“God Is Love”
1 John 4:7–11
7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said:
“Feeding the hungry, healing the sick, rebuking hypocrisy, pleading for faith—this was Christ showing us the way of the Father, He who is ‘merciful and gracious, slow to anger, long-suffering and full of goodness’ [Lectures on Faith, 42]. In His life and especially in His death, Christ was declaring, ‘This is God’s compassion I am showing you, as well as that of my own.’ . . .
“. . . And in the spirit of the holy apostleship, I say as did one who held this office anciently: ‘Herein [then] is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another’ [1 John 4:10–11]—and to love Him forever, I pray.”
(“The Grandeur of God,” Ensign or Liahona, Nov. 2003, 72–73.)
