Love Well (Prisoner) - Matthew 25
Fifteen years of marriage can teach you a lot. For one pastor, it taught him something surprising: his wife isn’t his soulmate.
Wait, what?
In a world obsessed with finding “the one,” that sounds almost wrong. But he went on to explain: “She already has a lover of her soul — the One who gave her life. I’m not her soulmate. I’m her helpmate.”
It’s a truth that takes time to learn — that our relationships, as beautiful and messy as they are, are not meant to complete us. They’re meant to reflect the love of a God who already has.
And that’s what this new sermon series, Love Well, is all about — learning not just how to love, but what real love looks like.
When Love Sees a Person, Not a Problem
The story that anchored this week’s message began in Dallas, Texas, with two women — Sharanda Jones and Brittany Barnett.
Sharanda grew up caring for her disabled mother. When life got hard, she made a desperate decision — running drugs from Dallas to Houston for $1,000 a trip. Her first offense. Nonviolent. But she was sentenced to 47 years in federal prison under the harsh drug laws of the 1980s.
Around the same time, Brittany was a law student at SMU. Her own mother had battled addiction and served time in prison, and Brittany wanted to help women like her. She came across Sharanda’s story and wrote her a letter:
“I don’t even have my law degree yet, but I’d like to help you. I’d like to be your friend.”
A friendship formed. And through years of advocacy, petitions, and prayer, Brittany helped Sharanda gain clemency from President Obama in 2016 — after 16 years behind bars.
Brittany saw Sharanda not as a criminal, but as a child of God.
Not as a problem to fix, but as a person to love.
That’s how God sees us too. We are not problems to solve, issues to debate, or statistics to post about. We are people to love — sheep in the care of a Good Shepherd.
Seeing God in the Least
In Matthew 25, Jesus tells a story about the end of days — a scene where the King separates the sheep from the goats. The sheep are praised because they fed the hungry, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, and visited the imprisoned.
The goats ask, “When did we see you, Lord?”
And Jesus answers, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me.”
They asked a vision question — “When did we see you?”
Jesus gave them an action answer — “What did you do?”
We often think loving God is about belief. But Jesus makes it clear: it’s about how we love people.
“I see God most in how I serve the least.”
If I don’t see you, I can’t love you.
If I don’t know you, I can’t serve you.
If I can’t serve you, I can’t claim to love God.
Faith that doesn’t move us to action is incomplete. As 1 John 3:18 says:
“Let us not love with words or speech, but with actions and in truth.”
The Difference Between Sheep and Goats
Jesus could have compared us to lions or eagles — powerful, independent, majestic. But instead, he calls us sheep.
Sheep aren’t dumb — they’re dependent.
They need a shepherd to guide them.
They flock together.
They move as one.
Goats, on the other hand, are independent. They fight. They climb. They want to be in charge.
We live in a culture that celebrates being “the GOAT” — the greatest of all time.
But Jesus calls us to be sheep, not goats — to depend on the Shepherd, to move together, to love in community, and to follow where He leads.
What Does Love Look Like?
Real love looks like this:
Feeding someone who can’t pay you back.
Visiting the person everyone else avoids.
Listening before judging.
Seeing people not through their mistakes, but through God’s mercy.
Love looks like Brittany writing a letter to a stranger in prison.
Love looks like Jesus washing feet.
Love looks like a God who laid down His life for us — not because we earned it, but because He loved us first.
We don’t love to be blessed. We love because we’ve been blessed.
We don’t do good to earn grace. We do good because grace is already at work within us.
Seeing and Loving Well
We don’t just have a love problem — we have a vision problem.
We scroll past pain instead of seeing it.
We confuse opinions for compassion.
We love people in theory, but not in practice.
If we want to love well, we have to see well.
See people as image-bearers, not enemies.
See the broken as beloved.
See the overlooked as chosen.
Because when we see like Jesus, we love like Jesus.
