We love him, because he first loved us.
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1 John 4:17-21
Tyndale Open Study Notes (CC BY-SA 4.0).
4:19 God loved us first, while we were sinners, not only after we gave sin up (Rom 8:5-11). God started the process; when he loved us he enabled us to respond to him in love and to extend that love to others.
Other Bible passages linked to this one, most cited first.
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.
For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;
For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.
Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.
Authorship: the book itself or Christian tradition. Approximate dates, as in Carson and Moo, An Introduction to the New Testament, and Longman and Dillard, An Introduction to the Old Testament.