1 John 4 (NRSVue)
7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.
13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. 15 God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. 16 So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.
We come to know God in the commitment to wholeness.
Here are some questions for discussion:
1. Our commitment to each other’s wholeness reflects perfectly the idea of Imago Dei and man being made “in our image” (Gen 1:26.) We are made to be loved completely and wholly from the start. What factors today, and through time, have made such loving commitment so difficult? Have you experienced a commitment to another’s wholeness in your life? How did that look different from what most of society says we are to do?
2. God knows us, each of us, in a complete and whole sense. What hope can we find in that notion that our Father and Creator knows us and asks us to be committed to each other in this love?
3. We often talk about Loving God, Loving Ourselves, and Loving Others — in that order. Pastor Trey mentions loving others despite their imperfections, how does loving ourself first help us to love others in this sense? How does this struggle to love ourselves impede our ability to love others?
If you’d like to dig a little deeper, consider the following:
1. When all we know of a man is that he is willing to slap a stranger for sitting down, we find it all too easy to NOT love him. Our Father knows this man though, and our Father loves him. What can we do to love this man we don’t know? What does this say about our faith or trust in the Father?
2. Loving the wholeness of another is a great description and an easy concept to understand but still such a difficult one for many to put into action. A common refrain bandied about is that we should love the sinner and hate the sin. In your opinion, what is the distinction between the two? What is the impact of this distinction on our relationships with each other and with God?
3. Pastor Trey makes clear the idea of loving wholeness doesn’t just transform relationships but transforms reality. As individuals it is far from modest to consider our loving can transform reality, what then in our loving makes such a tremendous impact? What did that young man in the stands do that would impact the reality of his world and the realities of those around him?
4. The young man in the stands made a choice, his choice was different from what much of society tells us to do at that moment though. Consider the factions in the stands, cheering for their team in a contest with another, and how out of place his response was in a time and place where conflict might have been the expectation. What about his reaction was a commitment to his fellow man? What about this situation makes his response that much more impactful?
5. To quote the words of the modern street poets Paul ‘DJ Paul’ Beauregard and Jordan ‘Juicy J’ Houston III, “When I look in your face I see a coward.” When we find ourselves committed to each other’s wholeness, what do we see instead of a coward? How does seeing a “coward” reflect the opposite of love?
For further contemplation, consider these prompts:
1. “God is embodied when we love one another.” We are told to repent for the Kingdom is at hand (Matthew 3:2, Matthew 4:17, & Mark 1:15.) What about this embodiment is a change for us and what about that change reflects the Kingdom?
2. The world today, existing as we are told, where we all are completely committed to each other’s wholeness would clearly look so much different. In this struggle for hearts and minds, what are our best tools? What chance does each of us have reshaping the reality of the world to reflect the Divine Love we are called to?