THE LOVE OF GOD

The love of God is revealed in that the God Family created mankind in Their image and Their likeness and gave them dominion over the entire earth, which They had bountifully created for them. God the Father's profound spiritual love is fully manifested to mankind through His overall plan as revealed in the New Testament in the life, death and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ. In His supreme love, God the Father offers every human being the opportunity to be born into the God Family through the resurrection from death, becoming a literal child of God the Father, with the same form and spiritual composition as God the Father and God the Son. God's love and reconciliation is now extended to those He is calling, and will be extended to all mankind according to His plan. God the Father's love is manifested toward those He has called now through His grace and mercy which He daily bestows through Jesus Christ, His continuing intervention and blessings, and the care with which He chastens them.

We love God because He first loved us. Our love for God is a result of God the Father's calling through the power of the Holy Spirit, which opens our minds to understand the greatness and goodness of God's love and the sinfulness of our own nature. God the Father leads us to genuine repentance and acceptance of the sacrifice and blood of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins. We manifest our repentance and our faith in Jesus Christ by being baptized in water, symbolically burying the old self into the death of Jesus Christ and rising to walk in newness of life. Through the laying on of hands, the gift of the Holy Spirit is given to us as a spiritual begettal from God the Father, imparting the love of God into our hearts. The capacity to truly love God comes through His Spirit within us. We are individually to love God the Father and Jesus Christ with all our heart, all our mind, all our soul, all our strength and all our being. Jesus said that anyone who does not love God more than all others is not worthy of Him. Our love and our complete devotion to God the Father and Jesus Christ are manifested by our willingness to live by every word of God and to keep all His commandments.

Christians are to have a special love for one another because God the Father and Jesus Christ have individually called and personally love each one. As the begotten children of God, with the Holy Spirit shed abroad into their hearts, all true Christians share a special fellowship with God the Father and Jesus Christ. This fellowship is the foundation for the new commandment which Jesus gave to His disciples to "love one another as I have loved you." This true Christian love is a sign by which all people can recognize the followers of Jesus Christ.