The cantata Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt was written for the second day of Whitsun in the year 1725 and is one of nine cantatas to texts by Mariane von Ziegler which, chronologically speaking, close the 1724/1725 cycle of chorale cantatas.  The work is not really a chorale cantata at all, but its spacious opening chorale movement induced Bach to keep it among the chorale cantatas when he later revised the order of the cycle.<br>