For here is the way God loved the world—he gave his only, unique Son as a gift. So now everyone who believes in him will never perish but experience everlasting life.
For God has proved his love by giving us his greatest treasure, the gift of his Son. And since God freely offered him up as the sacrifice for us all, he certainly won’t withhold from us anything else he has to give.
This is love: He loved us long before we loved him. It was his love, not ours. He proved it by sending his Son to be the pleasing sacrificial offering to take away our sins.
This is how we have discovered love’s reality: Jesus sacrificed his life for us. Because of this great love, we should be willing to lay down our lives for one another.
A thief has only one thing in mind—he wants to steal, slaughter, and destroy. But I have come to give you everything in abundance, more than you expect —life in its fullness until you overflow!
I alone am this living Bread that has come to you from heaven. Eat this Bread and you will live forever. The living Bread I give you is my body, which I will offer as a sacrifice so that all may live.”
So now there is no longer any condemnation for those who believe in him, but the unbeliever already lives under condemnation because they do not believe in the name of the only Son of God.
For God has never said to any angel what he said to Jesus: “You are my favored Son, today I have fathered you.” And this: “I will be the Father to him, and he will be the Son to me.”
Jesus said, “Then if God were really your father, you would love me, for I’ve come from his presence. I didn’t come here on my own, but God sent me to you.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and he has anointed me to be hope for the poor, healing for the brokenhearted, and new eyes for the blind, and to preach to prisoners, ‘You are set free!’ I have come to share the message of Jubilee, for the time of God’s great acceptance has begun.”
The owner had only one person left to send—his only son, whom he dearly loved. So he sent him to them, saying, ‘Surely they will restrain themselves and respect my son.’
We have come into an intimate experience with God’s love, and we trust in the love he has for us. God is love! Those who are living in love are living in God, and God lives through them.
Jesus explained, “I am the Way, I am the Truth, and I am the Life. No one comes next to the Father except through union with me. To know me is to know my Father too.
Therefore, the honor that belongs to the Father he will now share with his Son. So if you refuse to honor the Son, you are refusing to honor the Father who sent him.
“I will reveal the eternal purpose of God. For he has decreed over me, ‘You are my favored Son. And as your Father I have crowned you as my King Eternal. Today I became your Father.
God said, “Please take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom I know you dearly love, and go to the land of Moriah. Offer him up to me as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I will show you.”
I’ve written this letter to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you will be assured and know without a doubt that you have eternal life.