Love may be the word we use most and understand least. We say we love our families, our friends, our favourite food and our favourite team, all in the same week. So it’s no surprise that many of us turn to the Bible to find out what love really is.
Maybe you’re looking for a verse for a wedding or a card. Maybe your marriage is in a hard season, or you simply need to know that God loves you. Whatever brought you here, the Bible has a great deal to say about love, and it begins in one place:
“We love each other because he loved us first.”
1 John 4:19 NLT
Love starts with God. So the verses below follow that order: God’s love for you, what His love looks like, and how His love flows through us to others.
The Greatest Commandment
When someone asked Jesus which commandment mattered most, His answer was all about love:
“You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Matthew 22:37–39 NLT
Love for God and love for others: Jesus says everything else hangs on these two. Every other verse on this page is a closer look at one or the other.
Bible Verses About God’s Love for You
Before the Bible asks us to love anyone, it shows us how much we are loved.
God gave His Son. Probably the best-known verse in the Bible, and it’s a love verse:
“For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”
John 3:16 NLT
God loved us at our worst. He didn’t wait for us to clean up our lives first:
“But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”
Romans 5:8 NLT
God’s love doesn’t move. Speaking to His people through Isaiah, God described a faithful love that holds even when everything else shifts:
“’For the mountains may move and the hills disappear, but even then my faithful love for you will remain. My covenant of blessing will never be broken,’ says the LORD, who has mercy on you.”
Isaiah 54:10 NLT
For those who belong to Christ, nothing can separate us from it. Writing to believers, Paul lists everything he can think of, from death and life to our fears for today and our worries about tomorrow, and concludes:
“And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love.”
Romans 8:38 NLT
As I wrote in my book, Renewing Your Mind: Living Life Intentionally:
“God’s love for you is perfect and complete. He loves you just as you are. Your actions do not affect His love for you.”
If you’ve ever wondered whether your past puts you beyond the reach of God’s love, remember Romans 5:8: Christ died for us while we were still sinners. And for all who belong to Him, nothing can separate us from that love.
What Love Looks Like: 1 Corinthians 13
This is the passage many of us know from weddings, and for good reason. It’s the Bible’s clearest description of what love is. It’s also a passage that has meant a great deal to me personally.
“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.”
1 Corinthians 13:4–7 NLT
Read it slowly and you’ll notice something. Every line describes what love does. In the book I put it this way:
“Nowhere in the text do I see even a hint of love being expressed as a feeling or something that can fade, in fact, it specifically states that love never gives up. It appears that love is expressed as a verb, in positive action.”
That’s good news. Feelings come and go, but love as God describes it is something we can choose, again and again, with His help.
It’s also a description of God Himself. Read the passage again and put His name in place of the word love: God is patient and kind; God never gives up. Before it describes the love we give, it describes the love we’ve been given.
Download the 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 printable (free) → (opens in a new tab)
A free 8 × 10 print of the passage, for a wedding, an anniversary or your own wall. (The print uses the Berean Standard Bible, a modern translation that’s free for anyone to use.)
Bible Verses About Loving Others
God’s love doesn’t stop with us. It’s meant to flow through us.
Love as Jesus loved. Jesus gave His followers a new standard:
“So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.”
John 13:34 NLT
Love serves. Jesus showed what that looks like:
“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Mark 10:45 NLT
Love forgives. Forgiveness is love at its most costly, and it’s where many of us struggle most. Paul tells us to make allowance for each other’s faults and to forgive, because the Lord has forgiven us. Then he adds:
“Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony.”
Colossians 3:14 NLT
Love is genuine. Not a performance, but real affection. Paul urges us to love one another sincerely and to take delight in honouring each other (Romans 12:9–10).
Love looks for ways to act. Loving our neighbour can be as simple as holding a door open. For those like me, as I admit in the book, it may be exercising patience while driving.
“Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works.”
Hebrews 10:24 NLT
Love reaches even enemies. This is where love becomes unmistakably God’s kind:
“But to you who are willing to listen, I say, love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you.”
Luke 6:27 NLT
Love Is a Choice, and It Comes From God
Our culture tends to treat love as a feeling, and sometimes as a trade: I’ll love you as long as I get what I need from you. The Bible describes something far better. In the book I put the contrast this way:
“Our culture encourages us to love stuff and use people, but God wants us to love people and use stuff.”
So where does that kind of love come from? Not from trying harder.
“Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God…”
1 John 4:7 NLT
God’s love is the source. The Holy Spirit grows it in us (love is the first fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22), and we choose to live it out. The more we receive His love, the more we have to give.
Keep One Close
Don’t try to take in every verse at once. Choose one that speaks to where you are this week, and keep it with you. (Our guide on How to Memorize Scripture (opens in a new tab) shows a simple way.) Several of the verses on this page, including John 3:16, Mark 10:45 and Luke 6:27, are also on our Scripture Cards (opens in a new tab), so you can carry one in your pocket.
Go Deeper Into God’s Love
These verses come from the love chapter of my book, Renewing Your Mind: Living Life Intentionally, which looks at each side of God’s love in more depth: how it gives, serves, forgives and keeps no record of wrongs, and how to live it intentionally.
Let His Love Change How You Think
Knowing what love is and living it are two different things. Love grows as God’s Word reshapes the way we think, until His way of loving becomes our own. At Renewing Your Mind Discipleship Ministry, we teach a simple way to engage God’s Word so it changes how you live, in four parts. We call it The Process.
“Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.”
1 Corinthians 13:13 NLT
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
