Anyone can say, “I love God,” yet have hatred toward another believer. This makes him a phony, because if you don’t love a brother or sister, whom you can see, how can you truly love God, whom you can’t see?
If anyone sees a fellow believer in need and has the means to help him, yet shows no pity and closes his heart against him, how is it even possible that God’s love lives in him?
Don’t set the affections of your heart on this world or in loving the things of the world. The love of the Father and the love of the world are incompatible.
And I will strike down her followers with a deadly plague. Then all the congregations will realize that I am the one who thoroughly searches the most secret thought and the innermost being. I will give to each one what their works deserve.
Then Jesus asked him again, “Peter, son of Jonah, do you have great affection for me?” Peter was saddened by being asked the third time and said, “My Lord, you know everything. You know that I burn with love for you!” Jesus replied, “Then feed my lambs!
But in reality, you’ve never embraced him as your own. I know him, and I would be a liar, like yourselves, if I told you anything less than that. I have fully embraced him, and I treasure his every word.
If you really knew God, you would listen, receive, and respond with faith to his words. But since you don’t listen and respond to what he says, it proves you don’t belong to him and you have no room for him in your hearts.”
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.
so Jesus addressed them directly. “You always want to look spiritual in the eyes of others, but you have forgotten the eyes of God, which see what is inside you. The very things that you approve of and applaud are the things God despises.
I have come to represent my Father, yet you refuse to embrace me in faith. If someone comes in their own name and with their own agenda, you readily accept him.