The Bible is filled with verses about God's love. Maybe you've never heard about God's love for you and you're curious to learn more. Perhaps you're new to faith in Jesus and are growing in your understanding of God's love. Or, you may be someone who has followed Christ for a long time and need fresh reminders of how much you are loved.
Either way, we can learn more about God's perfect, unending love for us through His Word. Scripture is an overarching story of God's love for us, and the Gospel is the greatest example of love in history! Here are 20 key Bible verses about God's love.
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Bible Verses About What God's Love Is
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
This Bible passage is famously used at weddings, but it is a great reminder for all of us about what God's love looks like. God's love looks a lot different than love the world tries to offer to us, doesn't it?
Since God is love, we can read 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 and replace the word "love" with "God." God is patient, God is kind...God is not easily angered. This gives us a glimpse into God's own character.
Next, because we're supposed to be God's love to the world, try this challenge. Read 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 and replace each word "love" with "I." It should read, "I am patient, I am kind...." Continue reading. We can use this as a guide to see how well we are exemplifying God's love in our lives.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. - 1 Corinthians 13:13
All else in this world will fail us: success, relationships, our health. But God's love will always remain. It is constant and unchanging for us. Before the creation of the world, God's love was ever-present, and God's love will last throughout eternity.
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. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. - 1 John 4:9-12
This Bible passage lays a great foundation about God's love. First, God's love is sacrificial ("He sent his one and only Son"). Secondly, God is the source of love ("not that we loved God, but that he loved us"). Finally, God's love is to be shared with others ("we also ought to love one another"). We will look deeper into these qualities of love in a little bit.
And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. - 1 John 4:16
God is love. You can't separate the two! Love soaks through everything He is and everything He does. This is a truth that we can know and rely on. God's love is trustworthy and true. GOD IS LOVE.
Bible Verses About God's Great Love
For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. - Psalm 103:11-12
How high are the heavens above the earth? If you were to travel at the speed of light across just our galaxy, The Milky Way, it would take 100,000 years. That's not even considering the billions of other galaxies! God's love is as high as the heavens are above the earth: immeasurable. That is how great God's love is for us.
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. - Lamentations 3:22-23
God's great love and compassion is new every morning. It is so vast that it will never run out or leave us. No matter what happened in your life yesterday, His love remains today.
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. - Ephesians 3:17b-19
This scripture says you are rooted and established in love. God's love is foundational in your creation and very being! You were created with God's perfect love. His love is so vast -- wide, long, high, and deep -- that it surpasses anything we can comprehend. When you feel full of God's love, there is still indescribably more for you. His love is beyond measure.
Scripture About God's Enduring Love
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever. - Psalm 136:1
Several Psalms include a verse that says, "His love endures forever." Other examples include Psalm 100:5, 106:1, 107:1, , and all of Psalm 118 and 136. It's written so often that it seems God wants us to remember it! When all else fails, God's love endures. It doesn't slip or fade.
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
Through the good, bad, and ugly, NOTHING can separate us from the love of God. It doesn't matter what's in your past or your present. It doesn't matter what you've done or what's been done to you. There is not one single person, circumstance, or loss in all of creation that can separate you from His love. God loves you with an everlasting, unshakable, perfect love.
Bible Verses About God's Sacrificial Love
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
This is perhaps the most "famous" Bible verse, but it is still such a powerful reminder of God's love. He loved, so He gave. God loves us so much that He gave Jesus to die in our place for our sin. He rescued us from our brokenness!
This verse is a simple, clear message of God's great love, and can be used to share His love with others. You can use John 3:16 as a guide to share the Gospel with those who may not know the full picture of what Jesus did for them on the cross.
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But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. - Romans 5:8
God showed us His love through giving. Jesus died to save us, even though we did nothing to deserve it. We were still sinners! Jesus died knowing full well that we would betray Him again. That is how faithful His love is for us.
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. - 1 John 3:16
This is love: Jesus sacrificed for us. He rescued us! God's sacrificial love transformed our lives and we are called to walk in the way of love, using Christ as our example. We are called to love sacrificially, even love those who may not offer anything back to us.
Bible Verses About God As the Source of Love
And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. - Romans 5:5
God's love is steadfast and it will be proven trustworthy until the end of time. We will not be put to shame by placing our trust in God and His love. His love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, so we carry His love with us in our everyday lives. Wherever we go, whoever we are interacting with, we carry God's love and are empowered by the Holy Spirit to share God's love.
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
We are called to love one another with the love that comes from God. Scripture shows that God's love is great, enduring, and sacrificial. That's easier to do for those in our lives that are easy to love! But, we are also called to love those who may seem difficult to love. Remember, we are to love others with love that comes from God through the power of the Holy Spirit. We can try to muscle our way through or go through the motions, but will inevitably fall short. We need to rely on God as our source.
We love because he first loved us. - 1 John 4:19
Jesus loved us first. We did nothing to earn it or prove ourselves worthy. In the same way, we are called to love others whether or not we feel they "deserve" it. We need to make the first move and love those around us first.
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Scripture About God's Love for Others
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.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” - Matthew 22:37-40
According to these Bible verses, the law can be summed up in one word: Love. Love is the very heart of God, and love is at the heart of God's law for us. We can fulfill all of God's commandments through loving God and loving our neighbor. Everything "hangs" on these two commandments of love. If there's not love, everything we try to do through our own strength will fall. Love has to be at the center of everything we do.
“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
When the world thinks about Christians, do you think the first thing they think about is love? How loving we are to each other and those around us? Too often, we are associated with argumentative, judgmental actions rather than love. But, we are instructed by God to love others as He loved us. He didn't pick fights with us or condemn us. In the same way, let's lead with love in our interactions with those around us.
Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. - Romans 13:10
For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself." - Galatians 5:14
Both of these scriptures show that love fulfills the law laid out to us as followers of Jesus. We are to avoid doing harm to others. How does this look in practical ways? Consider who you interact with on a daily basis: coworkers, neighbors, classmates, coaches, store employees. How can you love them in practical ways today?
Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. - Colossians 3:13-14
Earlier in this chapter, Paul writes that we are to clothe ourselves with virtues such as compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. But then he writes that the one virtue over everything is love. Love is the glue that holds all other virtues together. It is the source of all goodness. If we don't have love, we have just a shadow of how we are supposed to interact with each other.
These Bible verses about love show us a broad picture of God's love for us. God's love for us is great, enduring, and sacrificial. When we grow in our understanding of God being the source of love, we can better fulfill our calling to love others with His great love.
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