H a b i t 7 : Love your neighbor as yourself
Jesus closely connects our vertical love for God and our horizontal love
for one another. Disciples are lovers of God and lovers of people. What made Jesus’ teaching radical in the 1st century and radical today is his call: 1) to love other people with the same level of care we would love ourselves 2) to expand our vision of who our neighbor is, to give costly love to people who inconvenience us and who are different from us. Love is the hallmark trait of disciples of Jesus. Growing here involves growing in self awareness, we must know ourselves better in order to know and love our neighbor better. Life is about loving God and others the best we can.
MEMORIZE
Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.” - Luke 10:36-37
STUDY AND DISCUSS LUKE 10:25-37
What similarities and differences do you see between this text and Mark
12:28-34 (the text for Habit 6)? Why does Jesus put these 2 commands together, how is vertical love for God related to horizontal love for our neighbor? What does it mean to love “your neighbor as yourself”? Describe a time in your life that, out of nowhere, someone showed love and mercy to you and how that impacted you. If Jesus showed up to your Discipleship Group today, how would he retell this parable in your context? Summarize in 1 sentence what this text of Scripture is teaching us. Share specifics as a group about the “neighbors” in your life and opportunities for showing mercy that God might be calling you to walk into.
“All the different obligations expected of a disciple can be summed up in a single word. It is love.”
Stephen Smallman 61