love that I read about at the back of my diary.

I then returned to Sunny Perth, Western Australia after my two-years military service.

Still on my quest for trying to find true love, like most people, I went on tinder – trying to find love from women. After a couple one-night make out sessions, it was pretty easy to see that hooking up isn't the way to find true love either!

Then, people online were starting to tell me that true love is self-love. So y’know I tried real hard to love myself. I was so successful in doing that – I supposed I only cared about myself after a while. Somehow, that didn’t fill the huge gaping hole in my heart.

Then one day – I started watching some Christian content creators online. There was a Christian teacher I watched, who was being so patient and gentle with one of his students. And this Christian teacher started telling the child about Jesus. After watching the video, my heart started to soften a little bit.

Wow – I think I just got a glimpse of what true love was.

Then, one day, I made a Christian friend! She was very different from my other friends. She was so patient, gentle and kind to me, even though I was very rude to her. That started to soften my heart even more, and I wondered if I finally found this true love from my Christian friend.  

But the thing is, ladies and gents, that Christian teacher would one day stop posting videos online. And that Christian friend I met, ended up going back to her family in her home country in Africa, leaving me by myself.

And the reality is – one day, everyone will die, including you and me.

So, if these people were just passing through my life, where is that permanent, everlasting, kind and patient love that I was looking for?

Eventually, ladies and gents, I found out what true love is and where to find it. I found permanent, everlasting and personal love by learning about the Man Jesus Christ. I believe that love is not a theory or a concept. Love is a person. Love is the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who is alive to this very day because He rose from the grave. True love – ladies and gentlemen – is found in the Good News of Him.

In fact, the Bible says that God is love and believing what He did for us is how we can come to know and experience this love. This is a quote from the Bible:

John 4:10

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

(propitiation is just a big word that means to give a gift in order to appease one’s anger)

And

Romans 5:7-8

⁷ Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. ⁸ But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Whether you and I realize it or not, we have treated the God who made us in horrible ways. We have not acknowledged him, respected him, talked to him, put him as number 1 in our lives. In fact, most of us are living like WE ARE GOD, even though He is God.

We show how much we hate him by ignoring him, turning away from Him, and we give our lives and affections to things HE CREATED, instead of giving our lives and affections to Him, the CREATOR and gift-giver. It’s like me giving a present to someone, and they don’t even care about me or say thank you to me, but just run away with the present. That would really hurt my feelings, and it hurts God’s feelings to. We have not loved our God, the One who made us.

We show how much we hate him by hating each other and ignoring His words and instructions in the Bible, even though they are written for our benefit. The wages for such evil done against Him and others is death and eternal hell. Because God and His love is eternal! God is an eternal being. And therefore His anger, his justice and the consequences are also eternal.

But – that didn’t affect how God loved us and how He showed His love for us. You would expect God to hate us back because we hated Him. But no, He loved us. This, ladies and gents, is called “GRACE!” and “MERCY!”.

The Living God loved us soooo much, that even though we treated the Him like trash, He came down as the man Jesus Christ and died on the Cross – taking the punishment we rightly deserved for our sins upon Himself.

And then He rose to life from the grave – and I want to challenge you: there’s a lot of historical evidence for this event actually happening, if you want to do your own research and Google it.

And the Bible says: that whoever believes in Him and calls upon His name WILL be saved and experience His love forever.

So whoever is metaphorically thirsty – come to the well to drink.

If you want to experience God’s kind, patient and perfect love – you can say this prayer with me and come talk to us at the table later to ask more questions if you want:

“Dear God,

I want to experience Your love in this unloving and unkind world. So, I believe and I want to believe that You died for me on the Cross while I was still hating you and hating others. Thank You for loving me even when I was ungrateful and ignorant by taking the punishment that I deserved for my evildoings against You on the Cross for me. I believe that you rose from the dead a few days after. Please forgive me for my evil actions and evil desires against you and against other people that you made in your image.

In Jesus Name, amen.”

Alright folks, the table is open.