My dear children, let us love one another since love comes from God and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love.
God's love for us was revealed when God sent into the world his only Son so that we could have life through him; this is the love I mean: not our love for God, but God's love for us when he sent his Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away.
My dear children, since God has loved us so much, we too should love one another. No one has ever seen God; but as long as we love one another God will live in us and his love will be complete in us. We can know that we are living in him and he is living in us because he lets us share his Spirit.
We ourselves saw and testify that the Father sent his Son as saviour of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him, and he in God. We ourselves have known and put our faith in God's love towards ourselves.
God is love and anyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him. Love will come to its perfection in us when we can face the day of Judgement without fear; because even in this world we have become as he is.
In love there can be no fear, but fear is driven out by perfect love because to fear is to expect punishment, and anyone who is afraid is still imperfect in love. We are to love then, because he loved us first.
Anyone who says, 'I love God', and hates his brother, is a liar, since a man who does not love the brother that he can see cannot love God, whom he has never seen. So this is the commandment that he has given us, that anyone who loves God must also love his brother. - 1 John 4:7-21
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1st John has to be my favorite book of the Bible!
Almost every child who grew up in church sang the words "God is love" many many times. Growing up, I always thought of it as "God is loving". Then, it occurred to me last year that it should be "God = Love".
I once heard someone say that it is impossible to have completely selfless love without God. I love to love and serve people. It struck me that if a task so ingrained in who I am is impossible without God, who am I to be prideful in anything else? If the most simple of tasks is only done through God, what can I do on my own?
I realized that love and trust go right hand in hand. You trust those you love, and you love those you trust. But what about when someone breaks your trust? Can you love without trust? Only through God.
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