Love’s cost isn’t only the dramatic moment of martyrdom. More often, it’s the daily kenōsis — the laying down of pride, vindication, comfort, the last word — that creates a community where the broken can finally breathe.

In a small unbranded church in Jupiter, Florida, a man named David walked in expecting judgment. What he found instead was a circle of mismatched chairs and people who knew the cost. Months later, he said: “I thought church was where you went to hide your wounds. But here… it feels like the place where wounds finally get to breathe.”

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Love’s Cost

The Sacrificial Dimension

Bruce Mitchell

Core Texts: John 15:13; Matthew 5:43–48; Philippians 2:1–8  •  Supporting: John 10:11–18; Romans 5:6–10; 1 John 3:16

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The Sanctuary

There was a church in Jupiter, Florida, that didn’t look like much from the outside. No towering steeple. No polished branding. No attempt to impress anyone.

But inside, something sacred was happening.

People came who had nowhere else to go — men who had blown up their lives, women carrying wounds from spiritual abuse, young adults who had been shamed out of churches, people drowning in addiction, regret, or secrets they were terrified to say out loud.

They didn’t come because the church was perfect. They came because it was honest.

The pastor often said, “This is a church for the bruised, the burned-out, and the broken.” And people believed him — because they saw it lived out every week.

One Sunday, a man named David walked in. He sat in the back, arms folded, eyes scanning the room like someone expecting judgment. He had been crushed by his previous church — publicly shamed, quietly discarded, spiritually abandoned.

He told himself he would slip out before the final song.

But after the service, a woman named Maria — a survivor of deep church hurt herself — walked up to him and said, “You don’t have to explain anything. You’re safe here.”

He didn’t know what to do with that. No one had said those words to him in years.

Over the next few months, David kept coming. He joined a midweek gathering where people confessed real sins, not sanitized ones. He listened as men and women told stories of failure and redemption. He watched people pray for each other with tears, not judgment. He saw grace practiced, not just preached.

One night, after a small group meeting, he lingered behind. He stood in the doorway, looking at the mismatched chairs and the circle of people who had just prayed over him.

He said to the pastor, “I thought church was where you went to hide your wounds. But here… it feels like the place where wounds finally get to breathe.”

The pastor nodded. “This is what happens when a church stops pretending and starts healing. This is what happens when love becomes the culture, not the slogan.”

David wiped his eyes and whispered, “I didn’t know Jesus had a place for people like me.”

But He does. And that little church — much like The Sanctuary in Jupiter, FL — became a refuge for sinners learning to breathe again. A community where grace wasn’t a doctrine but a lifeline. A place where love didn’t just welcome people — it held them. A place where the Law of Christ wasn’t a concept but a community.

A place where the broken healed together.

What Love Actually Costs

There is a question every honest believer eventually asks.

What does loving like Christ actually cost?

We have spent four chapters defining love — its anatomy, its source, its command, its expression. Now we come to the chapter every disciple eventually has to walk through.

Love costs something.

This is not the difficult part of the gospel. This is the gospel part of the gospel. The cross is not an embarrassing addendum to Christianity. The cross is its center. And the cross-shaped life — the kenotic life, the self-emptied life — is what Christ commanded when He said as I have loved you (John 13:34).

The little church in Jupiter understood this. They did not call it kenōsis. They probably did not name the Greek. But they practiced it. They laid down their reputations, their performances, their pretenses, their pride. They emptied themselves of the polished selves their previous churches had asked them to wear. And — together — they became a community where the cost of love made healing possible.

Read the three core texts slowly:

Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.

— John 15:13, NASB95

But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

— Matthew 5:44, NASB95

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

— Philippians 2:5–8, NASB95

Three texts. Three movements. One pattern.

Love lays down its life.

Love loves the enemy.

Love empties itself.

Each movement is a different angle on the same cross. Let me walk through each one.

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1. Love Lays Down Its Life

The verb in John 15:13 is θῇ (thē), an aorist subjunctive of τίθημι (tithēmi) — to lay down, to place, to set down.

It is the same verb Jesus uses repeatedly in John 10 about His own ministry. “I lay down My life for the sheep” (John 10:15). “No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative” (John 10:18).

This is not “love is willing to die in a hypothetical situation.” This is “love places, deposits, sets down its own life on behalf of another.”

The word μείζονα (meizona) means “greater.” It is a comparative. Jesus is not saying that laying down one’s life is a great act of love. He is saying it is the greatest possible act. There is no love that goes beyond laying itself down. The measure of love is what it is willing to surrender.

And then He uses the word φίλων (philōn) — “for friends.”

Pause here for a moment. Jesus is speaking these words to His disciples on the night before the cross. He has just called them friends (John 15:14–15). He is saying — quietly, while their feet are still wet from the basin — I am about to do for you what I am calling you to do for one another.

The cross is not a singular event that the Christian admires from a safe distance. The cross is the curriculum of Christian love.

Now, most of us will never face literal martyrdom. The chance that you will die for another believer is statistically remote. But the principle of laying down is not waiting for the dramatic moment. It is asking you, today, what you are willing to set down.

Your pride.

Your vindication.

Your right to be right.

Your comfort.

Your preferences.

Your last word.

Your need to be understood.

Your need to be appreciated.

These are the small daily deaths the cross is teaching us. Every act of laying down is a rehearsal for the love that gave everything.

At The Sanctuary, this was the unspoken rule. People laid down their reputations to be honest. They laid down their performance to be present. They laid down their pretense to be real. And in laying down, they discovered — to their surprise — that grace was waiting underneath.

Love lays down its life.

That is what greater love means.

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2. Love Loves the Enemy

Now Jesus says something the world has never gotten over.

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

The word for enemies is ἐχθρούς (echthrous) — not “people who irritate you,” not “people with whom you disagree,” not “people you find annoying.” Enemies. People who actively oppose you, harm you, persecute you, and want you ill.

The verb is ἀγαπᾶτε (agapate) — present imperative, the same form as the New Commandment in Chapter 3. Keep loving them. Continuous. Ongoing. Not a single act of magnanimity but a posture of love sustained over time.

And διωκόντων (diōkontōn) — present participle of διώκω, “those who are persecuting.” Not those who were persecuted in the past tense. Those who are doing it right now.

Stop and let that land.

Jesus is not asking us to love people who used to oppose us and have since become friends. He is asking us to love people whose hostility is current. People who are actively hurting us. People who would not love us back.

This is the scandal of Christian ethics.

Every other religion, every other moral system, every other ethic in human history has some version of: love those who love you, treat others as they treat you, repay good with good and evil with evil. Even Jesus’ contemporaries (Matt 5:43) had inherited the principle “love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”

Jesus refuses it.

Why? Because the love we received was given when we were enemies. Paul makes this explicit: “while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son” (Rom 5:10). The cross is the proof that God loves enemies. And the disciples of the One who died for His enemies cannot exempt themselves from the same posture.

This is not naïve. This does not mean staying in dangerous situations. It does not mean denying real harm. It does not mean refusing healthy boundaries. Loving an enemy and trusting an enemy are not the same thing.

But love is required.

David walked into The Sanctuary as a man with every reason to consider his former church an enemy. They had crushed him. They had publicly shamed him. They had quietly discarded him. By any rule of justice, he was owed bitterness. By any rule of self-protection, he was entitled to walk away from churches forever.

But he stayed. He let love do its slow work. And the people who welcomed him — Maria especially, herself a survivor of deep church hurt — did so as a community practicing the impossible. Loving the wounded. Welcoming the burned. Refusing to let the cycle of harm continue through them.

This is the second movement of the cross.

Love loves the enemy.

Because Christ loved you when you were one.

3. Christ Emptied Himself

Here is where the chapter climbs.

Paul gives us, in Philippians 2, what may be the deepest single passage in the New Testament. Many scholars believe it was an early church hymn — sung in worship before Paul ever quoted it. If so, then before Paul’s letters were even written, the church was already singing the doctrine of kenōsis.

Read it slowly:

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

— Philippians 2:5–8, NASB95

Paul names seven downward steps. Each one matters.

1. He existed in the form of God — μορφῇ Θεοῦ (morphē Theou). The word μορφή refers to essential form, not surface appearance. Christ was not pretending to be divine. He was God in His essential nature.
2. He did not regard equality with God as a thing to be grasped — οὐχ ἁρπαγμὸν ἡγήσατο (ouch harpagmon hēgēsato). The word ἁρπαγμός (harpagmos) means something seized or clutched. Christ did not cling to His rights. He held divinity loosely enough to come down.
3. He emptied Himself — ἐκένωσεν ἑαυτόν (ekenōsen heauton). This is the word at the center of the chapter. The verb κενόω (kenoō) means to empty, to pour out, to make void. From this word we get the doctrine of kenōsis. The Son did not cease to be God. He poured Himself out — laid aside His glory, His privileges, His prerogatives — to take the lower place.
4. Taking the form of a bond-servant — μορφὴν δούλου (morphēn doulou). The same word for essential form — morphē — is now used of slavery. He did not pretend to be a servant. He was a servant in His essential posture.
5. Being made in the likeness of men — He took on humanity. Not theoretically. Actually. Bone and blood and tears and limit.
6. He humbled Himself — ἐταπείνωσεν ἑαυτόν (etapeinōsen heauton). Already at the bottom, He goes lower. The Greek root ταπεινόω (tapeinoō) means to make low, to make humble. The same word is used elsewhere for the humility God calls believers into (James 4:10; 1 Pet 5:6).
7. Obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross — μέχρι θανάτου, θανάτου δὲ σταυροῦ (mechri thanatou, thanatou de staurou). Paul could have stopped at “death.” He doesn’t. He adds, and not just death — death by crucifixion. The most shameful, painful, accursed death the ancient world knew (Gal 3:13).

Seven steps. From the highest place to the lowest.

This is the model.

This is what love is.

This is what Paul says we are to have in ourselves. “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5). The word for “attitude” is φρονεῖτε (phroneite), from φρονέω (phroneō) — to think, to set the mind on. This is not a feeling. This is the deliberate orientation of your inner life toward downward movement.

The kenotic mind is the Christian mind.

And here is what makes Philippians 2 unbearable and bearable at once.

Unbearable, because the model is so much greater than we can match. We are not Christ. We did not pre-exist in glory. We have no equality with God to set aside. We cannot kenoō ourselves the way He did.

Bearable, because the same Spirit who indwells us (Phil 2:1, “if there is any fellowship of the Spirit”) produces in us the phronesis of Christ. The Spirit forms in us what Christ first lived. We do not manufacture the kenotic life. We yield to the Christ who is already kenotic in us — and we let His mind become ours.

This is why Paul places the hymn where he places it. He is not asking the Philippians to do something impossible. He is asking them to catch the rhythm of the One who already lives this way in them.

And when a community catches that rhythm together, something extraordinary happens.

The church becomes the place Paul describes in the opening verses of Philippians 2:

If there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

— Philippians 2:1–4, NASB95

This is what The Sanctuary in Jupiter looks like.

This is what every kenotic community looks like.

A place where people regard one another as more important than themselves. A place where the pride that hides wounds gets emptied out. A place where the performance that protects the ego gets laid down. A place where the broken can finally breathe because no one is pretending anymore.

The cost of love — the kenotic cost — is what creates the community in which the broken heal.

Each person’s daily kenōsis becomes the soil in which others can be honest. Each act of laying down becomes the floor that catches the next person who falls. Each refusal to grasp becomes the open hand into which the wounded can put their wounded hand.

This is the cost of love.

And it produces — quietly, faithfully, over years — the kind of church the world cannot stop watching.

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Love creates a community where the broken heal together in the presence of Christ.

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4. Naming the Cost

Which brings us to the question every disciple has to answer for themselves.

What is Christ asking you to empty yourself of in this season?

Not in general. Specifically. The Spirit who indwells you is calling you to set something down — and you probably already know what it is.

Maybe it is pride. The pride that keeps you from confessing to your spouse, your brother, your pastor, what you have been hiding. The pride that has hardened a relationship because you cannot bear to be the one who admits fault. The pride that won’t let you say “I was wrong,” “I need help,” or “Will you forgive me?”

Maybe it is vindication. The need to be proven right. The case you have been mentally building against the person who hurt you. The court of public opinion you have been recruiting witnesses for.

Maybe it is comfort. The comfort of a relationship pattern that has stopped serving Christ. The comfort of a routine that keeps you from costly obedience. The comfort of staying small when the Spirit is calling you bigger.

Maybe it is the last word. The need to win the argument. The need to be understood before you are willing to extend grace.

Maybe it is a grudge. The one you have nurtured for years. The one whose object you may not even know you carry. The one that is costing you sleep, joy, and presence.

Maybe it is enemy-love. The specific person Christ is asking you to pray for — not in the abstract, but by name. The one who hurt you. The one who is still hurting you. The one your flesh wants to disown.

Maybe it is money. Time. Reputation. Ambition. A platform you have been protecting. A boundary you have been refusing to soften toward someone wounded.

The Spirit is naming a specific cost.

And here is the gospel inside the cost: He who calls you to empty yourself has Himself been emptied. The Christ who indwells you knows what kenōsis feels like from the inside. He is not asking you to do what He has not already done. He is asking you to follow Him into a posture He has already taken.

You will not do this perfectly. None of us does. But every act of laying down — every small kenōsis, every withheld vindication, every chosen humility — is the Spirit forming the mind of Christ in you.

And as that mind is formed in you, and in me, and in the others Christ has placed beside us, a community comes into being. A community where pretense is unnecessary because grace is the floor. A community where the broken can finally exhale.

This is not a church program. This is the long, slow work of cruciform love producing cruciform community.

The Sanctuary in Jupiter is one such place. So are the countless small churches across the world where this same hidden work is being done — without branding, without strategy, without applause. Just a handful of people, formed by the same Spirit, catching the rhythm of the One who emptied Himself for them.

Naming the cost is the first step.

The Spirit will give you the courage to actually pay it.

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Examination

What is Christ asking you to empty yourself of this week?

Not what you should empty yourself of. Not what would impress anyone. Not what your spouse, your pastor, your friends would say is the obvious thing.

What is the specific thing the Spirit is pressing on you right now?

A surrendered grievance.

A retracted accusation.

A held tongue.

A withheld vindication.

A name spoken in prayer instead of in resentment.

A relationship re-engaged.

A boundary released or a boundary maintained.

A confession offered.

A reconciliation has been initiated.

Name it. Write it down. Bring it to Christ.

And then take one step toward emptying yourself of it — this week, in something specific, something small, something concrete.

Because the kenotic life is not built on a single grand sacrifice. It is built one small piece at a time.

And the church Christ is building in the world is built one kenotic believer at a time.

You are part of how He is building it.

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A Prayer

Lord Jesus —

You did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped.

You emptied Yourself.

You took the form of a servant.

You humbled Yourself.

You obeyed Your Father to the point of death — even death on a cross.

 

I cannot match this.

I am not You.

But Your Spirit dwells in me — and the mind that was in You is being formed in me.

 

Show me what to lay down this week.

Show me the pride I have been clutching.

Show me the vindication I have been holding.

Show me the comfort I have been guarding.

Show me the enemy I have been refusing to pray for.

 

And then — Spirit of the kenotic Christ — empty me.

 

Not for show. Not for praise. Not even for the satisfaction of having done something hard.

But because You emptied Yourself for me, and the love I have received cannot stay if it has not also been spent.

 

Make me, with the others You have placed beside me, the kind of community where the broken heal together — in Your presence, by Your Spirit, for Your glory.

A community where pride is unnecessary because grace is the floor.

A community where Your love is not a slogan but a culture.

 

Because love creates a community where the broken heal together in Your presence.

 

Amen.

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A Word for You

David said something near the end of the story that I have not been able to forget.

“I thought church was where you went to hide your wounds. But here… it feels like the place where wounds finally get to breathe.”

I wonder if your wounds are breathing.

Not just covered. Not just managed. Not just spiritualized into something that no longer needs to be named. Breathing. Open to the air of grace. Held by people who have made room for them.

If they aren’t — if you are still hiding, still pretending, still wearing the performance you learned in some previous church — I want you to know that Christ has a place for you. And He is building a community, somewhere within reach of where you live, where the broken are learning to heal together.

That community may be a church. It may be a small group. It may be two friends and a Bible. It may be the next congregation you have not yet walked into.

But it exists. And the Spirit who is forming the kenotic mind in you is also forming the kenotic community around you.

Find your people.

And to those of you who are already part of a community like The Sanctuary — quiet, faithful, unbranded, full of bruised and burned and broken people learning to breathe again — I want to honor you. The world does not see the work you are doing. But Christ sees it. And He is building His Church through it.

If something here met you — if a wound surfaced, if a community came to mind, if a specific cost the Spirit is calling you to pay just got clearer — I’d love to hear about it. Reply. Tell me where your wounds are, as you learn to breathe. Or tell me what Christ is asking you to lay down this season.

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If you’ve read this far, thank you from my heart.

I write every word prayerfully—not to impress, but to reflect Christ’s love and grace—in theology, yes, but especially in relationship. I pray something here has whispered to you:

You are not alone. You are deeply loved.

Grace. Always grace.

With love, prayer, and expectancy,
Bruce Mitchell
A voice of love & grace—always grace
Bruce@allelon.us
allelon.us
@AAllelon on X
Substack

“Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love conceals a multitude of sins.” —1 Peter 4:8

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Love creates a community where the broken heal together in the presence of Christ.