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. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, 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.
16 But Ruth replied, “Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.” 18 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.
12 “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.
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.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
“You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.” Amy Carmichael
“‘The supreme happiness of life,’ Victor Hugo said, ‘is the conviction that we are loved’....Unfortunately, many people go through life feeling unloved – and unlovable...No matter the reason, your feelings aren’t telling you the truth! God loves you, and if you begin to see yourself the way God sees you, your attitudes will begin to change. If He didn’t love you, would Christ have been willing to die for you? But He did! The Bible says, ‘By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us’ (1 John 3:16). God loves you. Hammer that truth into your head and mind every day. It will make all the difference.” Billy Graham
“Obedience to God is the most infallible evidence of sincere and supreme love for Him.” Nathanael Emmons
“Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved.” Thomas Merton
“Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that you have received -- only what you have given: a full heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage.” St. Francis of Assisi
“To love God, to serve Him because we love Him, is...our highest happiness...Love makes all labor light. We serve with enthusiasm where we love with sincerity.” Hannah More
“Our Lord does not care so much for the importance of our works as for the love with which they are done.” Teresa of Avila
“God is love — thus only He gets to define love. And He defines love as cross-shaped, cross-formed, stretched out, formed into a reaching givenness that leaves the heart breathtakingly vulnerable.” Ann Voskamp
“Human love is capable of great things. What then must be the depth and height and intensity of divine love?” Lord Shaftesbury
“‘We know that all things work together for good to them that love God.’ The Christian does not merely hold this as a theory, but he knows it as a matter of fact. Everything has worked for good as yet; the poisonous drugs mixed in fit proportions have worked the cure; the sharp cuts of the lancet have cleansed out the proud flesh and facilitated the healing. Every event as yet has worked out the most divinely blessed results; and so, believing that God rules all, that He governs wisely, that He brings good out of evil, the believer’s heart is assured, and he is enabled calmly to meet each trial as it comes. The believer can in the spirit of true resignation pray, ‘Send me what thou wilt, my God, so long as it comes from Thee; never came there an ill portion from Thy table to any of Thy children.’” C. H. Spurgeon
“God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son at a place three days distant. The word ‘love’ appears for the first time in the Bible in that command. Of course He didn’t allow him to go through with it. On the third day Abraham retained his son alive. Two thousand years later on the day Israel celebrated the sparing of sons Jesus of Nazareth was executed by slow torture. Maybe God wanted Abraham to exhibit a pattern. Maybe He wanted to teach a principle. Or maybe God wanted Abraham to know what it felt like to be God. Instead of slaying his son Abraham sacrificed a ram. He was able to catch the animal because his horns were entangled in the thicket. CAUGHT BY A CROWN OF THORNS. There were lots of startling coincidences like that. It's almost as if the thing were planned...” Ronnie Stevens