The college student’s challenge was formed as a question: “Doesn’t Jesus teach we should love and accept one another?” The query sounded innocent at first glance, and the answer seemed obvious, at least to most people. If you’re asked this question, though, beware of naively affirming it, for two reasons.

First, there’s likely a different issue lurking behind that question, as it was in this student’s case. If Jesus taught love and acceptance, then why don’t Christians—who allegedly follow Jesus—love, accept, and affirm those who are LGBTQ? If you quickly give the nod to the first question, you’ll be skewered by the second one.

The challenge falters in part because genuine love does not require approval and acceptance of every behavior of the one loved—a point obvious to thoughtful adults and foundational to wise parenting. Indeed, in the most famous biblical passage on love—one frequently quoted even by non-Christians at weddings—Paul himself declared that love “does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth” (1 Cor. 13:6).

Note that for the apostle, homosexual practice was unrighteous. It was “contrary to sound teaching” (1 Tim. 1:10) and was, along with other vices and sinful sexual activities, a practice that disqualified partakers from entrance into the kingdom (1 Cor. 6:9–10). Plus, transgenderism runs afoul of God’s “very good” creation order: humans created by God as sexually binary, male and female, thus capable of fulfilling God’s mandate to be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 1:27–28). This point was explicitly affirmed by Jesus himself (Matt. 19:4–5).

Consequently, no biblical understanding of love—and, therefore, no characterization of Jesus’ view of love—could endorse, affirm, or approve of either homosexual behavior or transgenderism.

There’s a second problem many miss, though. Contrary to popular opinion—and surprising even to me when I checked—Jesus actually said precious little in his public preaching about love in general, and he said absolutely nothing affirming the kind of “love and acceptance” being promoted in Jesus’ name through the student’s line of questioning.

Search your Bible concordance for all of Jesus’ public admonitions to love that are recorded in the Gospels. You’ll find only three directives: Love God, love your neighbor, and love your enemies. That’s it.

The “great and foremost” commandment is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” It’s mentioned in some form in three exchanges—Matthew 22:37, Mark 12:30, and Luke 10:27.

Of course, loving God entails keeping his commandments. It doesn’t make sense to say to someone who has legitimate authority over us, “I love you, but I’m not going to do anything you tell me unless it suits my own desires.” That’s not love. That’s narcissism.

The second great commandment is similar to the first: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 19:19; Matt. 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27). Loving ourselves, however, is not the same as blanket self-approval and self-affirmation. Clearly, not everything we do is ethical or good for us, so that couldn’t be what Jesus meant.

Rather, since we consistently look after our own well-being—sometimes to a fault—we ought to do the same for others. C.S. Lewis called it “a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” It’s not an act of love, then—for others or for us—to accept, encourage, or celebrate morally self-destructive behavior.

In Jesus’ third love command, he included even our enemies as “neighbors” to be cared for and shown goodness and mercy (Matt. 5:44; Luke 6:27). Curiously, when a lawyer asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus responded with a parable describing a virtuous Samaritan man caring for a wounded Jew—a person who was culturally his foe.

Jesus gave one other command to love, but it was not a public one. It was private, made to his disciples on their final night together. After washing their feet as an example to them of servant leadership, he gave them a “new commandment.” He told them that—as a witness to others that they were his disciples—they were to love one another sacrificially just as he had loved them (John 13:34–35; 15:12–13). He also added, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15).

So, don’t be distracted by any “love” challenge to your biblical morality. According to Scripture, love always has a moral dimension. Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness, and it does not counter the specific intentions of God in creation. Genuine love always entails obeying the Father and obeying the Son (1 John 5:2).

Jesus’ entire instruction on love was simple. Love God completely, love your neighbor as yourself, and show love and benevolence towards your enemies. Within the Christian community, demonstrate faithfulness as Jesus’ disciples by loving each other sacrificially. None of Jesus’ love commands is consistent with approving behavior that God clearly identifies as sinful and destructive.