Bible Verses About Love

Love is the central theme of Scripture. 1 John 4:8 sums up the very nature of God in three words: "God is love." John 3:16 is its supreme expression: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." Biblical love—agape—is not a passing emotion but a deliberate choice, a commitment of heart and will that seeks the good of another even at the cost of oneself. This love is not affection earned by attractive qualities; it moves toward its object regardless of merit, and it was most fully displayed at the cross, where God gave his Son for a world that had rejected him. Paul's hymn to love in 1 Corinthians 13 maps the character of agape in concrete behavioral terms: patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, not self-seeking, bearing all things and enduring all things. Romans 8:38-39 crowns the discussion with the assurance that neither death nor life, nor things present nor things to come, can separate the believer from the love of God in Christ Jesus. And 1 John 4:19 grounds all Christian love in its source: "We love Him because He first loved us." The Bible therefore calls its readers not only to receive this love but to let it flow outward to others as its natural fruit—to love God with the whole being and to love one's neighbor as oneself, the two commandments on which all the Law and the Prophets depend.