Love

My dear people,
let us love one another
since love comes from God
and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.
Anyone who fails to love can never have known God,
because God is love.
God’s love for us was revealed
when God sent into the world his only Son
so that we could have life through him;
this is the love I mean:
not our love for God,
but God’s love for us when he sent his Son
to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away.
My dear people,
since God has loved us so much,
we too should love one another.
No one has ever seen God;
but as long as we love one another
God will live in us
and his love will be complete in us.
We can know that we are living in him
and he is living in us
because he lets us share his Spirit.
We ourselves saw and we testify
that the Father sent his Son
as savior of the world.
If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God,
God lives in him, and he in God.
We ourselves have known and put our faith in
God’s love toward ourselves.
God is love
and anyone who lives in love lives in God,
and God lives in him.
Love will come to its perfection in us
when we can face the day of Judgment without fear;
because even in this world
we have become as he is.
In love there can be no fear,
but fear is driven out by perfect love:
because to fear is to expect punishment,
and anyone who is afraid is still imperfect in love.
We are to love, then,
because he loved us first.
Anyone who says, “I love God,”
and hates his brother,
is a liar,
since a man who does not love the brother that he can see
cannot love God, whom he has never seen.
So this is the commandment that he has given us,
that anyone who loves God must also love his brother.

Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ
has been begotten by God;
and whoever loves the Father that begot him
loves the child whom he begets.
We can be sure that we love God’s children
if we love God himself and do what he has commanded us;
this is what loving God is –
keeping his commandments;
and his commandments are not difficult,
because anyone who has been begotten by God
has already overcome the world;
this is the victory over the world –
our faith.

1 John 4:7-21, 5:1-4

The Day of the Lord; the prophets and the apostles

My friends, this is my second letter to you, and in both of them I have tried
to awaken a true understanding in you by giving you a reminder: recalling to
you what was said in the past by the holy prophets and the commandments of the
Lord and savior which you were given by the apostles.
We must be careful to remember that during the last days there are bound
to be people who will be scornful, the kind who always please themselves in what
they do, and they will make fun of the promise and ask, “Well, where is this
coming? Everything goes on as it has since the Fathers died, as it has since it
began at the creation.” They are choosing to forget that there were heavens
at the beginning, and that the earth was formed by the word of God out of
water and between the waters, so that the world of that time was destroyed by
being flooded by water. But by the same word, the present sky and earth are
destined for fire, and are only being reserved until Judgment day so that all
sinners may be destroyed.
But there is one thing, my friends, that you must never forget: that with the
Lord, “a day” can mean a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day.
The Lord is not being slow to carry out his promises, as anybody else might be
called slow; but he is being patient with you all, wanting nobody to be lost and
everybody to be brought to change his ways. The Day of the Lord will come
like a thief, and then with a roar the sky will vanish, the elements will catch fire
and fall apart, the earth and all that it contains will be burned up.

2 Peter 3:1-10

A warning for the rich and self-confident

Here is the answer for those of you who talk like this: “Today or tomorrow,
we are off to this or that town; we are going to spend a year there, trading, and
make some money.” You never know what will happen tomorrow: you are no
more than a mist that is here for a little while and then disappears. The most
you should ever say is: “If it is the Lord’s will, we shall still be alive to do this or
that.” But how proud and sure of yourselves you are now! Pride of this kind is
always wicked. Everyone who knows what is the right thing to do and doesn’t
do it commits a sin.
Now an answer for the rich. Start crying, weep for the miseries that are
coming to you. Your wealth is all rotting, your clothes are all eaten up by
moths. All your gold and your silver are corroding away, and the same corrosion
will be your own sentence, and eat into your body. It was a burning fire that you
stored up as your treasure for the last days. Laborers mowed your fields, and
you cheated them – listen to the wages that you kept back, calling out; realize
that the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. On earth
you have had a life of comfort and luxury; in the time of slaughter you went
on eating to your heart’s content. It was you who condemned the innocent and
killed them; they offered you no resistance.

James 4:13-17, 5:1-6