Welcome to the Jada Edwards podcast. For the next three episodes, we're going to do a short series on what it means to really love biblically, authentically, and intelligently. I call it the Love Well Project. Here's part two. So in this second part of the Love Well Project, I really want to talk about what it means to love freely,

that love is free. And that is the idea that we have to come from a place of healing and

forgiveness and wholeness in Christ in order for us to be able to love freely. I think one of the other reasons relationships

struggle any relationship because literally your neighbor is everyone and anyone. They struggle because

we love with condition. We love with a cost. If you treat me right, if you promise to not hurt me, if you are loyal to me,

if you don't cause me pain, then I will love you to the best of my ability. Now, my love is

flawed and jacked because, you know, I'm not really working on myself, but I'll give you what I got

if you treat me right. Like there's a cost to the love. And so

not only do we need to love smartly or love understand that we need to be curious and seek to

learn. Love is learning. We learned about that in our last episode. But love is also free.

So Matthew 614 at the end of the Lord's prayer, Jesus says,

for if you forgive others, their transgressions, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive others, then your Heavenly Father will not forgive your transgressions.

And Jesus is not really trying to give an ultimatum, but what he is

showing us here in this passage is how critical forgiveness is. That it is so important that if you have a

heart, a pattern, a spirit of unforgiveness in your life, then it could be that you have not allowed the Holy Spirit into your

heart, that as a believer, that part of salvation, the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit is that

we are able to forgive the way we have been forgiven. So he is saying that forgiveness is so big

that a pattern of unforgiveness could be an indication of our salvation.

Like that's huge. And so when you think about Jesus and the cross, man, that is love that was

free to us. It cost something, but it didn't cost us. Jesus doesn't say, get it together, serve me, love me,

then I'll forgive you. No, he says, I forgive first. My gosh, I forgive first. And then I want you

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