John - Day 29: Love is How He Lived

A disciple is some who is all in to how Jesus lived His life. One word to accurately describe how Jesus lived is the word Love. 1 John 4:7-11 says that God’s indispensable quality is love, that God’s love is demonstrated through Jesus and that God’s love is the catalyst for our love. To fully understand what Jesus is saying in verse 34-35 of this chapter, we have to take a deeper look at the context surrounding His statement of what it means to be a disciple. If you want to know what Jesus means by what He said, look at what Jesus did. As we saw yesterday, Jesus demonstrated a visible sign of an invisible quality of love for His disciples. The command to love was not new; the newness was found in loving one another as Jesus had lived and loved His disciples. Jesus’ own love and teachings deepen and transform the command to love. Love itself was not a new commandment; it is an old commandment found in Leviticus 19:8 and Deuteronomy 6:5. The Greek word translated “new” (kainos) speaks of what is new in the sense of unused or fresh, rather than something recent or different. It is not so much that the commandment hasn’t been given before as that it has a different quality about it, a quality of freshness that differentiates it from any other. To put it simply, this new commandment has a new object and a new measure.

Read John 13:18-38

Q: What condition does Jesus give for being His disciple? What does He attach to His command to love one another?

Q: What is a proper definition of love as defined by Jesus? How has He modeled and demonstrated His love? How does loving others differ from always saying yes to other’s demands and being able to say no?

Q: How does your view of yourself affect your ability to love others? If someone is having trouble loving others, what should be the first place for them to start?

Q: Why is it significant that the command to love one another is directed to fellow believers? Who will notice the love that is being displayed among the body of Christ? Have you seen this happen to someone outside the church, and if so, how?

Q: How have you experienced examples of the one anothers by being a part of Grace Church?

For Further Study: 1 John 4:10-12