Quotes About Love

Alcoholics Anonymous discovered long ago that the path toward cure involves more than a quick-fix solution based on increased knowledge. In fact, it involves a change that seems more theological than educational. Somehow the "victim" of addictive behavior must regain an underlying sense of human dignity and choice, a profound reawakening that usually requires much time, attention, and love.

When I ask, "Tell me the first word that comes to your mind when I say Christian," not one time has someone suggested the word love. Yet without question that is the proper biblical answer.

what about grace? How rare to find a church competing to "out-grace" its rivals.

In the study of scientific atheism, there was the idea that religion divides people. Now we see the opposite: love for God can only unite.

God rejoices. Not because the problems of the world have been solved, not because all human pain and suffering have come to an end, nor because thousands of people have been converted and are now praising him for his goodness. No, God rejoices because one of his children who was lost has been found.

Jesus was able to love men because he loved them right through the layer of mud.

No matter how capable we are, we need God every day, living in us and acting through us. We need his courage and his hope, his love and his companionship. We need his salvation. We can't live without God.

Jesus requires—no, demands—a response of forgiveness.

We're all bastards but God loves us anyway.

Nothing else — no learned "how-to" program, no expensive gift — is worth more to the sufferer than the comfortable assurance of your physical presence.

we in the body of Christ are called to show love when God seems not to.

To the question Do I matter? Jesus is indeed the answer.

Not even God, with all his power, can force a human being to love.

The One who had the right to destroy the world—and had nearly done so once in Noah's day—chose instead to love the world, at any cost.

What greater gift could Christians give to the world than the forming of a culture that upholds grace and forgiveness?

Paul harped on grace because he knew what could happen if we believe we have earned God's love. In the dark times, if perhaps we badly fail God, or if for no good reason we simply feel unloved, we would stand on shaky ground. We would fear that God might stop loving us when he discovers the real truth about us. Paul—"the chief of sinners" he once called himself—knew beyond doubt that God loves people because of who God is, not because of who we are.

Does the Christian emphasis on love, grace, and forgiveness have any relevance outside quarreling families or church encounter groups? In a world where force matters most, a lofty ideal like forgiveness may seem as insubstantial as vapor.

From Jesus I learn that, whatever activism I get involved in, it must not drive out love and humility, or otherwise I betray the kingdom of heaven. The Jesus I Never Knew (244 – 45)

Like grace, forgiveness has about it the maddening quality of being undeserved, unmerited, unfair.

Obviously, Jesus did not give the parables to teach us how to live. He gave them, I believe, to correct our notions about who God is and who God loves.

We Christians are called to use the "weapons of grace," which means treating even our opponents with love and respect.

Why are we here? We, all of us, are here because of the Creator's love, who seeks both our flourishing and our response of love and gratitude. "Find out what pleases the Lord," Paul told the Ephesians. We are here to please God. It brings God pleasure to see us thrive, and we thrive by living as God intended.

Christianity has a principle, "Hate the sin but love the sinner," which is more easily preached than practiced. If Christians could simply recover that practice, modeled so exquisitely by Jesus, we would go a long way toward fulfilling our calling as dispensers of God's grace.

why God asks us to forgive: because that is what God is like.