Scriptures about God’s Love

Most of us have heard that the Bible tells us to love others (see my article Scriptures about Loving Others) and other verses telling us that we should love God, but what do the Scriptures say about God’s love for people? Who does God love? How does God show love?

Does God Really Love Us? Bible Verses Telling about God’s Love

1 John 4:7-11

“Beloved, let’s love one another; for love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. By this the love of God was revealed in us, that God has sent His only Son into the world so that we may live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

God IS love. He doesn’t just love us like we know love. He is love itself. Amazing.

1 John 4:16:

“We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.“

I’ve been thinking this week about what it means to remain in love. You stay put, don’t leave. Oxford Dictionary says remain is “to continue to exist” (in God’s love), “stay in the place” (in God’s love), to continue to possess the quality of (God’s love). When we do this, we also remain in God and He remains in us.

Interesting that this verse begins by saying, “we have come to know and have believed…” It tells there what comes before obtaining God’s love. We need to get to know it and also believe.

1 John 4:19

“We love because He first loved us.”

This is how we are able to love at all–because God loved us first.

Psalm 143:8

“Cause me to hear Your lovingkindness in the morning, For in You do I trust; Cause me to know the way in which I should walk, For I lift up my soul to You.” (NKJV)

Romans 5:5

“…and hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

The Holy Spirit pours God’s love out within our hearts. Real love comes from God. If we are lacking love in our hearts, we can ask God for it and He will give it to us.

John 15:9  

“Just as the Father has loved Me, I also have loved you; remain in My love.”

This is a quote from Jesus. He loves us just like Father God loves Him. That’s huge.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8a

“Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant.  It does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered,  it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;  it keeps every confidence, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails;”

I used to think that 1 Corinthians 13 was a “to do” list and a standard that I had to live up to. It was a wonderful revelation to realize that this describes the love of God for us. He gives us His love when we receive Him so that we can love others with His love.

Romans 8:35, 37-39

“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or trouble, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? …But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.“

These verses about God’s love are so encouraging. Nothing can separate us from God’s love in Jesus. Nothing.

Ephesians 5:2

“…and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.”

Jesus loved us so much that He gave His life for us.

Romans 5:8

“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.“

One way that God showed His love for us is that even before we knew Him, even before we were born, Jesus to redeem us.

Jeremiah 31:3

“…I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you out with kindness.”

This verse is so beautiful. God has loved us with an everlasting love and he draws us to Himself with kindness.

John 3:16

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.”

So, God isn’t selective in who He loves. Isn’t that good news? He loves the WHOLE world. Everyone. No one is excluded from God’s love.

Zephaniah 3:17

“The Lord your God is in your midst, A victorious warrior. He will rejoice over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.“

God is loud–shouting with joy over us–and He is also quiet in His love for us. Isn’t that just like a parent? Shouting and cheering on a child or sitting a snuggling with him/her. It’s the same parent. It’s the same love. It’s just expressed differently in different situations.

Mark 10:21

“Looking at him, Jesus showed love to him and said to him, ‘One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.’”

When God shows us love, it is sometimes shown to as in discipline as Jesus here exposes the rich young ruler for having his heart wrapped up in his wealth. God disciplines (teaches and trains) us because He loves us.

John 13:1

“Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that His hour had come that He would depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.”

God’s love doesn’t stop. He loves us to the end.

John 13:34

“I am giving you a new commandment, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”

I remembering hearing that when God gives us a commandment, He also gives us the ability (grace and power) to fulfill that command. He tells us to love one another as He loved. Wow. He died for us. That’s a tall order to fill. But I am reminded that He gives us the love and ability to love like He loves when we rely on Him–remain in Him–receive His love in our own hearts.

John 15:12

“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.”

John 16:26-27

“On that day you will ask in My name, and I am not saying to you that I will request of the Father on your behalf; for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father.”

Father God loves us and because of Jesus, we can go to the Father for ourselves. That’s beautiful. We don’t just go to Jesus or anyone else to ask for something. We can go directly to our heavenly Father God.

2 Corinthians 13:11,14

“Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice, mend your ways, be comforted, be like-minded, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. …The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”

Galatians 2:20b

“…and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.“

Ephesians 1:3-6  

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He favored us in the Beloved.”

Because Father God loved us so much, he decided before that foundation of the world that He wanted to adopt us to be His sons and daughters through Jesus. He wants to be our Father.

Ephesians 3:14-19

“For this reason I bend my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner self, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to all the fullness of God.”

God’s love surpasses knowledge. We can know it but we may not be able to understand it.

Ephesians 5:25-33:

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,…”

2 Thessalonians 2:16-17  

“Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope by grace, comfort and strengthen your hearts in every good work and word.”

1 John 3:16

“We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters.”

How do we know what real love is? By how Jesus loves us. He laid down His life for us. When someone says they love us, or when we say we love someone, how do they know that we really love them? It’s by what we do.

I hope you’ve been encouraged by these Bible verses and my notes about God’s love. Let me know if I left one out that you really like.

Sources:

Scriptures are taken from the New American Standard Bible unless otherwise noted. You can purchase your own Bible with my affiliate link through Amazon. If you click the link and make a purchase, I may receive compensation, but your price will stay the same.

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