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Love is a key attribute of God in Christianity. 1 John 4:8 and 16 state that "God is love; and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him." [13] [14] John 3:16 states: "God so loved the world..." [15] In the New Testament, God's love for humanity or the world is expressed in Greek as agape (ἀγάπη).
Love can have other meanings in English, but as used in the New Testament it almost always refers to the virtue of caritas. Many times when charity is mentioned in English-language bibles, it refers to "love of God", which is a spiritual love that is extended from God to man and then reflected by man, who is made in the image of God, back to God.
(The Good News Bible, as a footnote, gave this as: "At every Passover Festival Pilate had to set free one prisoner for them.") Reasons: The same verse or a very similar verse appears (and is preserved) as Matthew 27:15 and as Mark 15:6. This verse is suspected of having been assimilated into Luke at a very early date.
When asked what was the great commandment, "Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these. ' "
These are found in Matthew 23 verses 13–16, 23, 25, 27 and 29. Only six are given in Luke, whose version is thus known as the six woes: three are directed to the Pharisees and three to the scribes. [2] The woes mostly criticise the Pharisees for hypocrisy and perjury. They illustrate the differences between inner and outer moral states. [1]
With regard to God, there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man. Between God and us there is an immeasurable inequality, for we have received everything from him, our Creator. The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace.
At a deeper level, we are all the eleventh-hour workers; to change the metaphor, we are all honored guests of God in the kingdom. It is not really necessary to decide who the eleventh-hour workers are. The point of the parable—both at the level of Jesus and the level of Matthew's Gospel—is that God saves by grace, not by our worthiness.