'Dear' in the Bible

Here the servant of a certain Captain, a man dear to his master, was ill and at the point of death;

"'You my dear son,' said the father, 'are always with me, and all that is mine is also yours.

So the sisters sent to Him to say, "Master, he whom you hold dear is ill."

"See how dear he held him," said the Jews.

He who holds his life dear, is destroying it; and he who makes his life of no account in this world shall keep it to the Life of the Ages.

Dear children, I am still with you a little longer. You will seek me, but, as I said to the Jews, 'Where I am going you cannot come,' so for the present I say to you.

for the Father Himself holds you dear, because you have held me dear and have believed that I came from the Father's presence.

So she ran, as fast as she could, to find Simon Peter and the other disciple--the one who was dear to Jesus--and to tell them, "They have taken the Master out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have put Him."

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus asked Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these others do?" "Yes, Master," was his answer; "you know that you are dear to me." "Then feed my lambs," replied Jesus.

Again a second time He asked him, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" "Yes, Master," he said, "you know that you are dear to me." "Then be a shepherd to my sheep," He said.

A third time Jesus put the question: "Simon, son of John, am I dear to you?" It grieved Peter that Jesus asked him the third time, "Am I dear to you?" "Master," he replied, "you know everything, you can see that you are dear to me." "Then feed my much-loved sheep," said Jesus.

we have unanimously decided to select certain men and send them to you in company with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul,

Do not be revengeful, my dear friends, but give way before anger; for it is written, "'Revenge belongs to Me: I will pay back,' says the Lord."

Greetings, too, to the Church that meets at their house. Greetings to my dear Epaenetus, who was the earliest convert to Christ in the province of Asia;

Greetings to Ampliatus, dear to me in the Lord;

to Urban, our fellow labourer in Christ, and to my dear Stachys.

Greetings to those Christian workers, Tryphaena and Tryphosa; also to dear Persis, who has laboured strenuously in the Lord's work.

Therefore, my dear friends, avoid all connection with the worship of idols.

Therefore, my dear brethren, be firm, unmovable, busily occupied at all times in the Lord's work, knowing that your toil is not fruitless in the Lord.

You are imagining, all this time, that we are making our defense at your bar. In reality it is as in God's presence and in communion with Christ that we speak; but, dear friends, it is all with a view to your progress in goodness.

Therefore be imitators of God, as His dear children.

And with him I send our dear and trusty brother Onesimus, who is one of yourselves. They will inform you of everything here.

Seeing that we were thus drawn affectionately towards you, it would have been a joy to us to have imparted to you not only God's Good News, but to have given our very lives also, because you had become very dear to us.

Every one here sends you greeting. Greet the believers who hold us dear. May grace be with you all.

no longer as a slave, but as something better than a slave--a brother peculiarly dear to me, and even dearer to you, both as a servant and as a fellow Christian.

Women received back their dear ones alive from the dead; and others were put to death with torture, refusing the deliverance offered to them--that they might secure a better resurrection.

Dear friends, I entreat you as pilgrims and foreigners not to indulge the cravings of your lower natures: for all such cravings wage war upon the soul.

Dear friends, do not be surprised at finding that that scorching flame of persecution is raging among you to put you to the test--as though some surprising thing were accidentally happening to you.

This letter which I am now writing to you, dear friends, is my second letter. In both my letters I seek to revive in your honest minds the memory of certain things,

But there is one thing, dear friends, which you must not forget. With the Lord one day resembles a thousand years and a thousand years resemble one day.

Therefore, dear friends, since you have these expectations, earnestly seek to be found in His presence, free from blemish or reproach, in peace.

And always regard the patient forbearance of our Lord as salvation, as our dear brother Paul also has written to you in virtue of the wisdom granted to him.

You, therefore, dear friends, having been warned beforehand, must continually be on your guard so as not to be led astray by the false teaching of immoral men nor fall from your own stedfastness.

Dear children, I write thus to you in order that you may not sin. If any one sins, we have an Advocate with the Father--Jesus Christ the righteous;

I am writing to you, dear children, because for His sake your sins are forgiven you.

Dear children, the last hour has come; and as you once heard that there was to be an anti-Christ, so even now many anti-Christs have appeared. By this we may know that the last hour has come.

And now, dear children, continue in union with Him; so that, if He re-appears, we may have perfect confidence, and may not shrink away in shame from His presence at His Coming.

Dear friends, we are now God's children, but what we are to be in the future has not yet been fully revealed. We know that if Christ reappears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.

Dear children, let no one lead you astray. The man who acts righteously is righteous, just as He is righteous.

Dear children, let us not love in words only nor with the lips, but in deed and in truth.

Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have perfect confidence towards God;

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but put the spirits to the test to see whether they are from God; for many false teachers have gone out into the world.

As for you, dear children, you are God's children, and have successfully resisted them; for greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.

Dear friends, let us love one another; for love has its origin in God, and every one who loves has become a child of God and is beginning to know God.

Dear friends, if God has so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

Dear children, guard yourselves from idols.

And now, dear lady, I pray you--writing to you, as I do, not a new command, but the one which we have had from the very beginning--let us love one another.

The Elder to his dear friend Gaius. Truly I love you.

My dear friend, I pray that you may in all respects prosper and enjoy good health, just as your soul already prospers.

My dear friend, you are acting faithfully in all your behaviour towards the brethren, even when they are strangers to you.

My dear friend, do not follow wrong examples, but right ones. He who habitually does what is right is a child of God: he who habitually does what is wrong has not seen God.

Dear friends, since I am eager to begin a letter to you on the subject of our common salvation, I find myself constrained to write and cheer you on to the vigorous defense of the faith delivered once for all to God's people.

All whom I hold dear, I reprove and chastise; therefore be in earnest and repent.