Enfleshing
Love!
Discipleship Group
Questions
for
October 23, 2005
Scripture Readings:
Discipleship Questions:
1Thssalonians 1:5-10: 1. When the Message we preached came to you, it wasn’t
just words. Something happened in you. The Holy Spirit put steel in your
convictions. You paid careful
attention to the way we lived among you, 6 and determined to live that
way yourselves. In imitating us, you imitated the Master. In other words, they didn’t just hear the
“Good News” they took it into themselves and began to incarnate it – they enfleshed it!
6. Although great
trouble accompanied the Word, you were able to take great joy from the Holy
Spirit!—taking the trouble with the joy, the joy with the trouble.
1Th. 1:7 Do you know that all over the provinces of both Macedonia and
Achaia believers look up to you? 8 The word has gotten around. Your
lives are echoing the Master’s Word, not only in the provinces but all over
the place. The news of your faith in God is out. We don’t even have to say
anything anymore—you’re the message! 9 People come up and tell us
how you received us with open arms, how you deserted the dead idols of your old
life so you could embrace and serve God, the true God. 10 They marvel at how expectantly you
await the arrival of his Son, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescued
us from certain doom
Ah! did you hear that? Look with me again at verse 8 – “Your very lives are
echoing the Master’s Word, not only in the provinces but all over the
place. The news of your faith is
out. We don’t even have to say anything
more – you’re the message!
Matt. 22:37-39 Jesus replied:
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest
commandment. 39 And the second is
like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
Discipleship
Questions:
- In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus tells
us what “describes” a vibrant and vital Christian: Love God and love neighbor.
Please discuss in depth this “Summary of the Law.”
- In 1Thessalonians 1:5-10 we hear Paul
congratulating the Christians in Thessalonica that they were loving God and loving their neighbors. At one point Paul said, v. 8 “The word has gotten around. Your lives are
echoing the Master’s Word, not only in the provinces but all over the
place. The news of your faith in God is out. We don’t even have to say
anything anymore—you’re the message!”
Please focus in on the words “you’re the
message.” In light of our
“sacramental” or “incarnational” faith what was
Paul telling his readers?
- Bible commentator William Barclay
wrote the following: “There’s something tremendous about the sheer
defiance of early Christianity.
When all prudence would have dictated a way of life that would
escape notice and so avoid danger and persecution, these early Christians
blazoned forth their faith. They
were never ashamed to show whose they were and whom they sought to serve!”
(The Letters to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians” William
Barclay, Westminster
Press 1975, p 187). Should we today be described in this
way? Please discuss.
- Now how do you and I become like these
Christian Thessalonians? The key to all of their zeal – their faithfulness, was
their deep and abiding and passionate love for their Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ. Truly, they loved the Lord
their God with all their heart and with all their soul and with all their mind and with all their strength.’ (Mark
12:30) and as a consequence of this love they loved their neighbor as
themselves! And so it came to be
that they enfleshed love! Would
you please bow your head now and invite the resurrected Jesus Christ to
give you the gift of more and more faith so that you will increasingly
become more and more faith-ful” –
incarnational! Amen and Amen!