“God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16).

In this famous passage, St. John expresses the heart of the Christian faith and the essence of the Christian image of God. In the same verse, he also offers a kind of summary of the Christian life: We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.

In God Is Love, Anthony Kelly, CSSR, takes this phrase as a concise and profound expression and unpacks it for thinking Christians today. He explores seven ideas that are necessarily implied in the love that God is—the Trinitarian terms, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; the cross and resurrection as events within the paschal mystery; the church as the revelation of God's love being worked out in history; and finally, the ultimate hope for eternal life and heaven itself.