Quotes about Love

Love is an ongoing debt that we owe each other, a debt that should never be paid off. Paul made this clear when he wrote to the believers in Rome, "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law" (Rom. 13:8). If we get into the habit of thinking of ourselves as always owing a debt of love to our spouses, we will be less inclined to take offense when they say or do something that we do not like.

fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline (2 Timothy 1:6-7). A

The people most successful at both giving and receiving love are not the ones who walk around degrading and bad-mouthing themselves all the time, but those who are fully in love with themselves and fully aware that they are loved by God. Because they are at peace within themselves about themselves, they are free both to give love and to allow others to love them.

Prayer is both a right and a privilege of redeemed man, who is now in a position to enter fully into a relationship of love with God and to agree that "His kingdom come, His will be done on earth as it is in heaven." (See Matthew 6:10.)

The love of work is the secret to personal progress, productivity, and fulfillment because work encourages the release of potential, and potential is the abundance of talents, abilities, and capabilities given to every person.

I feel about John ['s gospel] like I feel about my wife; I love her very much, but I wouldn't claim to understand her. (Following Jesus, p. 27.)

We have traditionally thought of knowing in terms of subject and object and have struggled to attain objectivity by detaching our subjectivity. It can't be done, and one of the achievements of postmodernity is to demonstrate that. What we are called to, and what in the resurrection we are equipped for, is a knowing in which we are involved as subjects but as self-giving, not as self-seeking, subjects: in other words, a knowing that is a form of love.

The church is not supposed to be a society of perfect people doing great work. It's a society of forgiven sinners repaying their unpayable debt of love by working for Jesus's kingdom in every way they can, knowing themselves to be unworthy of the task.

we have developed a corollary that is neither love nor forgiveness—namely, tolerance. The problem with this is clear: I can "tolerate" you without it costing me anything very much. I can shrug my shoulders, walk away, and leave you to do your own thing. That, admittedly, is preferable to my taking you by the throat and shaking you until you agree with me. But it is certainly not love.

Good Christian liturgy is friendship in action, love taking thought, the covenant relationship between God and his people not simply discovered and celebrated like the sudden meeting of friends, exciting and worthwhile though that is, but thought through and relished, planned and prepared -- an ultimately better way for the relationship to grow and at the same time a way of demonstrating what the relationship is all about.

Jesus died for our sins not so that we could sort out abstract ideas, but so that we, having been put right, could become part of God's plan to put his whole world right. That is how the revolution works.

Love is the deepest mode of knowing, because it is love that, while completely engaging with reality other than itself, affirms and celebrates that other-than-self reality. This is the mode of knowing that is necessary if we are to live in the new public world, the world launched at Easter, the world in which Jesus is Lord and Caesar isn't.