Quotes about Love

Jesus himself was law observant, but what distinguished his praxis was that he did so through the law of double love. To do the Torah through love is to do all the Torah says and more.

Prayer is not informing God of something unknown but drawing oneself in the divine life of the Trinity and into the very mission of God in this world — this God loves us and invites us into his presence with our petitions.

are challenged in this passage to discern who it is whom we treat as enemies—those we claim to love but don't, those who never sit at table with us, those we label and libel—and to convert enemies into neighbors by simply extending love to them. Love is to treat others as we treat ourselves, and it is the rugged commitment to be with someone as someone who is for them in order to foster Christlikeness.

John Wesley said this well: "The judging that Jesus condemns here is thinking about another person in a way that is contrary to love."3

Knowing God's love, knowing God's goodness, and learning to embrace those attributes of God prompt us to pray.

But Augustine knew the Bible's main mission: so that we can become people who love God and love others. If our reading of the Bible leads to this, the mission is accomplished. If it isn't …

God gave the Bible not so we can know it but so we can know and love God through it.

the God of the Bible is so immense, omnipotent, and omniscient that for God, knowing each of us in the depths of our beings is an afternoon walk in Sydney's botanical garden. The God of Jesus knows us by name, knows our minds and hearts and emotions, loves us (anyway), and summons us, as it were, into the divine presence to lay out our requests.

The first principle of spiritual formation is this: A spiritually formed person loves God and others.

James taught me that there is nothing that shows the world what God is like more clearly than when we love our enemies. Despite the reality that throughout the New Testament the cross is not only how God saves us, it is how we witness to that salvation.

Because they love God and others, they are willing to check their passions and will in order to do God's will, to further God's justice, and to express their longing that God act to establish his will and kingdom.

I'm aware that "enemy love" still scandalizes many a fundamentalist and liberal alike. Who wants a Savior who loves the enemies we want to kill? Who wants to witness to the God whose love falls like rain on the just and the unjust alike? Who wants a God who longs to heal those who have hurt us so they hurt no more? Who wants a Christ who comes to us in the pain we want to run from?