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Group Discussion
Questions for facilitating dynamic discussion
First Love
September 20,2025
Week 3: God's Love SAVES Us
Jeff Griffin
1 John 4:9-10
The apostle John proclaimed that God’s love comes first, and through it, everything can change. In this study of John’s first letter, we’re exploring the depth and power of God’s unconditional love. This week we’re looking at God’s love in action.
In life we come across the incomparable in many arenas: the pizza by which all other pizzas are judged, the hotel whose service and amenities spoil us for future travel, the Christmas celebration that eclipses all others. Describe an incomparable experience that sticks out in your memory.
1. When it comes to grasping something new or more deeply, do you understand better by having it explained verbally? Or being shown an example? Or both?
2. Jeff covered 1 John 4:9-10 in his sermon, but let’s back up to last week’s verses for our discussion. Read 1 John 4:7-10. From what you can tell in verses 7 & 8, what prompted John to describe God’s love in verses 9 & 10?
“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” (1 John 4:8 NIV)
3. What does John say that God’s love looks like – that is, what was the example He showed us?
4. Jeff talked about Christ’s Rescue Mission as the ultimate Hero’s Journey where an unlikely candidate is called to a dangerous mission, makes a sacrifice out of love, and returns victorious. Given that Jesus was sent to rescue humankind, what does that imply about us? (That we need to be saved). Can you recall when you first recognized this for yourself? Explain.
5. As Jeff shared, God’s love resulted in you being both rescued from what your sins deserve and getting to have life eternal (both in quantity & quality). What does knowing this mean for you?
“God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him.” (1 John 4:9 NLT)
6. Thinking about the grand rescue mission story and your role as one rescued, along with John’s call to love (in v. 7 & 8), how can you be part of God’s example to the world of His love and what it means to be saved through His great love?
God’s love for us is beyond any other, demonstrated by Christ’s sacrifice. Pray that you and your group members would be renewed in your knowledge of this love and inspired to share it with others.
Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NLT)