25 Bible Verses About God's Love and Ours

We love because he first loved us.

1 John 4:19

John writes this near the end of his life to churches he loved like a father. Before you try to love anyone well, he wants you to know you were loved first, and every good love you give starts there.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16

Jesus speaks these words at night to Nicodemus, a religious leader who came with honest questions. It is the verse many of us learned first, and it still holds the whole gospel in one breath: God loved, so God gave.

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8

Paul will not let you wait until you are cleaned up to believe you are loved. God proved his love at the cross while we were still far from him, not after we had earned our way back.

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

1 John 4:9-10

John gives us a definition, and it points away from us. Love is not first our effort toward God but his costly move toward us, sending Jesus to carry what we could not.

The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.”

Jeremiah 31:3

God speaks this to a people worn down by exile and loss, who had every reason to think he was done with them. He answers with a love that has no end date and a kindness that keeps drawing them home.

The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.

Zephaniah 3:17

After chapters of warning, the prophet ends with a picture of God singing over his people. If you have only ever imagined God frowning at you, sit with this one a while.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever.

Psalm 136:1

This psalm repeats one line, "His love endures forever," twenty-six times as it walks through Israel's story. The word for love here speaks of covenant loyalty, a love that stays when everything else shifts.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:38-39

Paul names every power he can think of and then says none of them can pull you out of God's love. Whatever you fear might cut you off from him tonight, it is already on this list, or covered by "anything else."

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

1 John 4:7-8

John says love is not only something God does but who he is. So when we love one another, we are not inventing kindness, we are showing the family likeness.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

We read this at weddings, but Paul first wrote it to a church split by pride and rivalry. Read it slowly and you will find a portrait of Jesus, and a gentle mirror held up to your own heart.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13:13

Paul closes his great chapter on love by looking ahead to eternity. One day faith will become sight and hope will be fulfilled, but love will still be there, because God is love.

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Matthew 22:37-39

Asked to name the greatest commandment, Jesus gives two that belong together. Love for God is meant to spill over into love for the person right in front of you.

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

John 13:34-35

Jesus says this on the night before the cross, just after washing his friends' feet. The measure of our love is his love, and the world is meant to recognize him by how we treat each other.

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

John 15:12-13

Hours before he would do exactly this, Jesus describes the highest love there is. He calls his disciples friends, and he calls you friend too.

But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.

Luke 6:35

This is the hardest love Jesus asks of us, and he does not soften it. He grounds it in the way God treats all of us, kind even when we were ungrateful.

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.

Romans 12:9-10

Paul turns from deep teaching to everyday life, and he starts with love that is real, not put on. It is a love that shows up in how we honor the people God has placed next to us.

Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

Romans 13:10

Paul sums up the commandments in one word. When you are unsure what the right thing is, this verse asks a simple question: will it harm the person in front of you?

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4:8

Peter writes to believers under pressure, and his first request is that they keep loving each other. Deep love does not pretend wrongs never happened, but it chooses to forgive rather than keep the wound open.

And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Colossians 3:14

Paul pictures kindness, humility, and patience like clothes we put on each morning. Love is the outer layer that holds them all together.

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.

Ephesians 4:2

Paul writes this from prison to a church learning to live as one family. Love here is not a feeling but patience, the daily choice to bear with people who are still being made new, just as you are.

Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

1 John 3:18

John is tender but direct. Love that stays in our mouths is not finished yet, and it grows up when it becomes a meal, a visit, a gift, or an hour of listening.

Do everything in love.

1 Corinthians 16:14

Four words near the end of a long letter, and they cover every part of your day. Your work, your words, and your hardest conversations can all be done in love.

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.

Proverbs 17:17

This proverb names the kind of love that shows up when life gets hard. If you have a friend like this, thank God for them, and ask him to make you that kind of friend.

Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away. If one were to give all the wealth of one’s house for love, it would be utterly scorned.

Song of Songs 8:7

This book celebrates the love between a husband and wife, and here it reaches its high point. True love cannot be drowned by trouble or bought with money, and many readers have also heard in it an echo of God's steadfast love.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her

Ephesians 5:25

Paul sets the bar for love in marriage at the cross itself. A husband's love is measured by Jesus, who laid down his life for the people he loved.