Quotes About 1 John

The apostle John wrote, "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!" (1 John 3:1 NIV). The word for "lavished" in the original language is in the perfect tense indicating that God's love is permanently fixed upon His children.

In his commentary on 1 John, however, Calvin saw more clearly than Packer did exactly where the issue must be joined. The issue is not, as Packer caricatured it, whether the proposition God is love expresses the complete truth about God. The issue is whether it expresses a truth about the very nature or essence of God—whether, in other words, it ascribes (what a philosopher would call) an essential property to the very being of God.