11 This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.
34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”
9 Now about brotherly love we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. 10 And in fact, you do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers, to do so more and more.
22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.
1 Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
9 Love must be sincere.
“Love one another that it may at last be said of Christians as it was at first: ‘Behold how they love one another.’” Ralph Venning
“God employs His people to encourage one another. We should delight that God usually works for human beings with other human beings. It forms a bond of friendship, and being mutually dependent on one another, we are fused more completely into one family. Work to help others, and especially strive to encourage them. Talk cheerily to the young and anxious inquirer, lovingly try to remove obstacles out of his way. When you find a spark of grace in the heart, kneel down and blow it into a flame. Leave the young believer to discover the roughness of the road by degrees, but tell him of the strength which dwells in God, of the sureness of the promise, and of the charms of communion with Christ. Aim to comfort the sorrowful, and to animate the hopeless. Speak a word in season to him who is weary, and encourage those who are fearful to go on their way with gladness. God encourages you by His promises; Christ encourages you as He points to the heaven He has won for you, and the Spirit encourages you as He works in you to will and to do of His own will and pleasure. Imitate divine wisdom, and encourage others according to the Word.” Charles H. Spurgeon
“Do not let us fail one another in interest, care, and practical help; but supremely we must not fail one another in prayer.” Michael Boughen
“Love, like warmth, should beam forth on every side, and bend to every necessity of our brethren.” Martin Luther
“What brings joy to the heart is not so much the friend’s gift as the friend’s love.” Aelred of Rievaulx
“No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the hecatombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love. And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we are ourselves defeated in our innermost personal selves?” Maximilian Kolbe
“Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.” Mother Teresa
“Accustom yourself continually to make many acts of love, for they enkindle and melt the soul.” Teresa of Avila
“See God in everything, and God will calm and color all that thou dost see! It may be that the circumstances of our sorrows will not be removed, their condition will remain unchanged; but if Christ, as Lord and Master of our life, is brought into our grief and gloom, ‘He will compass us about with songs of deliverance’. To see Him, and to be sure that His wisdom cannot err, His power cannot fail, His love can never change; to know that even His direst dealings with us are for our deepest spiritual gain, is to be able to say, in the midst of bereavement, sorrow, pain, and loss, ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’. Nothing else but seeing God in everything will make us loving and patient with those who annoy and trouble us. They will be to us then only instruments for accomplishing His tender and wise purposes toward us, and we shall even find ourselves at last inwardly thanking them for the blessing they bring us. Nothing else will completely put an end to all murmuring or rebelling thoughts.” Hannah W. Smith