The Gospel Project: The Son Embodies Divine Love (Doctrine Session)
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Introduction:
Engage Option: Doctor
Best possible solution
Watch video (Ask students to be prepared to summarize the video)
Ask: What are some highlights from the video?
God = ultimate standard and expression of love
Love demonstrated: Jesus
Others focused
Received from God; release to others
Main Point: We are called to love others like God loves us.
Love defined
1 John 4:7–10 (ESV)
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
What we know
What we don’t know
God is love
Ask: What characteristics of God help us understand what love is (for example: patient, forgiving, generous, kind, ETC.)?
Mercy + Grace
8: God is love
Flows from or out of God as spring/source
“Let no man think that any higher manifestation of love than this can be found. It is not in any love of man to his Maker, but in his Maker’s love to him, that the real nature of love can be perceived.” -Spence Jones
9-10: 2 ways God has loved us
1. Sending Jesus (what we needed)
2. Loved us before we loved him
Meeting needs, regardless if returned or not
Ask: What is a practical way we can love another person like God has loved us?
Prayer (Eph. 3:14-19)
Filled with His love, not ours (John 15:9)
Find need (even if not returned)
2. Love valued
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Important… but how important?
Word + works = mean something if Loving God + others = priority
Ask: Why is loving others so difficult sometimes?
People are messy
Loving God = difficult
Jesus’ purpose: flory of God + good of others
Legacy of love = serving God & serving people
Prior No. 1
Ask, “will this bring God glory and show His goodness to others?
Ask: What is an example of loving others from the life of Jesus?
Woman at the well
Woman caught in adultery
3. Love expressed
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Not “self-seeking”
Phil. 2:4: the interests of othersz
Others focused
Kindness + patience vs. envy, irritability, and arrogance
Ask: How does God’s love show us love is others-focused?
Can’t release what haven’t received
Love is God’s to give
Ask: Why is it important to remember the love others need originates with God? In what ways will love that originates with us fail?
Christ Connection:
God, in His nature, is love. God’s greatest act of love was giving Himself to us in Christ Jesus. Jesus took on flesh, suffered and died, and rose again to forgive the sins of all who trust in Him. Jesus’s work leaves no questions of God’s love for people.
Head: How does God’s character in the Bible change the way we think about what love is?
God’s patience
Patient, all our lives expression
“As long as it takes”
Heart: What is the right motivation for loving others?
God’s love for us makes loving others the right thing to do
Hands: Why is it important to pray to have God’s love for others?
Not easy
Own strength = failure
Receive from God for ourselves + others
Pray for God’s love