Bible Verses About Love

Love shows up so often in scripture that it can start to sound familiar. These verses are worth reading slowly, as if for the first time.

1 Corinthians 13:4

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.

The King James Version uses "charity" here for what other translations render as "love," from a Greek word describing a love that acts. What follows this verse is a description of behavior.

John 3:16

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

The most quoted verse in the Bible, and worth returning to precisely because it is easy to stop noticing. The love described here moves toward the whole world, all of it.

1 John 4:19

We love him, because he first loved us.

A short verse that reorders where love starts. It begins with God, not with anything a person did to earn or deserve it first.

Romans 8:38-39

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Paul builds a long list here, almost as if trying to think of every possible threat to this love and naming each one directly. The length of the list is part of the point.

1 John 4:8

He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

A brief, direct identity statement. Love is named here as part of who God is.

Read it as if it is true

Read one of these again slowly, as if for the first time. Devotional's daily reading gives a passage like this room to actually land, one small piece at a time.