Love compliments and balances everything else. It is the beautiful, softening principle. It keeps our firmness from becoming hardness and our strength from becoming domineering. It keeps our maturity gentle and considerate. It keeps our right doctrine from becoming obstinate dogmatism and our right living from becoming smug self-righteousness.
1 Corinthians, Moody, 1984, p. 476.
Love is the only fire that is hot enough to melt the iron obstinacy of a creature’s will.
Deep in our timid hearts is a desire to be loved mildly, nothing more. That way, we retain control, we set the terms, we avoid risk. Our loving God, in His ferocious intensity, will have none of it. He defines the meaning of our lives, and we are saved from our anemic loves and brought by degrees into intense loves, like His own.
Blog Post: How Edwards Defined Love, January 19, 2008, Used by Permission.
Does “love win? Absolutely! A redemptive plan was set in motion immediately after man fell into sin – love wins. When all hope was lost, Jesus rose from the dead – love wins. God will complete the good work He began in His people – love wins! When the Lord returns, every knee will bow to King Jesus – love wins. We know that despite the evil in this world, true goodness will prevail, because God will always prevail – love wins! Love wins, because God who is the definition of love always wins!
Sermon, True Love Discriminates, Philippians 1:7-11 – Part 2, September 11, 2022.
Love is power. The Holy Spirit, for the most part, works by our affection. Love men to Christ; faith accomplishes much, but love is the actual instrument by which faith works out its desires in the Name of the Lord of love. And I am sure that, until we heartily love our work, and love the people with whom we are working, we shall not accomplish much.
An All-Around Ministry.
Love can grow only if it is rooted in the soil of true obedience.
Leading With Love, Lewis and Roth, 2006, p. 184, Used by Permission.
The deepest sense of guilt comes not when you sin against law but when you sin against love.
When love is felt, the message is heard.
Quoted by Curtis C. Thomas, Practical Wisdom for Pastors, Crossway Books, 2001, p. 65.
