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God's Triune Commandment: Love
A Jewish scribe once asked Jesus: what is God’s greatest commandment? Jesus answered: “. . .you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. . . soul. . .mind and . . .strength. The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:28-31). The apostle Paul further explains that “. . .love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:10). But this commandment is not even among God’s top ten! How is it greater than all other commandments? What kind of love is this that fulfills God’s whole law? How can we love in this way when our hearts and minds are so prone to scatter in different directions and cannot altogether love God, our neighbor, or our self?
God’s love fulfills His law because it fulfills His will, which is to love. How can we know this? God sent Jesus to us not only to show us the nature of His will but also to do His will. In Jesus, we discover that God “so loved the world” (John 3:16) and is Himself love (1 John 4:8), a love relationship of Father and Son in His holy Spirit. Jesus is also God’s way of love to Himself. At the beginning of His ministry on earth, God called Jesus “. . .My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased” (Matthew 3:17). Jesus lived with great losses and rejection, and He suffered a most painful and despicable death. Despite these things, He lived fully in God’s good pleasure because He lived in God’s love. God sent us Jesus so we, too, can live in the good pleasure of God’s love for us. Learning the nature of God’s love relationship in Himself and with others grows us as He wants us to grow, in the good and satisfying pleasure of His will to love
Classes will focus on the nature of God’s unique love for us and how to better apprehend His love
Class 1: God, our holy love - Foundational to our relationship with God is His distinct presence with us. God’s holiness is His boundary with all He created. God’s boundary describes His gracious love
Class 2: God revealed in the Hebrew Bible - The dynamics of our relationship with God is as Creator (Sabbath), Redeemer (Passover) and Sanctifier (Day of Atonement)
Class 3: Immanuel, God With Us - God wants to eternally be with us, in love. The Father’s love in Jesus is His Way of relationship with Him
Class 4: The hearing of faith (Galatians 3:2) - God prepares our hearts to receive Him by listening, in faith. Learning to hear God enables us to trust and know His love
Class 5: God in secret - Intimate communing with God is in secret, where our hearts can be purified from divided intentions and prepared to receive His undivided love
Class 6: God, others and self - Jesus prayed to His Father for us who believe in Him, “that they may all be one. . . that they also may be in Us” (John 17:21). God unites our relationships in His love (17:23, 26)
Class 7: Who heals addictions - The disease of addictions separates and isolates. The healing of God’s love unites and makes whole. We will explore God’s love in relation to formal addictions as well as to the more common and softer addictions
Class 8: God’s healing making whole - God’s way of completing us in Jesus (Colossians 1:28) responds to our deepest needs and hungers, with Himself