Love serves as the central motivation in a life aligned with God, driving actions that reflect His nature. Without the love of God, eternal life remains out of reach, for knowing God is to live with Him, to walk with Him, and to be in constant communion with Him. This love is not fleeting; it is permanent, enduring all things, bearing all things, and never failing, as it forms a unity with faith and hope, yet stands as the greatest among them. Love must be the dominating influence in a person's life, pursued continually, for it is never fully attained in one moment but grows through persistent seeking after God. God's love motivates Him to share His life and quality of existence with others, compelling Him to create, provide, and care for His creation. When God created, it was an act of love, driven by the desire to share rather than to remain in isolation. His provision for both the just and unjust, His maintenance of creation, and His redemption of mankind all stem from this love, which also grants free moral agency and the hope of eternal life as evidence of His caring nature. Unlike the destructive self-centeredness of satan, God's actions are always for the good of those He acts toward, aiming to gather all things to Himself to share what He is. Love, as exemplified by God and His Son, involves a cost, often requiring sacrifice for the benefit of others, even those not naturally loved. This costliness is essential, seen in acts that mirror God's own, where His children manifest His nature through deeds that benefit others, even at personal expense. Jesus Christ's entire life serves as the standard for such acts of love, demonstrating a willingness to pay the price, humbling Himself for mankind's sake in every action He took. Within the fellowship of God's people, love is the primary outlet God intends, strengthening the body to bear a powerful witness to the world. This love, inseparable from loving God, binds the community together, ensuring that rivalry and carnality do not fracture the group, thus enabling the fulfillment of God's commission. Love is an action, proven by obedience to God's commandments, which define its direction and parameters, ensuring that acts are not swayed by misleading feelings but are guided by truth and a reasoned will to follow God's way, even when the cost feels great. The love of God begins with action, not mere feeling, transforming into true love only when the act is performed, whether it be a simple prayer or a more costly deed to alleviate another's suffering. As this love is practiced, it grows and is perfected, becoming a skill honed for the benefit of others, blessing both the giver and receiver. Originating in God, manifested in His Son, and perfected in His people, this love completes a cycle, flowing from God to His people, out to others, and back to Him, maturing as it is used and ensuring a continued relationship with Him through abiding in love for one another.

The world is in desperate need of love, a force that transcends mere feelings or preferences and stands as the supreme motivation for all actions. Love never fails and will always be of use, unlike other gifts such as prophecy, tongues, or knowledge, which may end or become obsolete. There will never be a time when love is not needed, for it is the driving force behind everything we do, holding the power to prevent corruption that can arise from other gifts when they are not used with love. Love is the sum of all duty, a debt we owe to every person every day, which can never truly be paid in full. Regardless of how much love we extend one day, the debt renews the next, compelling us to help wherever there is need. This continuous obligation underscores that love must be the motivation for all our actions, providing a deeper incentive than law alone, which often fails to inspire obedience without the threat of coercion. Love, however, can motivate us to uphold the law naturally, ensuring that we do no harm to our neighbor and fulfill all responsibilities toward God and man. As the bond of perfection, love unifies and holds groups together, countering the natural tendency of division. It surpasses worldly virtues that, without spiritual control, can lead to self-seeking and discord. Love, encompassing tender mercies, kindness, humbleness, meekness, longsuffering, and forgiveness, enables community living and resists carnal urges, proving its strength and necessity as the ultimate cohesive force. Love is of God, its true source, and is not naturally part of human nature. God is love, and every activity of His—whether creating, ruling, or judging—is an expression of this nature. To be in His image, we must love as He loves, a transformation made possible through knowing Him and experiencing His love. God initiates and sustains this relationship with His love, calling us, granting repentance, forgiving us, and giving His Spirit, enabling us to reciprocate love back to Him and to others, thus perfecting it within us. God's love is revealed through His actions, such as sending His Son, creating the world, and providing for all, even His enemies. His nature to share and give, driven by love, contrasts sharply with the self-centered, destructive tendencies of human nature. Love compels action, not just feeling, and is evidenced in God's providence, free moral agency, redemption, and the hope of eternal life, all of which demonstrate His care and involvement in our lives. Finally, as Jesus Christ commands, we are to love one another as He has loved us, making this love the hallmark by which all will know we are His disciples. Love is not merely a sentiment but an action, manifested in what we do for each other and the world, reflecting God's nature and serving as our witness to His presence in our lives.

Love serves as a profound motivator in the life of a believer, surpassing all other virtues and gifts from God. In I Corinthians 13, the apostle Paul emphasizes love's supreme importance, highlighting its enduring nature over temporary gifts like prophecy, tongues, and knowledge. Love never becomes obsolete and is essential in every situation, enabling us to use God's gifts without corruption. Without love, even divine knowledge can lead to pride and destruction, whereas love edifies and builds up. Paul further illustrates in Romans 13:8-10 that love is the epitome of virtues, acting as the bond that holds communities together. It restrains individuals from divisive traits, fostering unity through self-constraint and expressions of love. This quality is not weak but requires strength to resist natural urges and follow God's commands. In I John 4:7-12, love is shown as integral to God's nature, linking love for Him with love for others. True love for God necessitates love for one's brother, as hatred towards a brother reveals a lack of God's love. Obedience to God's commandments, as stated in I John 5:3, is the proof of love, reflecting His nature in every command given. Jesus Himself teaches in John 14:15 and John 15:10 that keeping His commandments is the expression of love, ensuring one abides in His love. Love, in the biblical sense, is an action, not merely a feeling. It transforms from mere duty to joyous devotion through experience and the guidance of God's Holy Spirit, which empowers believers to emulate Christ's sacrificial love, as seen in Ephesians 5:25. This love, the fruit of the Spirit, guides us into truth and is the supreme virtue of the Creator, motivating obedience to His commands and principles.

Love motivates the works that Christ requires. If love for Christ is present, the right works follow, including overcoming human nature, the world, and Satan, as well as keeping the commandments in their intent. When love for Christ diminishes, the frequency of right works lessens, and if love is lost entirely, the works cease. Love for Christ functions as the mainspring of good works because it supplies the motivation for intimate communion, joy, and loyalty. The same love that Jesus requires produces the service of feeding His sheep and laying down one's life for the brethren. This love combines agape, which involves deliberate judgment and the setting of the will even without affectionate feeling, and phileo, which expresses family affection. Both forms appear in the questions Jesus posed to Peter. Love for Christ arises as a response to His prior love. God takes the initiative while humans remain strangers, reveals Himself through a calling, and demonstrates love by sending His Son. Recognition of this love creates a sense of obligation and appreciation that grows into devotion. Devotion is a deep and ardent affection that includes attentiveness, dedication, and commitment. When devotion wanes, the works that flow from it gradually diminish.

Jesus was motivated by love in laying down His life. He was driven in all of this by His love for His creation with His Father. The emphasis is on His great love. This is an immensely personal loving act on His part. It was an act of love beyond all others. Jesus Christ is our Passover because of His and His Father's love. By this we know love because He laid down His life for us and we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. He was moved by His great attribute of love His own self-generated love. Though we are what we are God is love and His great heart of love despite all that is in us unmoved by anything except itself is working a great creative work in us. Our loving Jesus Christ committed no sin and therefore the standard of righteousness we must reach is to love one another.

A proper sense of obligation produces a valuable Christian virtue, humility. The woman perceived a greatness in Jesus that motivated her to so abase herself. Her deed expresses her love and gratitude springing from recognition of His greatness compared to her unworthiness. Jesus draws a direct correlation between acts of love directed toward Him and the recognition of the enormity of the forgiven sins, as contrasted to the payment made to remove our indebtedness. We are obligated to love Him, and if the recognition is strong, we are virtually driven to do so due to grasping the enormity of what we have been saved from in contrast to the tremendous value of what we are now free to pursue. Jesus adds that the person who knows he has been forgiven for many egregious sins feels more strongly obliged to the One who paid his debt than one who thinks his indebtedness and forgiveness are of little consequence. The one forgiven of much feels obligated to live the way his Redeemer tells him he should. Jesus is telling us that those most conscious of forgiveness will be the most fruitful of love. The depth, fervor, and growth of our Christianity depend perhaps more largely on the clarity of our consciousness of this contrast than on anything else. A person can be very gifted yet not grow as much as one less gifted but more aware of his obligation to Christ. The latter will simply be more motivated. Love is the motivating power that frees and enables us to serve and sacrifice with largeness of heart and generosity of spirit. Of what level was the love of the fallen woman who washed Christ's feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair, kissed them with her lips, and anointed them with costly oil? Her conduct was an exquisite expression of a heart freed to give its all. Christ's death is the supreme example of unselfish and sacrificial service on behalf of the undeserving guilty. It is the highest, most brilliant example of love. Out of beneficent goodwill, the Father and the Son freely gave of themselves for the sake of our well-being. When we can properly judge ourselves in terms of what we are in relation to Their freely given sacrifices, it frees us not only to conduct life as They do but eventually to receive everlasting life too. God does not want us to let this sacrifice get very far from our minds. He wants to remind us that it represents the measure of His love for us as well as of our worth to Him, that we always bear a right sense of obligation, not as an overbearing burden but a wondering awe that He would pay so much for something so utterly defiled. This act becomes the foundation of all loving relationships possible to us with God and His Family because it provides us reason to hope that our lives are not spent in vain. In addition, it motivates us to do what we failed to do that put us into debt in the first place to love. To eat the bread or drink the wine in an unworthy manner is to treat His sacrifice with casual, disrespectful ingratitude. The person who does this is not showing much love in his life because he is barely aware of his sins and the enormous cost of forgiveness. Such a person is not really free to love because he is still wrapped up in himself. Passover is intended by God to teach us these things so that we begin each year by being turned from where we have deviated in our understanding and application and jump started once again in the right direction with the right attitude. Life revolves around our Father in heaven, His Messiah and our Creator and Savior, and Their purpose.

Love is the key word in the definition of patriotism as the love of one's country. Love within any relationship has a strong influence toward influencing those who have it to act in the well being of the object of his or her love or it is not really love. Love is part of the major element that is in patriotism. Jesus Christ was the most patriotic individual who ever lived because He gave His life for the country and more besides and He did it willingly. No one was more loving than Jesus Christ and He acted in the behalf of those He loved. Patriotism must be part of a Christian's normal operating pattern and it must be patriotic to the Kingdom of God. If one is going to follow Jesus Christ then patriotism having the element of love has to be part of one's work as a human being and it should be a labor of love expended on other people. The love function is a reality in God's way of life. By a correct definition love of the Fatherland tends to influence the patriotic act. Love was what stirred the person to do what he did. Love moves a family to be unified together and to do acts of love within it. Patriotism keeps expanding out until in some people's minds it is love for the nation that they need to expend to hold their nation together. Patriotism because of the element of love involved as a powerfully persuasive proclivity inspires its possessor to motivate them at very high risk to themselves to dedicate their possessions including their very lives or their time or part of their body or to make highly sacrificial risk of their possessions even to the point of the giving of one's life for the overall well being of another single person perhaps a family perhaps a village or perhaps the citizenry of the entire nation. The church is a tool an instrument of the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of God is a nation being formed and this tool is being captained by Jesus Christ who is the King. Patriotic acts often take place in warfare and the church has demons making war against it in order to kill members off spiritually. All the parts are there for one to be patriotic because one already has the number one tool needed which is called love. A form of love drives patriotic acts. Love drives the engine in one always in operating within God's Family not just toward the people in the Family but also the people in the world. Jesus Christ did what He did driven by His love for His creation and one is supposed to go in the same direction as Jesus Christ. Love should be driving one too in acts toward not just people in the church but people in the world as well. The main gift that God gives is love. God gives these gifts to this very day and therefore there is sufficient love to follow Christ's commands. One must sacrifice oneself because one has enough love to do the patriotic thing. The Holy Spirit has given the basis of Christ's promise and it is in one. Christ's promises are not empty. A new commandment is given that one love one another as Jesus Christ has loved one. The level of love one is expected to work toward is the level Jesus Christ expended toward one. Jesus Christ went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed in their lives. By means of the Spirit of God He went about doing good. God wants good works. This is the commandment that one love one another as Jesus Christ has loved one. Greater love has no one than this than to lay down his life as a patriot does. He lays down his life in service and does good thereby. This teaching by Jesus Christ illustrates a level of caring concern for each person not just the people in the church but especially within the Family of God. One has to love to the level that Jesus Christ did. The operational level between the Father and the Son is the very same level that He expects one to strive for in relationships within the Family team. A good shepherd relationship with each sheep was individualistic and that is Christ's relationship with one. The operational level between one and Jesus

Love serves as the motivation and the foundation behind all that is done because God is love. When love accompanies the gifts that are given those gifts enhance service to the church and draw members closer together. Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself and is not puffed up. Love does not behave rudely. Love does not seek its own. Love is not provoked. Love thinks no evil. Love does not rejoice in iniquity but rejoices in truth. Love bears all things believes all things hopes all things and endures all things. Love never fails. Brotherly love is not merely a warm passive feeling but a deliberate act rooted in obedience to God's commandments. This love transforms relationships within the spiritual family and reflects God Himself. Praying for the brethren constitutes brotherly love in action. Such prayer fosters humility unites the body and invites God's power. Fervent love covers a multitude of sins and proves forgiving. Praying for others pushes past selfishness bears one another's burdens and participates in the spiritual unity of the body of Christ. This love mirrors the heart of Jesus Christ who interceded even for those who tortured and mocked Him.