We love because He first loved us.
Parallel translations
- WEB We love him, because he first loved us.
- KJV We love him, because he first loved us.
- NKJV We love Him because He first loved us.
- NASB We love, because He first loved us.
- NLT We love each other because he loved us first.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
We love because God first loved us. All Christian love is a response to God's prior, initiating grace.
Overview
This brief verse summarizes the chapter's logic: our capacity to love God and others originates entirely in his having loved us first in Christ. Divine love is the cause and pattern of all genuine human love. The grammar emphasizes God's initiative, guarding against any notion that we earn his favor; we are simply responding to grace already given.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 8
- 1 Jn 4:10And love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
- John 3:16For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
- John 15:16You did not choose Me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will remain—so that whatever you ask the Father in My name, He will give you.
- Titus 3:3–5For at one time we too were foolish, disobedient, misled, and enslaved to all sorts of desires and pleasures—living in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.
- 2 Cor 5:14–15For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that One died for all, therefore all died.
- Luke 7:47Therefore I tell you, because her many sins have been forgiven, she has loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.”
- Eph 2:3–5All of us also lived among them at one time, fulfilling the cravings of our flesh and indulging its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature children of wrath.
- Gal 5:22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
Themes, concepts, people & topics
Resources, by level
Commentaries & study tools
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
Jesus is the Word of life made manifest, the propitiation for our sins, the Son in whom is eternal life — 'that you may know that you have eternal life.'
How 1 John 4:19 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Greek word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.