1 John 4:7-21
God LOVE and Our Love
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
Matthew 22:36-40
Two Greatest Commandments
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment.39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Love is Many Things
1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
John 3:16
God So LOVES the World
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
I would say that Perfect LOVE completely understands everything, and that Complete Understanding is a natural and completely Unconditional LOVE...This helps me better understand God, who is LOVE...God is the Creator of all things and God is LOVE...LOVE comes from God...God's very nature is LOVE...Mankind knows how to love because He LOVED us first...So when He created all things, it would seem that there is this LOVE connection of all the things He created...And since He is LOVE, LOVE connects all things together...
There are different types and kinds of love...There is God's LOVE and their is our love...C. S. Lewis said there are four basic loves...In fact, he wrote a book about these loves and called his book the Four Loves...The first of the four loves is affection, which is a need-gift love, like the love from a mother with her child or children...Lewis said this love is nine-tenths of all human happiness...This nurturing love is from a child's parents or guardians...This beginning-nurturing love gives us a foundation on our future love relationships...Then there is a friendship love called, which is the love we have for our friends...There is a third love which Lewis called eros, which is the love you have when you have fell in love with the one you love...This is the love you have for your wife or husband...And the fourth LOVE is Agape LOVE or the Charitable-Type LOVE, which is the LOVE of God...This Agape LOVE is a Divine LOVE...This is where all the other loves are derived...LOVE comes first from our Creator, God...We know how to love because God first LOVED us...
Jesus when ask about the Two Greatest Commandments, He says love of God and love of neighbor are the two...Jesus forever links not only God and neighbor with this teaching, but also God, neighbor and love are forever linked also...
One of the most quoted and read verses of love are from Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthians...When Paul wrote to the Corinthians about love, he was doing it to address a conflict the Corinthians had among themselves...There was division and quarreling and division among the Corinthians of Paul's day...Lawsuits, divorce, and sexual immorality were addressed by Paul...So Paul would write to the Corinthian community about these problems with love...In the verses of chapter thirteen of his first epistle to the Corinthians, he thought love could bring the Corinthian community back together with love...
Yet, these verses from St. Paul are often used in weddings and take on a more romantic sense...So his words of love take on more than just an affectionate love, but also a marriage-type love in the wedding vows of many a couple...And as St. Paul finished His writings, we see he writes about the three most powerful virtues in life...These three are faith, hope, and love...But the greatest of these is love...Arguably the three most powerful forces in the world, which happen to be all invisible...The most powerful force on earth is love...Love makes us complete...
And the most powerful invisible force in the universe is LOVE...Saying that God is LOVE, the Agape LOVE is the LOVE that God gives us...God's LOVE is a different type of LOVE, because He is God...LOVE sustains all life...God can give LOVE unfettered and unconditionally, with Complete Understanding to each of us, and each of our problems and situations that we are involved with in our own personal life...St. John wrote that God so LOVES the world that He gave his One and Only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life...And chapter three of John's Gospel is one of my favorites as Nicodemus is asking Jesus great questions about eternal life and the Kingdom of God, but it seems this chapter gets completely overwhelmed with God's LOVE and this verse about God and of His LOVE, as He gives us His Son on the cross...And John 3:16 has been told by millions of preachers and pastors and ministers to others...Now that is a different type of LOVE, than the other loves...God's LOVE is the type of LOVE that sustains all things...God's LOVE is the substance of everything...