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The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.
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Love
Teaching Text: John 13: 1–5
It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet,drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
Act 2: 42–47
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Themes
Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:
Hebrews: A new and Living Way
Vision Series 2 | Formation x Tables
Formation
Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:
Sermon Summary
“The human spirit is an inescapable, fundamental aspect of every human being; and it takes on whatever character it has from the experiences and the choices that we have lived through or made in our past… The most despicable as well as the most admirable of persons have had a spiritual formation.”
— Dallas Willard
We don’t opt in or out of formation. It happens to all of us — family, wounds, friendships, stories, daily habits. They shape the spirit whether we notice or not.
The real Gospel isn’t a transaction to believe your way into heaven — it’s an invitation into a lifelong, relational union with Jesus, formed at His table and in His body.
American Christianity often reduces the Gospel to: believe in Jesus, get forgiven, go to heaven when you die. True as far as it goes — but it lets people become “Christian” without ever becoming a follower of Christ.
That reduction causes real damage:
It’s barely in the New Testament — you have to strip verses out of context to build it.
It produces people who are passionate about being Christian while mostly ignoring Christ.
It confuses outsiders, who watch professed believers act nothing like Jesus.
It leaves believers bored and fruitless — same old life, no love, joy, peace, patience.
A friend’s line captures it: Paul said to live is Christ and to die is gain. We’ve reversed it — to live is gain, to die is Christ. We live for ourselves and just expect Jesus to cover us at the end.
Jesus never opens with a prayer to say. He opens Mark’s Gospel announcing the Kingdom is here — repent, believe, reorient your whole life. Then He teaches it, demonstrates it, lives it, and invites others into it. And when He calls His first followers, He doesn’t say “pray this and don’t forget my name.” He says:
Follow me.
That’s apprenticeship — being with Him, becoming like Him, doing what He did. And when He commissions the disciples at the end, He doesn’t send them to collect converts. He sends them to make apprentices — baptizing them into the life of the Trinity, teaching them to obey everything He commanded.
This is deeply relational grace. It’s a shared life, not just a forgiven one. We’re invited into union with the Triune God — the same life the Father, Son, and Spirit have shared from before time.
And this union gets formed at the table. Jesus’s last, most formative night with His friends is a meal — where He gets up and washes their feet, showing them exactly what God’s love does: it takes the low place. Then the Spirit falls, the church is born, and they live it out — devoted to teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, prayer, radical generosity, showing up at each other’s tables. They were being formed in community, not on their own.
You are being formed right now, whether you’re paying attention or not.
So — the invitations:
Be formed by the meal of Jesus.
Don’t go alone — commit to a group to grow with.
Practice hospitality — invite others to your table.
Practice the way of Jesus intentionally, or be pulled by the currents of culture.
Direct Quotes
To many in the West, a Christian is just someone who mentally ascribes to the bare bones of Christianity (a word never used in Scripture) and may or may not occasionally attend church.
— John Mark Comer
The word Christian is used only three times in the New Testament. To put that in perspective, the word disciple (or apprentice) is used 269 times, which comes as no surprise since the New Testament was written by apprentices of Jesus, for apprentices of Jesus.
— John Mark Comer
This is the gospel: God has drawn near to us in Jesus—us, we who are sinful, broken, wounded, mortal, dying, and incapable of self-saving… to draw us into His inner life, to heal us by immersing us within the fold of his Trinitarian love, and then to send us out into the world as agents of His love… This, then, is spiritual formation: the process of being formed into a person of self-giving love through deepening surrender to and union with the Trinity.
— John Mark Comer
Three Questions for Personal Application
Who or what has actually been forming your spirit lately? Not who you’d like to name, but the honest answer — the habits, screens, relationships, and stories shaping you day to day. .
Have you settled for believing in Jesus without following Him? Consider whether your faith has quietly become a belief you hold rather than a life you’re living with Him. Ask God to show you where “follow me” has gone unanswered.
Who’s at your table, and who is God inviting you to add? Think of one relationship where you could practice the kind of hospitality and foot washing love Jesus modeled. Ask Him for the courage to actually extend the invitation.
