Quotes & Sayings About Love In The Old Testament

And it seems to me a blasphemy to say that the Holy Spirit is Love. In the Old Testament it is an Eagle: in the New it is a Dove.Christ insists on the Dove: but in His supreme moments He includes the Eagle. — D.H. Lawrence

The Old Testament tells us to love our neighbors, the New Testament to love our enemies. The moral rationale seems to be: Love your neighbors and enemies; that way you won't kill them. But frankly, I don't love my neighbors, to say nothing of my enemies. Better, then, is the following idea: Don't kill your neighbors or enemies, even if you don't love them. . . . What really has expanded is not so much a circle of empathy as a circle of rights - a commitment that other living things, no matter how distant or dissimilar, be safe from harm and exploitation. And — Paul Bloom

My soul always reverts to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. There at least one feels that it's human beings talking. There people hate, people love, people murder their enemy and curse his descendants through all generations, there people sin. — Soren Kierkegaard

Isn't that a little Old Testament for a nun?" "Ex-nun. And let me tell you, that serenity crap from The Sound of Music? Bullshit. Inside the cloister, the sisters are just as petty as people on the outside. There are some you love and some you hate. I did my share of spitting in the Holy Water font before another nun used it. It was totally worth the twenty rosaries I said for penance. — Jodi Picoult

Be sweet to one another. Stay in this beauty and brawl against the world's power of pulling apart. Recall Old Testament terminology: covenant, sacred, sacrifice. And mind always that Adam wasn't a schlep fruitily duped by Eve. He turned his back on God because he knew that a paradise without her was no paradise at all. — William Giraldi

It seems to me impossible for a civilized man to love or worship, or respect the God of the Old Testament. A really civilized man, a really civilized woman, must hold such a God in abhorrence and contempt. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Let other complain that the age is wicked; my complaint is that it is paltry; for it lacks passion. Men's thoughts are thin and flimsy like lace, they are themselves pitiable like the lacemakers. The thoughts of their hearts are too paltry to be sinful. For a worm it might be regarded as a sin to harbor such thoughts, but not for a being made in the image of God. Their lusts are dull and sluggish, their passions sleepy ... This is the reason my soul always turns back to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. I feel that those who speak there are at least human beings: they hate, they love, they murder their enemies, and curse their descendants throughout all generations, they sin. — Soren Kierkegaard

The Old Testament gave us the law; the New Testament reveals the love upon which the law rests. — William Jennings Bryan

The rock, when one came to think of it, was the utmost expression of human need; even mere feeling yearned for it; it was the highest comparison of loyalty in love and friendship. Christ Himself had used that comparison for the disciple to whom He gave the keys of His Church. And the Hebrews of the Old Testament, always being carried captive into foreign lands,
their rock was an idea of God, the only thing their conquerors could not take from them. — Willa Cather

There is a tension in the Bible between justice and mercy, between the Old Testament and the New Testament. And the New Testament says you can never be good enough: goodness is the thing, and you can never live up to it. The main message of Jesus, I believed, is that mercy trumps justice every time. — Paul Kalanithi

The call to "take the land" ... is not a call to a new political, cultural or geographical dominance. It is Kingdom of God territory. It is the will of the Eternal God being done on earth, as it is in heaven. — Ken Baker

When we think of God, we are apt to think of Him in human form. In the Epiphanies of the Old Testament God revealed Himself to Joshua and others in human form. He puts Himself within the compass of our highest conception, in order that He may make Himself real to us in His love and sympathy and power. — A.C. Dixon

The Book of Numbers relates that when the people murmured rebelliously against God, they were punished with a plague of fiery serpents, so that many lost their lives. When they repented, Moses was told by God to make a brazen serpent and set it up for a sign, and all those bitten by the serpents who looked upon that sign would be healed. Our Blessed Lord was now declaring that He was to be lifted up, as the serpent had been lifted up. As the brass serpent had the appearance of a serpent and yet lacked its venom, so too, when He would be lifted up upon the bars of the Cross, He would have the appearance of a sinner and yet be without sin. As all who looked upon the brass serpent had been healed of the bite of the serpent, so all who looked upon Him with love and faith would be healed of the bite of the serpent of evil. — Fulton J. Sheen

Apparently, some have forgotten that God, who killed sinners in the Old Testament, died for them in the New Testament. Unfortunately, legalistic Christians love spiritual law enforcement too much to make good New Testament believers. Legalism has never drawn a lost soul to Christ, and it never will. Love does! "Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins" (1 Peter 4:8). — Eddie Smith

I wonder if these missionaries ever thought how Christ was so continually substituting affirmations for the 'Thou shalt nots' of the Old Testament. 'To love one's neighbor as oneself' is certainly harder, but states life so much more actively, gladly, and kindly, that you can begin to see some pleasure in it. — Gaellen Quinn

I love the melodies in the Old Testament, how preachers highlight them when they read from the Scripture. But I was influenced forever by the New Testament. I love the Beatitudes, informing us that the meek shall inherit the earth. — Maya Angelou

Both God's love and God's wrath are ratcheted up in the move from the old covenant to the new, from the Old Testament to the New. These themes barrel along through redemptive history, unresolved, until they come to a resounding climax - in the cross. — D. A. Carson

Give your false prophet a message for me. Tell him Jesus befriended the whores and the thieves and the sinners. Tell him his Old Testament God is dead. God doesn't punish the wicked and save the righteous. God is love. — Jennifer Bosworth

That the Old Testament represents God chiefly as angry Judge and vicious Warrior is a false stereotype. While these images are not absent, they are more than balanced by striking portrayals of God as Lover or Husband, infatuated with Israel beyond all reason or deserving. God is not too proud to grieve terribly over Israel's unfaithfulness, nor to be giddy over her return home. ... [This covenant's] primary quality is love at the highest pitch of intensity. (pg. 77) — Ellen F. Davis

I mentioned that Jesus came to invade satan's kingdom. When He did, the long period of time covered by the Old Testament permanently changed. Jesus brought a new covenant. When precisely did things change? Theologically, they changed on the cross. Paul explains this in some detail in Colossians when he says that the Father "has delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love" (Col. 1:13). He then goes on to say that we have redemption through His blood (Col. 1:14). The blood that Jesus shed on the cross defeated the enemy, or as Paul later says, "having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it" (Col. 2:15). He declares that Jesus is the "head of all principality and power" (Col. 2:10). — C. Peter Wagner