Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume V/On the Grace of Christ, and on Original Sin/On the Grace of Christ/Chapter 22

Chapter 22 [XXI.]—Love is a Good Will.

That love, however, which is a virtue, comes to us from God, not from ourselves, according to the testimony of Scripture, which says: “Love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God: for God is love.” It is on the principle of this love that one can best understand the passage, “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin;” as well as the sentence, “And he cannot sin.” Because the love according to which we are born of God “doth not behave itself unseemly,” and “thinketh no evil.” Therefore, whenever a man sins, it is not according to love: but it is according to cupidity that he commits sin; and following such a disposition, he is not born of God. Because, as it has been already stated, “the capacity” of which we speak is capable of either root. When, therefore, the Scripture says, “Love is of God,” or still more pointedly, “God is love;” when the Apostle John so very emphatically exclaims, “Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called, and be, the sons of God!” with what face can this writer, on hearing that “God is love,” persist in maintaining his opinion, that we bare of God one only of those three, namely, “the capacity;” whereas it is of ourselves that we have “the good will” and “the good action?” As if, indeed, this good will were a different thing from that love which the Scripture so loudly proclaims to have come to us from God, and to have been given to us by the Father, that we might become His children.