John 16:27

But what is loveable, and is not also loved by Him? And man has been proved to be loveable; consequently man is loved by God. For how shall he not be loved for whose sake the only-begotten Son is sent from the Father's bosom, the Word of faith, the faith which is superabundant; the Lord Himself distinctly confessing and saying, "For the Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved Me;" and again, "And hast loved them as Thou hast loved Me?" What, then, the Master desires and declares, and how He is disposed in deed and word, how He commands what is to be done, and forbids the opposite, has already been shown.

And in saying this, He shows us too, to our profit, that very acceptable to God the Father is the honour and love which we have towards His Offspring. Not understanding this, the miserable people of the Jews did not shrink from assailing Him with intolerable blasphemies, and sought to kill Him, according to the Scripture, because of the conversion of the mind of His believers from the obscure commandment of the Law to the clearness of the life according to the Gospel. For these wretched men said in their ignorance, or rather in their desire to sharpen their blasphemous tongues against Him, If this man were from God, He would not have broken the Sabbath day. He says then, that God the Father will very readily vouchsafe His favour to those who have undoubting faith, and are well assured that He came out from God the Father. For the Father will, as it were, He says, hail in advance, and anticipate, the request of the Mediator, and overwhelm with spiritual blessings the mind of those who have a right understanding concerning Me, and not according to the imaginations of those who are too much enamoured of the letter of the Law.

"For the Father Himself," He says, "loveth you, because ye have loved me." Is it the case, then, that He loveth, because we love; or rather, that we love, because He loveth? Let this same evangelist give us the answer out of his own epistle: "We love Him," he says, "because He first loved us." This, then, was the efficient cause of our loving, that we were loved. And certainly to love God is the gift of God. He it was that gave the grace to love Him, who loved while still unloved. Even when displeasing Him we were loved, that there might be that in us whereby we should become pleasing in His sight. For we could not love the Son unless we loved the Father also. The Father loveth us, because we love the Son; seeing it is of the Father and Son we have received the power to love both the Father and the Son: for love is shed abroad in our hearts by the Spirit of both, by which Spirit we love both the Father and the Son, and whom we love along with the Father and the Son. God, therefore, it was that wrought this religious love of ours whereby we worship God; and He saw that it is good, and on that account He Himself loved that which He had made. But He would not have wrought in us something He could love, were it not that He loved ourselves before He wrought it.