Extra Prep for This Week's Lesson

Important topic this week...the most important, according to Jesus! (see text from Mark 12 below)  Please read the following texts in preparation for Sunday's lesson.  There are some "Challenge Questions" at the bottom of this post for you to consider before we meet on Sunday.  We'll have some other questions to discuss during the lesson, as well.  I hope you're all having a great week!

The Greatest Commandment
Mark 12:28-31

 

²⁸ And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, "Which commandment is the most important of all?"
²⁹ Jesus answered, "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
³⁰ And 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.'
³¹ The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

 

"The Love Chapter"
1 Corinthians 13

 

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.

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.

⁸ Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.

⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part,

¹⁰ but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

¹² For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

¹³ So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

 

Love and Hate Cannot Coexist

1 John 4:19-21

¹⁹ We love because he first loved us.

²⁰ If anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
²¹ And this commendment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

  

CHALLENGE QUESTIONS:

1. Jesus said the greatest commandment is, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength."  The second greatest commandment is, "Love your neighbor as yourself"?  Why are these commandments above the rest?
2. How can we, individually and as a class, show love to other believers?
3. How can we, individually and as a class, show love to a lost world?
4. Why do so many non-believers view Christians as unloving?
5. What should our motive be in showing love to others?