Bible Verses About Love
The Bible's central claim about love is not a feeling but a description of God's own character — and a standard, in 1 Corinthians 13, that reads more like an examination than a greeting card.
Love appears in the Bible as command, as definition, and as motive — love your neighbor, love is patient and kind, God so loved the world. Read together, these verses resist the idea that love is primarily a feeling; it is repeatedly described as something done, often at cost.
Featured verses
“Love is patient and is kind; love doesn't envy. Love doesn't brag, is not proud, doesn't behave itself inappropriately, doesn't seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil; doesn't rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 · WEB
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
John 3:16 · WEB
“We love him, because he first loved us.”
1 John 4:19 · WEB
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”
John 13:34 · WEB
“But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:8 · WEB
More verses
“He who doesn't love doesn't know God, for God is love.”
1 John 4:8 · WEB“Above all these things, walk in love, which is the bond of perfection.”
Colossians 3:14 · WEB
Questions about love
What is the biblical definition of love?
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 is the closest thing the Bible offers to a definition — a list of what love does and does not do, rather than a description of a feeling.