Small Group 6/11/20
Notes
Transcript
Jesus passes on love from the Father
Jesus passes on love from the Father
9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.
10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.
What does Jesus say we need to do in order to abide in His love?
What did Jesus teach earlier about the value of love?
See answer in John 13:35
Jesus showed us the beauty and power of humble obedience.
8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Why is it hard sometimes to obey what someone tells you to do?
(Assuming you are being told to do something you don’t really want to do.)
Parents...
Bosses...
What does Jesus show about the power of obedience?
11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
Holman New Testament Commentary: John B. Affection in the Body (15:9–17)
The Christian life is not some shallow, insipid following of a traditional pattern. It is a life characterized by ‘unexhausted (and inexhaustible) power for fresh creation’ ” (Morris, p. 674).
How often do you think about the Christian life as a walk of joy?
What would it look like for your “joy to be full”?
How is obedience and joy linked?
12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.
Is it possible that sometimes we get so busy figuring out how to love God that we forget to love others?
It’s incredible that the way God showed His love for us was by sacrificing for us!
8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
“Unity instead of rivalry, trust instead of suspicion, obedience instead of self-assertion must rule the disciples’ common labors. The measure of their love for one another is that of his love for them … which would be further demonstrated by his forthcoming sacrifice” (Tenney, EBC, p. 153).
Kenneth O. Gangel, John, vol. 4, Holman New Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 285.
15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
Remember, “servant” was a very positive reference. But friendship was something else.
Abraham was called God’s friend.
23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God.
Jesus refers to the disciples as friends but they continue to refer to Him as “Lord” and “Master.”
God is a friend of sinners but this is different that how we think of friendships.
Holman New Testament Commentary: John B. Affection in the Body (15:9–17)
“Neither God nor Jesus is ever referred to in Scripture as the ‘friend’ of anyone. Of course, this does not mean that either God or Jesus is an ‘unfriend’: if one measures friendship strictly on the basis of who loves most, guilty sinners can find no better and truer friend than in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Son whom He has sent. But mutual, reciprocal friendship of the modern variety is not in view, and cannot be without demeaning God” (Carson, p. 522).
16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
God has chosen and called us to follow Him. He has appointed us to bear fruit that pleases and honors Him.
The way we bear the fruit God wants us to bear is by loving one another.
Why does Jesus have to command us to love one another?
What are some ways we can love one another better today?