How do you know if you are truly following Jesus?

How can you know if you’re making disciples, denying self, taking up your cross daily, loving God before all else? One word: LOVE.

Jesus redefines love with his words and his life. He declares this to be a new command. You can imagine the disciples sitting on the edge of their seats, excited to hear a new command.

But then Jesus delivers one of the oldest commands in scripture: “Love one another.” But he adds a phrase that makes this revolutionary, “just as I have loved you.” Any true disciple will spend a lifetime learning to obey just this one command!  

• What was so revolutionary about the way Jesus loved compared to the world’s ideas of love today?

• Ultimately, Jesus shows us that true love is sacrificial by dying on the cross. How can you practice sacrificial love in your life?

• The result of truly loving people is that we’ll be recognized as his disciples. Have you seen examples of loving disciples in your life? How does loving people help us make disciples?

Unfortunately, when people think about Christianity today, love isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind. What an opportunity we have to bring Christianity back to it’s roots as faith-filled followers rooted in the love of Christ.