Bible Verses About Love.

The Bible's definition of love starts with God. God is love, and he showed it by sending his Son to die for people who did not love him back. Every other kind of love in Scripture flows from that.

Love in the Bible is more than a feeling. It is patient, it acts, and it costs something. These verses describe what love is and call you to love God and others the way Christ loved you.

What love is

Paul's description is a portrait of Christ.

  • 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

    Read in context
    Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
  • 1 Corinthians 13:13

    Read in context
    So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

God's love first

We love because he first loved us.

  • 1 John 4:9-10

    Read in context
    In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
  • Romans 5:8

    Read in context
    but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
  • John 3:16

    Read in context
    “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
  • 1 John 4:19

    Read in context
    We love because he first loved us.

Love one another

Jesus makes love the mark of his people.

  • John 13:34-35

    Read in context
    A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
  • Romans 12:9-10

    Read in context
    Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.
  • 1 Peter 4:8

    Read in context
    Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.
  • Matthew 22:37-39

    Read in context
    And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Love that goes further

Christian love reaches even enemies.

  • Luke 6:35

    Read in context
    But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.
  • 1 John 3:18

    Read in context
    Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

Write about 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

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Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (ESV)

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Scripture quotations are from the ESV(R) Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version(R)), copyright (c) 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.