{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/105/1050477.htm","path":"chr/ecf/105/1050477.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/105/1050477.htm","text":"Chapter 22 [XXI.]\u2014Love is a Good Will.\nThat love, however, which is a virtue, comes to us from God, not from ourselves, according to the testimony of Scripture, which says: \u201cLove is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God: for God is love.\u201d 1832 It is on the principle of this love that one can best understand the passage, \u201cWhosoever is born of God doth not commit sin;\u201d 1833 as well as the sentence, \u201cAnd he cannot sin.\u201d 1834 Because the love according to which we are born of God \u201cdoth not behave itself unseemly,\u201d and \u201cthinketh no evil.\u201d 1835 Therefore, whenever a man sins, it is not according to love: but it is according to cupidity that he commits sin; and following such a disposition, he is not born of God. Because, as it has been already stated, \u201cthe capacity\u201d of which we speak is capable of either root. When, therefore, the Scripture says, \u201cLove is of God,\u201d or still more pointedly, \u201cGod is love;\u201d when the Apostle John so very emphatically exclaims, \u201cBehold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called, and be, the sons of God!\u201d 1836 with what face can this writer, on hearing that \u201cGod is love,\u201d persist in maintaining his opinion, that we bare of God one only of those three, 1837 namely, \u201cthe capacity;\u201d whereas it is of ourselves that we have \u201cthe good will\u201d and \u201cthe good action?\u201d As if, indeed, this good will were a different thing from that love which the Scripture so loudly proclaims to have come to us from God, and to have been given to us by the Father, that we might become His children.\n1 John 4:7, 8.\n224:1833 224:1834 224:1835 224:1836 224:1837","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. V: A Treatise on the...","type":"page"}