GOD’S
LOVE
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.
The Bible, John 3:16
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
The Bible, Romans 5:8
The love of God is like the Amazon River flowing down to water one daisy.
Author unknown
God’s love is persistent but never pushy.
Author unknown
Jesus did not come to make God’s love possible, but to make God’s love visible.
Author unknow
God loves us not because of who we are, but because of who He is.
Author unknown
Incomprehensible and immutable is the love of God. For it was not after we were reconciled to him by the blood of his Son that he began to love us, but he loved us before the foundation of the world, that with his only begotten Son we too might be sons of God before we were any thing at all.
Augustine of Hippo
O Love ever burning and never extinguished caritas, my God, set me on fire.
Augustine of Hippo
God loves each one of us as if there were only one of us to love.
Augustine of Hippo
Christianity does not think of a man finally submitting to the power of God, it thinks of him as finally surrendering to the love of God. It is not that man’s will is crushed, but that man’s heart is broken.
William Barclay
Is it a small thing in your eyes to be loved by God – to be the son, the spouse, the love, the delight of the King of glory? Christian, believe this, and think about it: you will be eternally embraced in the arms of the love which was from everlasting, and will extend to everlasting – of the love which brought the Son of God’s love from heaven to earth, from earth to the cross, from the cross to the grave, from the grave to glory – that love which was weary, hungry, tempted, scorned, scourged, buffeted, spat upon, crucified, pierced – which fasted, prayed, taught, healed, wept, sweated, bled, died. That love will eternally embrace you.
Richard Baxter
The true original and prime motive of all gracious, bountiful expressions and effusions of love upon his elect, is the good pleasure of his will.
Robert Bolton
It is not after we were reconciled by the blood of his Son that God began to love us, but before the foundation of the world.
John Calvin
I am so washed in the tide of His measureless love that I seem to be below the surface of a sea and cannot touch or see or feel anything around me except its water.
Catherine of Genoa
Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind.
Catherine of Siena
Charity [love] means nothing else than to love God for himself above all creatures, and to love one’s fellow men for God’s sake as one loves oneself.
The Cloud of Unknowing
To stop God loving me would be to rob him of his Godhead, for God is love no less than he is truth.
Meister Eckhart
For however devoted you are to God, you may be sure that he is immeasurably more devoted to you.
Meister Eckhart
For the love of God is broader
Than the measures of man’s mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.
F.W. Faber
God’s love to His elect is not of yesterday; it does not begin with their love to Him, We love Him, because He first loved us. It was bore in His heart towards them long before they were delivered from the power of darkness, and translated into the kingdom of His dear Son. It does not commence in time, but bears date from eternity, and is the ground and foundation of the elect’s being called in time out of darkness into marvelous light: I have loved thee, says the Lord to the church, with an everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness have I have drawn thee. that is in effectual vocation. Many are the instances which might be given in proof of the antiquity of God’s love to His elect, and as it is antecedent to their being brought out of a state of nature. God’s choosing them in Christ before the foundation of the world, was an act of His love towards them, the fruit and effect of it; for election presupposes love. His making an everlasting covenant with His Son, ordered in all things, and sure, on account of those He chose in Him; His setting Him up as the Mediator of the covenant from everlasting; His donation of grace to them in Him before the world began; his putting their persons into His hands, and so making them His care and charge, are so many demonstrative proofs of His early love to them; for can it ever be imagined that there should be a choice of persons made, a covenant of grace so well formed and stored, a promise of life granted, and a security made, both of persons and grace, and yet no love all this while?
John Gill
God proved his love on the cross. When Christ hung, and bled, and died it was God saying to the world – I love you.
Billy Graham
Love refuseth nothing that love sends.
William Gurnall
For love dwells so deep in the womb of the Father that her power will unfold only to those who serve her with utter devotion.
Hadewijch
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew
back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow
slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lack’d any thing.
A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my
shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore
the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my
meat:
So I did sit and eat.
George Herbert
When a soul is purified by the love of God, illumined by wisdom, stabled by the might of God, then is the eye of the soul opened to view spiritual things, such as angels and heavenly beings. Then the purified soul is able to feel the touch and hear the voice of good angels. This feeling and hearing is not bodily but spiritual. For when the soul is lifted up and ravished out of sensuality, and away from all earthly things, then in great fervor and light (if our Lord wills) the soul may hear and feel heavenly sound, made by the presence of angels as they love God. This is the song of the angels.
Walter Hilton
We can love him because he loved us. It produces gratitude, delight, zeal, filial reverence, obedience. It elevates the soul above the creature. It purifies all the affections. This is its legitimate effect. Where God is understood, and where his love is really enjoyed, these effects follow.
Charles Hodge
The very fire of love which afterwards is united with the soul, glorifying it, is that which previously assails it by purging it, just as the fire that penetrates a log of wood is the same that first makes an assault on it, wounding it with its flame, drying it out, and stripping it of its unsightly qualities until it is so disposed that it can be penetrated and transformed into the fire.
John of the Cross
Painting and sculpture will lose their appeal for the soul turned to that divine love which opened its arms upon the cross to welcome us.
Michelangelo
Do you want to know what our Lord meant in all this? Learn it well: love was what he meant.
Who showed it to you? Love.
Why did he show it? Out of love.
So I was taught that love was what our Lord meant.
Julian of Norwich
In his love he clothes us, enfolds us and embraces us; that tender love completely surrounds us, never to leave us.
Julian of Norwich
Thus I was taught that love is our Lord’s meaning, and I saw most certainly in this and in all things that before God made us He loved us; this love was never diminished nor shall it ever be. And in His love He has accomplished in all His works; and in this love He has made all things profitable to us; and in this love our life is everlasting. In our creation, we had a beginning, but the love out of which He made us was always within Him. In this love we have our beginning and in all this we shall see God eternally.
Julian of Norwich
Some of us believe that God is almighty and may do everything, and that he is all-wisdom and can do everything; but that he is all-love and wishes to do everything – there we stop short. It is this ignorance, it seems to me, that hinders most of God’s lovers.
Julian of Norwich
Daughter, I have suffered many pains for thy love; therefore thou hast great cause to love Me right well, for I have bought thy love full dear.
Margery Kempe
God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that he may love and perfect them.
C.S. Lewis
God’s love never imposes itself. It has to be discovered and welcomed.
Brother Roger
All God can give us is his love; and this love becomes tangible – a burning of the soul – it sets us on fire to the point of forgetting ourselves.
Brother Roger
Human love is capable of great things. What then must be the depth and height and intensity of divine love. Know nothing, think of nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified.
Lord Shaftesbury, to his schoolboy son who had a terminal illness
He who counts the stars and calls them by their names, is in no danger of forgetting His own children. He knows your case as thoroughly as if you were the only creature He ever made, or the only saint He ever loved.
C.H. Spurgeon
Divine love can rake a dunghill, and find a diamond!
C.H. Spurgeon
Nothing binds me to my Lord like a strong belief in his changeless love.
C.H. Spurgeon
None of us ever desired anything more ardently than God desires to bring men to a knowledge of himself.
John Tauler
Love is the greatest thing that God can give us; for Himself is love; and it is the greatest thing we can give to God; for it will also give ourselves, and carry with it all that is ours.
Jeremy Taylor
Keep us little and unknown, prized and loved by God alone.
Charles Wesley
Love Divine, all loves excelling,
Joy of heaven, to earth come down,
Fix in us thy humble dwelling,
And thy faithful mercies crown.
Charles Wesley