Life in the Vine - Week 6

October 12, 2025

Teacher: Pastor Dave Brown  

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my  

commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain  

in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be  complete.

— John 15:9-11

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.

— John 15:9

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their  

message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they  

also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory  

that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they  

may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved  

them even as you have loved me.

—John 17:20-23

One with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

He became what we are so that we might become what He is.

—Irenaeus

In all of Jesus’ teaching, what we call God is, in a mysterious but beautiful way, a flow of love  

between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. God is a community of self-giving love;  

each member of the Trinity is distinct yet somehow still one. To be with the Spirit is to be with  

Jesus, and to be with Jesus is to be with the Father. It’s to enter the flow of love within the  

inner life of God himself.

— John Mark Comer

Agape  

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.  

— 1 John 4:16b

In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give…God,  

who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love  

and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing the buzzing cloud of flies about  

the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the  

medial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of  

back and arms as it is time after time, for breathes sake, hitched up. If I may dare the  

biological image, God is a “host” who deliberately created His own parasites; causes us to be  

that we may exploit and take advantage of Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love  

Himself, the inventor of all loves.

— C.S. Lewis

The Four Loves  

If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s  

commands and remain in his love.

— John 15:10

Jesus’ Commands Are All About Love

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart  

and with all your soul and with all your strength.

— Deuteronomy 6:4

Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your  

neighbor as yourself.

— Leviticus 19:18

The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself,  

for you were foreigners in Egypt.

— Leviticus 19:34

Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of  

love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.

— Deuteronomy 7:9

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your  

God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and  

greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law  

and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

— Matthew 36-40

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

— John 15:1