The Love of God

For God loved the world so much that He gave His only Son, so that every one who believes in Him shall not be lost, but should have eternal life. If God loved us as much as that, surely we, in our turn, should love each other! (John 3:16; 1 John 4:11 Phillips)

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power and love and a sound mind. (II Timothy 1:7 KJV)  God is love, and the man whose life is lived in love does, in fact, live in God, and God does, in fact, live in him. So our love for Him grows more and more, filling us with complete confidence for the day when He shall judge all men—for we realize that our life in this world is actually His life lived in us. [I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Gal. 2:20 NIV] Love contains no fear—indeed fully-developed love expels every particle of fear, for fear always contains some of the torture of feeling guilty. This means that the man who lives in fear has not yet had his love perfected. (1 John 4:16-18 Phillips) [Whatsover is not of faith is sin. Romans 14:23 KJV]

Can anything separate us from the love of Christ? Can trouble, pain or persecution? Can lack of clothes and food, danger to life and limb, the threat of force of arms? Indeed some of us know the truth of the ancient text: ‘For your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter’(Ps. 44:22)

No, in all these things we win an overwhelming victory through Him who has proved his love for us.

I have become absolutely convinced that neither death nor life, neither messenger of Heaven nor monarch of earth, neither what happens today nor what may happen tomorrow, neither a power from on high nor a power from below, nor anything else in God’s whole world has any power to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 8:35-39 Phillips)

This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience—it looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance.

Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails.

Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen. (1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 Phillips)