10 Verses That Teach Us How to Love

“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” - 1 John 4:8

Alex Duke encourages us to “press pause for a second. Imagine you didn’t exist. In fact, imagine nothing had ever existed—no people, no places, no things. Is anything left? According to Jesus, there is. “There’s love. Love between the eternally loving, eternally secure, and eternally complete Godhead.” We cannot know love unless we know Jesus Christ because he does not merely represent or reflect love - he IS love. To love well, we must spend our lives letting him lead us in love.

This means we cannot truly understand love until we understand the nature of God. Love is frequently misunderstood as “being nice” or “doing good things,” but nice is impotent and safe - Jesus challenged people’s sins and provoked religious leaders. Jesus called the Twelve to follow him into danger and hardship, and he told us to pick up our cross and follow him. We cannot know love apart from him, which is why love will even lead to suffering.

4. Love Is Active

“Let all that you do be done in love.” -1 Corinthians 16:14

Many “love” verses feature some kind of active verb, which tells us that people who love are more than well-wishers. They go out of their way to actively help other people, not to earn God’s love, but because they are “of” God through Christ, and they see through Jesus’ loving eyes. Love of God compels us to make dinner for a new family in the neighborhood, listen to a weeping senior who faces the loss of independence, or go with a co-worker to a frightening medical appointment.

Actively loving looks different for everyone, depending on God’s direction to each individual. For some, that means entering a place of political instability; for others, it means taking a job at home where secular values are deeply entrenched and trying to bring the truth to those people. For a senior in poor physical health, mentorship and prayer are active ways of serving the Lord and loving others. But make no mistake, love moves: 

“Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.” - 1 John 3:18

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"By this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.” - John 13:35

Many Christians exclude and hurt others who do not agree with them, both inside and outside the church. Our behavior must reflect the nature of our Savior because our lives are our greatest testimonies of the influence of Christ’s love in our own lives. He ate with people who did not agree with him, and eating with someone was a sign of peace and friendship.

But we are not always like Christ, try as we do to become more and more like him. We are often guilty of handling conflict poorly, even among our fellow believers. Conflict is inevitable; the Disciples even argued about “who is the greatest” (Matthew 18:1). They were not thinking about each other or registering what Jesus was teaching them about himself. It should be easy to love fellow Christians as we follow the same Savior; disunity is a huge source of strife and a terrible example to the watching world, especially when conflict becomes disrespectful. When we are selfish and confrontational, the message of Christ’s love for people is lost amid our raised voices and hurtful rhetoric.

6. Love Is Commanded

“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

The Lord’s instructions are also found in the Old Testament, such as Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. Love is not optional, but as we saw above, there are challenges. It seems impossible to obey God by loving others as we should.

We cannot fully or consistently love in our own strength; we need the Holy Spirit. We need God’s forgiveness for falling short on a regular basis. Both are available to us from a loving God who realizes how fallen and needy we are but who meets our needs because we want desperately to tell the world that God IS love in the most loving way possible. The good news is that, although this is an instruction, Jesus is transforming us into his likeness (2 Corinthians 3:18). That means we are able to love honestly and truly, not as a matter of duty.

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“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” - John 15:13

The first and most obvious example of sacrificial love is Christ’s death on the cross to pay for our sins. A sacrifice is costly but given willingly and lovingly. It hurts to give money to a missionary when our accounts are suffering. When life is stressful, but we take time to help someone, that is a sacrifice. And when we make a sacrifice out of love, we do so without heaping the burden of guilt or shame onto the recipient of our sacrifice.

We can also behave sacrificially by doing and saying things that are risky but are necessary for the other person. Telling the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15) is a form of sacrifice. When a loved one is straying from the straight path, and you believe God is urging you to tell him or her to stop it, that can be scary. What if that friend stops talking to you because the truth is offensive, no matter how gently you put it? This is as much a sacrificial choice as defending a weak person against someone else’s violence.

8. Love Serves Others

”For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” - Galatians 5:13

When the Disciples fought about who was the greatest, Jesus told them they would have to give up the dream of being “first.” Jesus explained that “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:28) Leaders of the world are often surrounded by servants and eager to promote their personal glory, which must have caused some confusion for the Twelve.

Real love is a love that obeys and serves God. “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8) Service begins with following the Lord’s own command to look after those who are weaker than ourselves and to humble ourselves. In other words, your service might be seen, but it will be God who gets the glory, not you. Even Jesus did the Father’s will and gave glory to him, choosing humiliation for himself on the cross.

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“If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” - John 15:19

To love God is to be hated by the world. Christians will be laughed at, left out, rejected, bullied, yelled at, physically harmed, and even murdered for what they believe. We choose to be set apart by saying “no” to sexual immorality, laziness, materialism, exploitation, etc. We can simultaneously reject the world’s values while loving the people who are so lost that they cannot see how lost they are.

Forgiveness is part of how we love counter-culturally. We forgive because we are forgiven, and God commands it: Jesus told us that if we do not forgive others, the Father will not forgive us. (Matthew 6:15) We don’t forgive as the world forgives - to let go of bitterness and move on with life - but to obey a loving and forgiving Father. We forgive as an invitation to continually receive Christ’s forgiveness for ourselves and to introduce a loving God to those who hurt us. Like God, we do not want anyone to die apart from him. (2 Peter 3:9)

10. Love Is Here

“If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth.” - John 14:15-17

Jesus is Immanuel, God with us (Matthew 1:23). When he ascended into Heaven, Jesus left his Holy Spirit as a helper, and he promised to return. Hear the tenderness in these words: “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am, you may also be” (John 14:3). The Lord wants to live with us, his children, for eternity. He is making things ready to come back and get us. Jesus loves us and will not be gone forever.

But he is also with us all the time. The Triune God is constantly present by his Spirit, and this is not like leaving a representative or a deputy either. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are One. By His Spirit, we have God himself in our lives, loving us and showing us how to love well. PLUS, we have the promise that Christ will come and wipe away our tears - this is the very image of a tender-hearted, earthly father making everything right. Because he has kept every promise, he has shown us the best examples of a love that keeps its promises and serves others; we can trust Jesus to do this.

Godly love is not easy, and it was never designed to be. Nothing easy or cheap is worth having. But following a loving God who came in person to show us how to love well is worth the hardship of trying to love people who are hard to love, including ourselves. And because we follow a loving God, we receive consolation when we repent of failing to love as we ought. We get to walk and talk with the One who knows us fully and still loves us. May we show others what his love is like, even though we can barely comprehend “the breadth and length and height and depth, [...] the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge”. (Ephesians 3:18-19)

Sources: https://biblehub.com/commentaries/1_john/4-19.htm
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/what-does-the-bible-teach-about-love/
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