Where is the Bible does God say He loves humanity?

[Bagheera]

Pretty straight forward.

There are a lot of people claiming to speak on God's behalf in the New Testament, but I realized the Bible has very few quotes from God Himself on his supposed love for us (although He has no difficulty proclaiming the wrath and the jealousy and making with the smiting).

Need a little help with this one.

[One Above All]

BM

[Nick]

God, the Big Guy, has always been a Son -of- a- Bitch.  He needed Jesus to calm things down some.  I still don't know what the Spook is for.

[jetson]

It cannot be answered until we establish there is a god.   

But, how about this...if you can find one person in the Bible that God hates, then there is your answer!  Hint, you probably don't need to leave Genesis!

[Bagheera]

It cannot be answered until we establish there is a god.   

But, how about this...if you can find one person in the Bible that God hates, then there is your answer!  Hint, you probably don't need to leave Genesis!

It's more of an intellectual exercise. Anyone can make claims about (for example) Romeo loving Juliet. You can even read parts of the book where other characters might talk about Romeo's love for Juliet. But wouldn't quotes from Romeo, and his actions specifically attributed to him by the author, be much more compelling evidence about his love for Juliet?

I thought it would be as easy as going to a Christian site featuring "God is Love" and just plagiarizing a few of their quotes. Surprise; so many quotes from the apostles talking about God's love, none that I can find (so far) where God talks about God's love.

An amusing aside: Went to openbible.info, and where it says "Find Bible versus about" I typed into the search window "God loves man".  I got as a result:

It looks like this topic doesn’t exist yet. Please wait while the computer creates it. This process usually takes 15-30 seconds. Thanks for waiting.

So yeah. :/

Don't worry. It came up with 146 verses after a few seconds. Of course many of them were of the unhelpful category, like:

Acts 3:19 ESV / 2 helpful votes
"Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out,"

John 14:15 ESV / 2 helpful votes
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments."

Still looking. Quotes from God in the Bible that he loves humanity. Not just His Son, or a person in specific (God does play some serious favorites in the texts) but from God's mouth that he really loves humanity.

[Backspace]

Genesis starts out well,

1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

But by the middle of the third chapter, it's not looking good for man & woman; by early in the sixth chapter, it's pretty clear man & woman are hosed,

6:6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

[Sarevok]

Hey, I'm new, but I can't post a thread in the "Hey I'm new" section, because I don't have 3 thoughtful posts, so I thought I'd start here.

As was said by jetson, we can't answer that until we establish there is a god. However, I would take it that your statement permits this assumption, since you are talking about God, and I'm having a guess your referring to the bible.

So, if we assume that God exists, and we assume that the bible is true (assuming that part also, since if it is false, then we can't use that book), then we could then imply that Jesus is apart of God. Jesus is refereed to as "The Word", "The Word" is said to have been with God "In The Beginning". Jesus speaks of God's love in John 3:16 (I won't bother quoting, you probably know it well enough). This talks of God's love for the whole world to such an extent as to send he Son to save us.

Sounds like he loves the world.

[Skinz]

Sarevok, I'm glad you joined already. That is a fine and rational argument.


If we assume the Bible is true, there are many souces of heresay claiming God's love, right up to Jesus in John. I didn't mean that to sound dirty. HOWEVER, if we assume the Bible is true, God's love takes some fairly interesting forms, including rains of sulphur, pillars of salt, swarms of locusts etc.

But if the Bible is true, we mere mortals cannot fathom God's love, so I suppose that point is moot.

I think (Correct me if I'm wrong) that the OP is asking for a direct quote. For example, in Genesis, God directly says "Let there be light". In John, Jesus says God says he loves us all. Searching high and low through the (king james) Bible, I am yet to find a part that says 'And god said "I love all my creations"' or something similar.

[screwtape]

then we could then imply that Jesus is apart of God.

I'm confused.  Did you mean "apart from god" or did you mean "a part of god"?  xians like to mix up their prepositions a la 16th century english, so it is never a sure bet what they mean.[1]

And Backspace points out the problem with assuming the bible is true.  If it is true, yhwh is a hateful prick.  I have a whole thread on yhwh being jealous here --> http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/forums/index.php/topic,10880.msg244449.html#msg244449

1.	Eve ate of the tree of moral knowledge... etc

[Anfauglir]

To be fair, god has some weird ideas about what "love" means.....

"Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and ... offer him there for a burnt offering "

.....we're probably damned luckt Yahweh DOESN'T love us, if that is the behaviour he thinks is appropriate to show to someone you love.

[wheels5894]

John 3:16

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

That answers the OP anyway!

[DumpsterFire]

Loving the world and loving humanity are not necessarily the same thing, but John 3:16 certainly implies that god loves humanity.

[wheels5894]

Loving the world and loving humanity are not necessarily the same thing, but John 3:16 certainly implies that god loves humanity.

Well its the verse Christians always give to show how much god loves his people - to kill himself to satisfy himself that he can forgive sins. I don't think there's a better verse though.

[Leviathan]

Where does it say that god loves anyone but the jews?  Wasn’t the world flat at that time and the world only consented of the middle eastern areas? If he (jesus/god) loved "humanity" so much then why was there so much genocide? I think god/jesus loves only the people who give him money.

[wheels5894]

I think main thrust of the Torah is that god originally was loving towards all people but by the time the Flood came along, nearly all of them had rejected him and were doing some sort of evil or other so he started again with Noah and family.

However, it is really with the arrival of Abram on the scene that god takes up with one man and his family - and renames him Abraham as well.

Isaiah 42, or course, has significant implications for the way the god described wants to bring all nations together - something that Jewish nation did undertake in the Diaspora as an evangelising faith.

Finally, there seems to be some puzzlement amongst the NT writers as to why Jesus, in effect rejects the Jews, the chosen nation and there are various reasons suggested. Of course, those reading the story these days can see quite well, as did the Jews of Jesus day, that the texts taken as prophecies in the OT were not really the ones the Jesus was claimed to fulfil and Jesus himself was not leader of the nation but rather an itinerant preacher who was, in all probability look down on by the Jews generally.

Of course, one can read and interpret these texts in lots of different ways but that would be the sort of  gereal way it would be done.

[Bagheera]

Genesis starts out well,

1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

[/quote]

Some problems:

God does not say that he loves it all, only that it is 'very good'. 100% on a test is very good. The only thing I can glean from that is that everything in the universe was created exactly as god in tended it.

So. . . evil is very good.

But by the middle of the third chapter, it's not looking good for man & woman; by early in the sixth chapter, it's pretty clear man & woman are hosed,

6:6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

Which is a "what the fuck" of the highest order.

Still. . . no love for man yet. Or rather, no love for man above a rock (that God made, and was 'very good') or even, say, Satan (whom God made, and was 'very good').

[Bagheera]

Hey, I'm new, but I can't post a thread in the "Hey I'm new" section, because I don't have 3 thoughtful posts, so I thought I'd start here.

Welcome. You can post in Introductions just fine. Find it, post, make yourself known.

As was said by jetson, we can't answer that until we establish there is a god. However, I would take it that your statement permits this assumption, since you are talking about God, and I'm having a guess your referring to the bible.

Well, not really. The statement is merely asking a question about the contents of the Bible, in much the same way that I might ask "Where in the Star Wars movies does Anakin Skywalker say he loves Amidala?"

 In the Bible, God makes many statements that are directly attributed to him by the text. There are also many statements made about God by other characters in the text. What I want to know is, how much of what is said about God matches what God himself says, in the text?

One does not have to believe in God to discuss the literature about Him, any more than one has to believe in Harry Potter to discuss the literature about him.

So, if we assume that God exists, and we assume that the bible is true (assuming that part also, since if it is false, then we can't use that book), then we could then imply that Jesus is apart of God. Jesus is refereed to as "The Word", "The Word" is said to have been with God "In The Beginning". Jesus speaks of God's love in John 3:16 (I won't bother quoting, you probably know it well enough). This talks of God's love for the whole world to such an extent as to send he Son to save us.

Sounds like he loves the world.

Ifs and buts and coconuts. According to the Bible, Jesus was the son of god, born of Mary, blah blah blah. While the word of the son of god should be good, I'd like for something so apparently self-evident to be backed up by something that says so. Otherwise, Jesus might just be. . . misguided.

Where in the text does God talk to jesus, by the way? (I actually don't remember this; it's been a while since my last Bible reading). Not Jesus talking to God (we all do that) nor someone saying that jesus talked to god. The Biblical passages of God talking to Jesus, and if its about how much God loves humanity, so much the better.

Why is this so hard? I can find passages about God talking to Noah, Moses, just about everybody. It's trickier than finding a woman in the Bible who does something important instead of having something done to her.

[rev45]

Where in the text does God talk to jesus, by the way? (I actually don't remember this; it's been a while since my last Bible reading). Not Jesus talking to God (we all do that) nor someone saying that jesus talked to god. The Biblical passages of God talking to Jesus, and if its about how much God loves humanity, so much the better.

Why is this so hard? I can find passages about God talking to Noah, Moses, just about everybody. It's trickier than finding a woman in the Bible who does something important instead of having something done to her.

The only time I can think of God talking to Jesus was after Jesus' baptism.  The dove descended and God or according to Matthew, a voice, said "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”  Which then makes a person wonder how can Jesus be God?  Did he just talk to himself in this instance? 

[Jag]

The only time I can think of God talking to Jesus was after Jesus' baptism.  The dove descended and God or according to Matthew, a voice, said "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”  Which then makes a person wonder how can Jesus be God?  Did he just talk to himself in this instance?

I immediately thought of this passages as well. Same problem though - this doesn't read as though God is talking TO Jesus, it's as though he's talking ABOUT Jesus.

Seriously, wouldn't this have been a golden opportunity for God to give his son an "attaboy" or something? Maybe a celestial fist bump? It's all fine and good to hear your dad say nice things about you, but occasionally it's good to have your dad say nice things about you TO YOU. That's Parenting 101!

[wheels5894]

Where in the text does God talk to jesus, by the way? (I actually don't remember this; it's been a while since my last Bible reading). Not Jesus talking to God (we all do that) nor someone saying that jesus talked to god. The Biblical passages of God talking to Jesus, and if its about how much God loves humanity, so much the better.

Why is this so hard? I can find passages about God talking to Noah, Moses, just about everybody. It's trickier than finding a woman in the Bible who does something important instead of having something done to her.

The only time I can think of God talking to Jesus was after Jesus' baptism.  The dove descended and God or according to Matthew, a voice, said "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”  Which then makes a person wonder how can Jesus be God?  Did he just talk to himself in this instance?

Don't get too hooked on the last bit. The Early Church spend centuries on fighting out juts who Jesus was - from Arius, who said he was a man onwards and through Nicea 325 and up to Chalcedon 450 (where they solved the whole question by restating the problem!)

[Sarevok]

@Skinz:
Ah ok. So if we assume that Jesus is God the Son, then what is being asked, is a quote where God the Father said "I love the world", "I love all people" that kinda thing. Got ya.

@screwtape:
Sorry, "a part of God". I know the different between the two, I guess I either mistyped, or missed the space bar.
I accept there maybe issues with accepting the bible is true. But if we don't make this assumption, we have nothing of what the Christian God said, so we can't prove or disprove either way without this assumption first. Also, this thread isn't really about he's character, but what he said.

@Bagheera:
The rest of what you said was sorta covered, and I noticed I could post there afterwards  So I'll go with this part: "I'd like for something so apparently self-evident to be backed up by something that says so". Matthew 3:17 has God saying that Jesus is he's Son. That's pretty straight forward.