Queen's Road Cell

7. According to Jesus, what should be a person's two priorities in life (10:27-28)? Loving God (Dt 6:5) Loving our neighbour (Lev 19:18)   What does it mean to 'love' God and 'love' your neighbour? To love God is to desire Him above all else and to seek to please Him  To love a neighbour is to place his needs equal to our own The common element in love is the forgetting of ourselves.  8. Jesus said, "Do this and you will live" (10:28). What is the problem with trying to inherit eternal life in this way? The attitude of the lawyer is wrong: he is not truly interested in knowing the answer to his question, but he wants to establish his superiority over Jesus. Jesus turns the tables by referring him to the most basic of the teachings of the faith. And so the lawyer then seeks to rescue ('justify') himself by asking a more 'sophisticated' question. Jesus takes the OT as the standard of faith and practice (cf. 19:18). we do this to 'earn...

“Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mt 20:27-28) The disciples of Jesus had been upset with one another because James and John had asked to be  pre-eminent – the greatest - in Jesus’ kingdom. Jesus took the opportunity to teach His disciples about greatness. He does not discourage the desire to be great – but he tells them to change their ideas about what greatness means. To them and according to the world’s ways of doing things, greatness means being honoured by others, being able to impose authority on others, and being served by others. But Jesus says us that real greatness has nothing to do with how others regard us, but by how God regards us. The kind of greatness God desires is in a heart that can humble itself to serve people. Greatness in the eyes of God is measured in servanthood. Th...