³⁴ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.^{(A) 35} By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”^(B)

¹³ For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence,^[a] but through love become enslaved to one another.^{(A) 14} For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”^(B)

Imitating Christ’s Humility

2 If, then, there is any comfort in Christ, any consolation from love, any partnership in the Spirit, any tender affection and sympathy,^{(A) 2} make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.^{(B) 3} Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.^{(C) 4} Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others.^{(D) 5} Let the same mind be in you that was^[a] in Christ Jesus,^(E)

¹⁶ We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters.^{(A) 17} How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?^(B)

¹⁸ Little children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.^(C)

⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. ⁹ God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.^{(A) 10} In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.^{(B) 11} Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.^{(C) 12} No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.^(D)

¹³ By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. ¹⁴ And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. ¹⁵ God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God.^{(E) 16} So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.