Irresistible | Week 2
Week 2 What Does Love Require
Life Group Discussion Guide
Note to the Leaders:
This discussion guide is a help for you to engage and steer the conversation within your group.
You do not have to read every question; this is just resources for you to move the main idea forward.
Do your best to make the story come to life by asking questions that will spur your group conversations that make this story play come alive and become applicable to their lives.
Key Verse: John 13:34 A new command I give you: Love one another as I have loved you, so you must love one another.
Once upon a time there was a version of our faith that was irresistible: despite all odds, without an official Bible, no political or moral status, with little chance of survival... the early church irresistibly flourished.
Getting Started:
· Somewhere along the way Christianity has lost the heart of what once made it irresistible.
· Most people have rejected the faith for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with Jesus
1. How does our current culture describe Christians and Christianity?
2. Look around at your Life Group. How do you describe your fellow Christians and Christianity as a whole?
3. What, if any, is the difference between the two descriptions? *As a leader, use this time to encourage and affirm your group members*
Digging In:
1. Recounting last week, why did Jesus establish a new covenant instead of just following the covenant of the Old Testament?
· Where the old covenant required following 600 plus laws, the very definition of religion…
· While the new covenant was based on Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and His resurrection, allowing us to have an individual relationship with God.
· The old was established on task the new was established on grace.
Read Matthew 22:37-40
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
2. How did Jesus clarify the law in these 2 commands?
3. Which of these two commands is the most important?
· The answer is they are equal in value. You must both love God and love your neighbor as yourself.
A New Covenant Requires and New Command
· When Jesus gave the new covenant, he also gave a new command.
Read John 13:34
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
1. How did the requirements of how we show love change from what Jesus said earlier in Matthew 27:37-40(re-read verses)?
· Jesus wasn’t adding a command to an existing list of commands, rather he was replacing the irrefutable standard of love for others for those who followed him
· The old covenant was “Do to others as you want them to do to you”
· Jesus was saying “Do to others as I do to you”
· The motive for love was shifted from reciprocal, what do I get out of this, to sacrificial, love that is unconditional.
Read John 13:35
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
· Jesus’ primary command wasn’t just to believe something, but to do something
· To love as he had loved
Saint Francis of Assisi
Master grant that I may never seek
so much to be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love with all my soul
2. How is Jesus’ new command simpler, yet more demanding than all the old covenant?
3. How does having to question whether something is a sin lead to more hypocrisy?
· It shows a line that we tend to snuggle close too.
4. How does asking the question “What does Love Require of Me?” bring clarity and reshape our thinking?
5. How does this change our answer to Why obey?
Revisit the question at the start.
1. Why has our culture rejected Christianity?
· Remember most people have rejected the faith based on something that has nothing to do with Jesus.
· Real Love is irresistible.
Next Step:
How can you personally adjust the way you live based on the command of Jesus?