According to ancient tradition, when the Apostle John was an old, old man in the 90s AD — too frail to walk, too weak to preach — he would have himself carried into the congregation at Ephesus and laid down at the front of the church. Each Lord's Day, he would prop himself up on an elbow and say to the gathered believers the same five words: "Little children, love one another." Week after week, the same brief sermon. Eventually the congregation, bewildered, asked him why he kept saying only this. His reply, according to tradition, was simple: "Because it is the Lord's command, and if you do this, it is enough."

One of the last things Jesus prayed before going to the cross was for the unity of the church. Three times in three consecutive verses of John 17, He prayed that Christians would be one. In Romans 12:16, Paul echoes that prayer with a command: "Live in harmony with one another." The church at Rome — a volatile mix of converted Jews and converted Gentiles with very different habits, traditions, and tastes — needed to hear this urgently. And so do we, because true harmony is not uniformity but the beautiful blending of very different people who are united by something far deeper than background or personality: union with Jesus Christ.

In Hebrews 10:19–25, the writer gives three exhortations based on the incomparable greatness of Jesus Christ as our great high priest. This sermon focuses on the third: “Let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds.” The passage is explored under four headings: the people to be spurred on, the preparation for spurring on, the practice of spurring on, and the place for spurring on.

In Romans 12:5, Paul declares that “in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” This sermon asks two questions about this truth: why are we members of one another, and how are members of one another to behave? The answer unfolds in three directions: consider your gifts, contribute them to the body, and care for one another as you care for yourself.

In Galatians 5:26–6:5, Paul teaches what it means to live by the Spirit in the way we treat one another in church. He gives two things we must not do — provoke one another and envy one another, both rooted in conceit — and one thing we must do: carry each other’s burdens, and in this way fulfil the law of Christ.

The New Testament has a vast amount to say about encouragement — the word and its related forms occur nearly 300 times. This sermon explores encouragement through the lens of 1 Thessalonians 4:18 and 5:11 under three headings: the meaning of encouragement (both comfort and exhortation), the need for encouragement (hard circumstances and high demands of holiness), and the practice of encouragement (how every member of the church can comfort and exhort one another).

In a companion evening sermon to the morning message on John 13:1–11, this sermon turns from foot washing as a picture of Christ's sacrifice to foot washing as a pattern of service for every believer. Jesus' command in verses 12–17 is not a call to a once-a-year ritual but to a life of humble, sacrificial, and indiscriminate service — modelled on the One who knelt before His own betrayer.

In the first of two sermons on John 13 — the second being the evening message on John 13:12–17 — this morning sermon explores why Jesus chose this particular moment to perform one of the most astonishing acts of His ministry. Foot washing was not simply an act of humility; it was a carefully timed visual parable of the cross, a picture of the sacrifice by which Christ would cleanse His people from sin.

James 5:16 commands us to confess our sins to one another and pray for each other so that we may be healed. While the Roman Catholic Church appeals to this verse for the confessional, the Reformers rightly recognised that we confess not to a special priest but to one another. Yet Protestant churches may have swung too far the other way and lost the practice altogether. This sermon asks two practical questions: when should we confess, and how should we do it well?

Ever since the Garden of Eden, sin has disrupted not only our relationship with God but our relationships with one another. The church is not immune. Paul assumes there will be grievances among believers and prescribes the remedy: forgive one another as the Lord forgave you (Ephesians 4:32; Colossians 3:13). This sermon explores what that means in practice — the meaning, motivation, and manner of Christian forgiveness.

Philippians 2:3 contains one of the most important commands for church life and for marriage: "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider one another better than yourselves." Paul diagnoses two poisonous attitudes — selfish ambition and vain conceit — and prescribes a single powerful antidote: humble-mindedness. The ultimate model for this humility is Christ Himself, who considered us more important than Himself and gave up everything for our sake.

Romans 16:16 commands Christians to "greet one another with a holy kiss" — a command repeated five times in the New Testament. The key is not the exact form of the greeting but the principle behind it: believers are to greet one another warmly, affectionately, and without favoritism. As one famous English paraphrase puts it, "Give one another a hearty handshake all round." Behind this culturally flexible command lies a profound truth about who we are as the family of God — and what our love for one another says to the watching world.