character matters

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CHARACTER MATTERS

Week Two | January 13, 2019 | Revealing the Gospel with Our Lives

GETTING RE ADY Before your group meets next time, spend some time alone in God’s Word reading through this week’s texts. Pray that God, through His Spirit, would bring to life the truth of this text and how it applies to your life.

KEY BIBLICAL TRUTH God is love, and He demonstrated His love by laying down His life for us, dying on the cross in our place.

THEOLOGY APPLIED We love because He first loved us.

MEDITATE “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. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:9–11).

+ Use this section to prepare your heart and mind for the truths of this week. This section will help to introduce the focus of this week’s lesson.

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It’s not an accident that we look at love as the first in a series of ten different character traits. It is all-encompassing. It summarizes and completes all other traits and aspects of life. Revealing the gospel with your love requires your entire life. While some aspects of character can easily be categorized into certain areas of life, love cannot. It spreads into all of life. It is no wonder that 1 Corinthians 13 says love is greater than faith or hope, and we can probably assume it is greater than all aspects of character. 1 Corinthians is written to a congregation struggling with unity. They have allowed temptations and sins to divide them instead of seeking the loving fellowship that should mark a community of believers. They have given personal desire and selfish ambition priority over serving one another. Paul desires to see the fruit of love overflowing from their hearts. Only God’s love can make the Church indivisible and overcome the conflicts caused by our sinful natures. When we are filled with God’s love, we are encouraged and convicted to put others first. While love is rightly placed first and is central to the importance of our character, it isn’t hard to admit that love is hard. As C. S. Lewis once said, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.” Giving, showing, and displaying love are difficult. It is hard. Is there anything more heart wrenching than loving someone else and not having them return your love? Additionally, our sinful, selfish hearts make it difficult for us to love others because we are often consumed with thinking about and loving ourselves. To love rightly, we must think about how to love in the way the Bible describes. One key is remembering that our mandate to love one another is only accomplished because God so loved us.

Q: How do you expose your vulnerability by loving others? Q: According to 1 Corinthians 13 what is love and what is it not? Take a moment to describe how each word contributes to Paul’s description of love.

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U N D E R S TA N D I N G T H E T E X T In 1 John 3–4 we are reminded of two absolutely essential truths of the Christian faith—God is love, and we are to love one another. You cannot have one without the other. It is impossible for us to love one another apart from the fact that God is love. If God were not love, there would be no salvation or redemption. It is because God so loved the world that the gospel saves us in the first place. God saves because God loves. Love isn’t something God gives and does. Love is who God is. Our character ought to reflect the same type of love, a love that is more about being than doing. We embody this type of love by doing three things with the love of God.

1. RECEIVING GOD’S LOVE 2. RETURNING GOD’S LOVE 3. RESPONDING TO GOD’S LOVE

+ This next section will help show what God’s Word says about this week’s particular focus. Read through the Scripture passages and connect the text to this week’s biblical truth.

RECEIVING GOD’S LOVE 1 JOHN 3:16; 1 JOHN 4:9–10

Q: Do you view your relationship and standing with God as based more on your love for God or God’s love for you? Q: In what ways is it hard for you to receive things, and in what ways does it come naturally?

One of the most popular marriage books of all time is Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages. In the book, Chapman details and describes five different ways people give and receive love (words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch). The book is helpful in making people aware that other people,

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their spouses in particular, may not experience love exactly the same way they do. And spouses almost always speak different love languages. The book is challenging and insightful in showing that, while all people want to love and be loved, none of us receives love in exactly the same manner. It also shows that while love is a feeling, it must also move into an action, being demonstrated and expressed. An emotion as strong and powerful as love must be put on display. God displays for us what love in action looks like. He didn’t merely say He loves us. He showed us and proved to us how much He loves us. God demonstrated His love for us by sending Christ to die, even when were still sinners (Romans 5:8). As 1 John shows us, God didn’t just love us, but He manifested that love. God proved His love. He declared His love. There is no ambiguity about whether He loves us because He made it known and did so very clearly. It’s often hard for us to receive love if it isn’t expressed or revealed according to one of our love languages. If your love language is receiving gifts, then someone’s words of affirmation aren’t going to mean that much to you. Similarly, if you need physical touch as your love language, being given a gift won’t mean much to you. We receive love best when it is given to us in a manner that meets a need we have. And that is why receiving God’s love is so necessary for us. God speaks to us and shows us love for a reason that meets us exactly where we are and in a manner that we can relate to. Our sin put us in a place where we could not save ourselves. We were without hope and helpless. We needed someone who would take the punishment and penalty for our sins, someone who would lay down their life for us. Jesus came to do exactly that. He loved us in a language we needed and could relate to. All we have to do is receive it.

Q: Which love language resonates with you most? Q: Why is it important to not just acknowledge that God loves you, but to receive His love? To not just understand that He loves you, but personally accept that He loves you?

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RETURNING GOD’S LOVE DEUTERONOMY 10:12–22, MATTHEW 22:37–40

Q: How do you often allow your love for God to dictate what you think and feel about God’s love for you? Q: What practical ways of loving God are given to us in Deuteronomy 10?

One major mistake Christians make is defining their faith based on their love for God (which is often quite small) rather than on God’s love for us (which is constantly and continuously extravagant.) Our love for God wavers. It changes with our circumstances, our mood, and our feelings. God’s love never changes and it never ends (Psalm 103:11). Another mistake Christians often make is being more preoccupied with loving others more than with loving God. This is the picture we see in Luke 10:38–42 with Martha and Mary. Mary was focused on sitting at Jesus’s feet and just being near Him, in His presence. Martha, on the other hand, was “distracted with much serving.” The perplexing thing about this passage is that what Martha was doing was good. Serving is a good thing. Responding to God’s love by serving others is a major part of what it means to have a life characterized by love. But it’s not always the best and most necessary thing. God loves not only so we will in turn love others, but also so we will love Him in return. He doesn’t just want to make us His messengers. He wants us to be part of His family. God wants us to love Him above all else and before all else. Yes, we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, but that comes after first loving God with “all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” We often think doing for God equals being with God. While you can worship and rest in Christ by working and serving Him, there must also be a time of simply being with God. God wants us to love others. He desires it and commands it. But He wants us to love Him first and foremost. God’s love for us and our love for Him are what enable and empower us to love others.

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Q: Is your default mode more like Mary or Martha? Q: What practical steps can you can take to focus on being with God more than doing for God?

RESPONDING TO GOD’S LOVE 1 JOHN 4:7–8, 11, 19–21

Q: How have you recently displayed and demonstrated your love for someone else in a tangible way? Q: What caused you to show that person love? How and why did you turn your feeling of love into an action of love?

Pastor Tim Keller uses an analogy referencing money and generosity to depict our ability to love. He notes that the only way to be generous is to have enough money in the bank to draw from in order to give some of it away. If there isn’t any money there, you are unable to be generous. In the same way, in order to love others at all times, regardless of whether they are deserving or have earned your love, you must make sure you have enough love stored up “in the bank.” This illustration is a helpful way to remember and illustrate what 1 John teaches—that because God so loved us, we also ought to love one another (1 John 4:11). We don’t love others in response to their love for us. We love others in response to how we have been loved by God in Christ. And because we know that God’s love for us is infinite and that it is constant, we will always have love from God stored up and available to draw from so we can love one another. At least four different times throughout 1 John 4 we are reminded that we are to love one another because God 21

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first loved us. The premise is repeated again and again, not only because of how important and foundational it is for us to grasp, but also because of how hard it is for us to remember and do. We are so prone to try to love in our flesh and from our own strength, not realizing that it’s impossible for us to love apart from the source of all love. We also must remember that while God calls us to love Him above and before loving others, we cannot fully love God apart from loving others. If we claim to love God, then we must love our brother (1 John 4:21). But the order is important. We love our brother because we first love God and have been changed by His love. We don’t love our brother in order to love God or to earn His love. People who have experienced deep transformational love respond by giving deep transformational love. The key to faithfully and fully responding to the love of God is doing it practically and making it tangible. God didn’t just love us with words. He demonstrated His love for us in action by dying on the cross for us. In the same way, we are called to love not just in word or talk, but in deed and truth (1 John 3:18). This means not just telling people we love them, but showing them by speaking their language and meeting their needs in the same manner that our greatest need of salvation was met for us at the cross.

Q: What are some practical ways to ensure you have the love of God fully stored up within you so you are prepared and ready to draw from it to love others? Q: In your season and stage of life and with the circles of relationships around you, what are some practical ways you can love others in deed and in truth?

+ Connect the truths from God’s Word to your daily life. Process how what you’ve learned this week will impact the way you live beyond today and into the future.

Q: Why is understanding God’s love for us so important for being able to love others? 22

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Q: Think of three people you currently know who are in need of love. What tangible thing can you do this week to love them because you have been loved by God? Q: What are some of the biggest barriers and hindrances that sometimes keep you from loving others like you should?

+ Use these prayer points to connect your time in prayer to this week’s focus.

Our most gracious heavenly Father: •

Thank You for loving me when I was unlovable and did not deserve it. Thank You for loving me, even when I was still a sinner.

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Thank You for sending your Son to die for me and demonstrating what true love is like.

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Would You change my heart to understand how high and deep and wide Your love is?

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May my life be marked and defined by my love for You and my love for others. May your love for me compel me to lay down my life for others and serve them, just as You did for me.

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Open my eyes to how I can better meet the needs of those around me and love in deed and in truth. Show me my brothers and sisters around me who I can tangibly love as an expression of my love for You.

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