Bible Verses About Love

"Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Christ speaks these words at the Last Supper, hours before he proves them on the Cross. The phrase frames Catholic charity as costly — a willingness to spend oneself, not a feeling.

"Charity is patient, is kind: charity envieth not, dealeth not perversely; is not puffed up; Is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth with the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things."

Paul writes to a fractious church and gives them, instead of doctrine, a portrait — what charity does and does not do. Read at most Catholic weddings, but written for ordinary Tuesdays.

"Dearly beloved, let us love one another, for charity is of God. And every one that loveth, is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God: for God is charity."

John makes the most ambitious claim possible: that to love is to know God, and to fail to love is not to know him. The Catechism returns to this passage when it defines what God is.

"For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor might, 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 ends Romans 8 with this litany of things that cannot separate us from God's love. It is read at Catholic funerals because it answers the unspoken question: even now?

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."

Asked by a lawyer to name the greatest commandment, Christ links the two great loves: God and neighbour. The Catechism treats them as inseparable — neither possible without the other.

"For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting."

The most quoted verse in Christianity. In the Douay-Rheims it reads slightly older — "as to give" rather than "that he gave" — and the older cadence preserves the sense of consequence: love issued in a gift.

"Fear is not in charity: but perfect charity casteth out fear, because fear hath pain. And he that feareth, is not perfected in charity."

A diagnostic: where there is real charity, fear quiets. Not the fear of the Lord (which is reverence) but the fear that locks us inside ourselves.

"But above all these things have charity, which is the bond of perfection."

Paul has just listed the virtues — kindness, humility, patience, forgiveness — and crowns them with charity. It is the binding agent that holds the rest in place.

"Hatred stirreth up strifes: and charity covereth all sins."

A wisdom-saying about what charity does in a community: it does not deny sins exist, but it refuses to let them be the last word.