Love One Another
1 John 3:11-24
International Sunday
School Lesson
April 12th, 2015
Commentary
By
Jed Greenough
If this week in preparing for the lesson you went ahead and
read the preceding verses of the chapter you might be depressed if you didn't
finish with today's.
I may not have been depressed but I was somber about those verses.
That's the problem, from time to time, when we weekly just pull out a handful of verses and try and put together some ideas that we can contribute to each other and I will get back to that in the discussion questions.
Those not included first 10 verses say in a sobering and chilling effective way that if you keep on sinning you are not in Him, meaning Christ. Or more forcefully further along it also says that those who go on sinning are of the devil!
The theme continues in the few remaining verses concluding with verse 10 by hinting what this is all about as being how we love one another. But then thankfully with today's verses we start to see some answer because we both know you and I to some extent are still sinning.
The answer is love. I have always known it of myself that I need to love my brothers and sisters more and to make a difference. For some, loving is something they do like breathing, for others, like myself and I believe the author John, not so much.
Check out the early day description of John as one of the Sons of Thunder and I think just as you can see Paul's personality come out in scripture, you can see John's. It might be pure conjecture but I think John wrote so forcefully about this because he knew he needed to work on it and it shamed him.
Rather than being depressed by our sinning and be paralyzed I think we can be encouraged by John knowing he too was a work in progress.
As the last verse encourages, we do have the Spirit in us. If we didn't we wouldn't be shamed in the work we yet need to do to improve our love for each other.
I may not have been depressed but I was somber about those verses.
That's the problem, from time to time, when we weekly just pull out a handful of verses and try and put together some ideas that we can contribute to each other and I will get back to that in the discussion questions.
Those not included first 10 verses say in a sobering and chilling effective way that if you keep on sinning you are not in Him, meaning Christ. Or more forcefully further along it also says that those who go on sinning are of the devil!
The theme continues in the few remaining verses concluding with verse 10 by hinting what this is all about as being how we love one another. But then thankfully with today's verses we start to see some answer because we both know you and I to some extent are still sinning.
The answer is love. I have always known it of myself that I need to love my brothers and sisters more and to make a difference. For some, loving is something they do like breathing, for others, like myself and I believe the author John, not so much.
Check out the early day description of John as one of the Sons of Thunder and I think just as you can see Paul's personality come out in scripture, you can see John's. It might be pure conjecture but I think John wrote so forcefully about this because he knew he needed to work on it and it shamed him.
Rather than being depressed by our sinning and be paralyzed I think we can be encouraged by John knowing he too was a work in progress.
As the last verse encourages, we do have the Spirit in us. If we didn't we wouldn't be shamed in the work we yet need to do to improve our love for each other.
For Discussion:
- Read the scripture where Jesus talks of the greatest commandment
- Discuss how you can lay down your life for others in a figurative sense
- One great lesson plan for this week could be to read a verse and discuss one at a time. This is a great week for this.
- I do this blog week after week because I love God and you. Discuss if that is why you teach or prepare as a student.
- Discuss what we do that literally shows we love.
- Discuss who the Bible shows we are clearly to be taking care of and thus showing our love towards.
- Discuss what your class could do together.
Upcoming Lessons
4-19-15 Trust in God's Love or Believe God's Love 1 John 4:13-5:5
Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW
INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by
permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved
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