Category: Bible Study

“Beloved, let us love one another because love is of God.” –1 John 4:7 Jesus loves us as God the Father loves Him (Jn 15:9). Jesus reveals the Father’s love so that we will accept that love and make love the very atmosphere in which we live (Jn 15:10). Then, after first being loved (1 Jn 4:19), we can love one another (Jn 15:17) even as Christ has loved us (Jn 15:12) and lay down our lives in love even for our enemies (Rm 5:8; 1 Jn 3:16). “Love, then, consists in this: not that we have loved God but...

“If you find that the world hates you, know it has hated Me before you.” –John 15:18 Christians continue to be surprised that the world hates them. We may naively think that the world has changed since it rejected and crucified Jesus. Also, we may think that we’re not enough like Jesus to be worthy of rejection and persecution. Nevertheless, we have been fundamentally changed by being baptized into Christ (see Rm 6:3). We have a new nature. As new creations (see Gal 6:15), we have been chosen out of the world by Christ (Jn 15:19). The world recognizes that...

“This is My commandment: love one another as I have loved you.” –John 15:12 Jesus commands us not only to love one another but to love as He has loved us! That means that we are to lay down our lives for our friends (Jn 15:13) and even for our enemies (Rm 5:8, 10). In this way, we will be recognizable as Jesus’ disciples, because no one except Jesus loves his enemies by dying for them (Lk 5:27ff). How are we, with all our selfishness, to love so divinely? The Holy Spirit will purify us by obedience to the truth...

“We ought not to cause God’s Gentile converts any difficulties.” –Acts 15:19 The leaders of the early Church discerned that the Holy Spirit was not requiring Gentile Christians to observe the Mosaic law except for abstaining “from anything contaminated by idols, from illicit sexual union, from the meat of strangled animals, and from eating blood” (Acts 15:20). We have no Biblical record of the Gentile Christians having any problems with abstaining “from the meat of strangled animals and from eating blood.” However, some Gentile Christians had serious problems in obeying the first two commands. Paul warned the Corinthian Christians that...

“He prunes away every barren branch, but the fruitful ones He trims clean to increase their yield.” –John 15:2 A glance at Scripture paints a picture of the Lord as a rather inconsistent Farmer. First, He goes crazy with the pruning shears, snipping off everything in sight, both fruitful and barren branches (Jn 15:2). In the next scene, the Lord cuts nothing at all. He refuses to cut weeds which threaten the fruitfulness of the adjoining wheat (Mt 13:30). Then the Lord allows an unproductive fig tree to go yet another year without fruit, so that it can have one...