Bible verses about loving others run through the whole of Scripture, from a quiet line in the law of Moses to the final letters of the apostle John. Together they form one of the clearest threads in the Bible and show how God shapes a people who reflect His character.
Below you will find 18 Bible verses about loving others from the King James Version, each with a short note, followed by a closer look at where the command to love comes from, how Jesus deepened it, how the apostles explained it, and which common ideas about love the text does not actually support.
If you are looking for help applying love in specific situations at home, work, or church, the companion page of practical Bible verses for loving others is written for that purpose. Here the goal is understanding.
Every verse below is quoted word for word from the King James Version, with the reference under each passage.
Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.
Leviticus 19:18 (KJV)
This is the root of all later Bible verses about loving others. It appears in a chapter about everyday conduct and forbids grudges and revenge inside the covenant community.
And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
Leviticus 19:33-34 (KJV)
The same chapter shows that Bible verses about loving others reach the foreigner too. Israel’s own memory of being strangers in Egypt becomes the reason for compassion.
He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Deuteronomy 10:18-19 (KJV)
Love for the stranger is grounded in God’s character: He loves the stranger first, so His people must as well.
Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins.
Proverbs 10:12 (KJV)
Wisdom literature adds Bible verses about loving others that show love working quietly, refusing to stir up old offenses. Peter later echoes this line.
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Matthew 22:37-40 (KJV)
Jesus joins Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, showing that love for God and love for people belong together and summarize the law.
And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
Luke 6:31 (KJV)
The Golden Rule turns love into a simple test: treat others the way you would want to be treated.
Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.
Luke 10:36-37 (KJV)
After the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus changes the question from “Who qualifies as my neighbor?” to “Will I act as a neighbor?”
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
Matthew 5:43-45 (KJV)
Among Bible verses about loving others, this is the most demanding. It reaches even to enemies and persecutors, because the Father sends rain on the just and the unjust.
A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
John 13:34-35 (KJV)
Many Bible verses about loving others build toward this “new commandment,” which raises the standard to Christ’s own love and makes it the visible mark of His disciples.
This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:12-13 (KJV)
Jesus defines the depth of love by self-giving, pointing ahead to His own death for His friends.
Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another;
Romans 12:9-10 (KJV)
Paul asks for love without pretense, joined to a hatred of evil and an eagerness to honor others above ourselves.
Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
Romans 13:8-10 (KJV)
Love is a debt that is never fully paid off, and it fulfills the law’s commands about how we treat people.
Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (KJV)
The KJV word “charity” translates the Greek agape. Few Bible verses about loving others describe love so concretely, by what it does and refuses to do.
For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Galatians 5:13-14 (KJV)
Christian freedom is not a license for selfishness; it is freedom to serve one another in love.
And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.
1 Peter 4:8 (KJV)
Like other Bible verses about loving others, this one calls for fervent love, echoing Proverbs 10:12, because love refuses to keep a running record of faults.
Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.
1 John 3:16-18 (KJV)
In these Bible verses about loving others, John measures love by the cross and by practical help for a brother in need, not by words alone.
Beloved, let us love one another: for love 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 love.
1 John 4:7-8 (KJV)
These Bible verses about loving others trace love back to its source: God is love, and love is born of Him.
We love him, because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.
1 John 4:19-21 (KJV)
We love because He first loved us, and John insists that love for God cannot coexist with hatred for a brother.
Before reading Bible verses about loving others, it helps to know that biblical love is not first a feeling. In the Hebrew of Leviticus 19:18, the verb for love describes loyal commitment and active goodwill. A related word, hesed, often rendered “lovingkindness” or “mercy” in the KJV, describes God’s steadfast covenant faithfulness. You can see its range of uses in the Blue Letter Bible lexicon entry for hesed.
In the New Testament the key word is agape, a love that seeks the other person’s good even at personal cost. The KJV sometimes translates it “charity,” which in 1611 meant self-giving love rather than only donations. Some teachers draw sharp lines between agape and phileo, but many scholars caution that the two overlap, so it is wiser to let each passage define love by what it shows. That keeps our reading of passages on neighbor love anchored in the text.
Many readers assume love for neighbor began with Jesus, but He was quoting the Torah. Leviticus 19 is a chapter full of ordinary instructions: leave gleanings for the poor, pay workers promptly, do not curse the deaf or trip the blind, judge fairly. Then verse 18 gathers it all up: “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.”
The setting matters. The verse first forbids vengeance and grudges against “the children of thy people.” Love here is the opposite of settling scores. The closing words “I am the LORD” tie loving people to honoring God. The Old Testament Bible verses about loving others are therefore not abstract ideals but covenant obligations woven into daily life, from the harvest field to the courtroom.
The law did not stop at fellow Israelites. Leviticus 19:34 commands Israel to love the stranger “as thyself,” and Deuteronomy 10:19 repeats it with a reason: “for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” These early Bible verses about loving others asked God’s people to remember their own vulnerability and let it soften them toward others.
Deuteronomy 10:18 adds that God Himself “loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment.” That order is important for understanding all texts about loving people. God’s people are not inventing a new ethic; they are copying their Father. For a wider view of how Scripture describes God’s own affection for people, see our collection of Bible verses about love.
When a lawyer asked Jesus which commandment was greatest, He answered with two texts rather than one: Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:40). Love for God comes first, but the second is “like unto it.” In His teaching, the Bible verses about loving others cannot be pulled apart from love for God.
Jesus was not alone among Jewish teachers in summarizing the law this way. The rabbi Hillel, who lived shortly before Him, is remembered in the Talmud for a negative form of the Golden Rule: do not do to your neighbor what is hateful to you. Jesus states it positively in Luke 6:31, which asks more. In this sense, the Bible verses about loving others become a lens for reading every other command.
In Luke 10 a lawyer tried to narrow the command by asking, “And who is my neighbour?” Jesus answered with a story you can read in full at Bible Gateway’s KJV text of Luke 10:25-37. A priest and a Levite pass by a wounded man. A Samaritan, from a group that Jews of the day distrusted (John 4:9 notes they had “no dealings” with one another), stops, binds his wounds, and pays for his care.
Notice the twist at the end. Jesus does not ask who the neighbor was to the Samaritan; He asks which man “was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves.” Here the verses on love for neighbor shift the question from defining others to becoming a neighbor. Our page of Bible verses about loving your neighbor studies this command more closely, and a practical guide to loving your neighbor shows how it plays out.
Of all the Bible verses about loving others, Matthew 5:44 may be the one people struggle with most: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.” Jesus contrasts this with a popular saying, “hate thine enemy,” which is not a direct quotation of the Old Testament but reflected how many people applied it.
The reason Jesus gives is about God’s own conduct. The Father “maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good” (Matthew 5:45). Loving enemies does not mean pretending wrongs never happened, and it does not require trusting someone who remains dangerous. It means refusing hatred and actively wishing and praying for their good. For a fuller study, read our Bible verses about loving your enemies, along with a companion page of verses for loving your enemies in real conflicts.
If love for neighbor was already in Leviticus, why does Jesus call it a “new commandment” in John 13:34? The answer lies in the phrase “as I have loved you.” The measure is no longer simply “as thyself” but the love of Christ, who had just washed the disciples’ feet, including the feet of the one who would betray Him.
John 15:13 then defines the peak of that love: laying down one’s life for one’s friends. This is why the New Testament Bible verses about loving others keep pointing back to the cross. The command is new in its standard, new in its example, and new in its purpose, since Jesus says this love is how “all men know that ye are my disciples.”
Paul’s letters translate the teaching of Jesus into the life of young churches, and for him the passages on neighbor love were never optional extras for mature believers. In Romans 12:9 he warns against love “with dissimulation,” meaning love that is only an act. In Romans 13:8-10 he calls love a debt we always owe, and he says that love “worketh no ill to his neighbour” and is “the fulfilling of the law.”
First Corinthians 13, which you can study verse by verse at Bible Hub’s KJV page for 1 Corinthians 13, was written to a gifted but divided church. Paul describes love by its behavior: patient, kind, not envious, not proud, not easily provoked, keeping no tally of wrongs. Galatians 5:13-14 adds that freedom in Christ is meant for serving one another. These Bible verses about loving others show that love is how grace takes shape in a community; our page on Bible verses about grace explores that link.
Some of the most searching Bible verses about loving others come from the apostle John’s first letter. For him, love is evidence. “Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God” (1 John 4:7). Hatred toward a brother, on the other hand, exposes a claim to love God as hollow (1 John 4:20).
John is also concrete. In 1 John 3:17 he asks how the love of God can dwell in someone who sees a brother in need and “shutteth up his bowels of compassion” (an older English idiom for closing one’s heart). Love is shown “in deed and in truth.” John grounds everything in grace. The texts about loving people in 1 John never make love a ladder to earn God’s favor. They describe the fruit of having received it.
Seeing the whole arc helps make sense of individual Bible verses about loving others. The table below summarizes how the command grows from the law to the apostles.
| Stage | Key Passage | What It Adds |
|---|---|---|
| Law | Leviticus 19:18 | Love your neighbor as yourself; no revenge or grudges |
| Law | Deuteronomy 10:19 | Love extends to the foreigner, modeled on God |
| Wisdom | Proverbs 10:12 | Love covers offenses rather than stirring strife |
| Jesus | Matthew 22:37-40 | Love for God and neighbor summarize the law |
| Jesus | Matthew 5:44 | Love reaches enemies |
| Jesus | John 13:34 | The standard becomes Christ’s own love |
| Apostles | Romans 13:10 | Love fulfills the law |
| Apostles | 1 John 4:19 | We love because God loved us first |
The movement is not from law to love, as if the Old Testament lacked love. It is from a command given to a covenant nation to a command fulfilled and embodied in Christ, then carried into a worldwide church. Britannica’s article on agape offers helpful background on how Christians have understood this love through history.
Several popular readings of the Bible verses about loving others do not hold up when the text is read carefully. First, love is not the same as approval. Romans 12:9 puts “Let love be without dissimulation” right beside “Abhor that which is evil.”
Second, love is not mainly a mood. It is commanded, which means it involves the will and actions, even when feelings lag behind. Third, “as thyself” is not a command to cultivate self-esteem first; most interpreters read it as assuming we already care for our own needs and asking us to extend that care outward. Fourth, “love covereth all sins” in Proverbs 10:12 does not mean hiding abuse or crime. It means refusing to broadcast and relive personal offenses. Wisdom still matters, as our Bible verses about wisdom page shows.
What about people who have hurt us deeply? The verses on love for neighbor do not require returning to harmful situations. Loving an abusive person can mean seeking their good through accountability and distance rather than closeness, and many pastors encourage involving trusted leaders or professionals when safety is at stake.
What about the Old Testament’s wars and judgments? Christians hold a range of views on how those passages relate to Jesus’ teaching, a question worth studying humbly. What remains consistent is that God’s people were never permitted personal revenge; Romans 12:19 quotes Deuteronomy 32:35 to leave vengeance to God. Finally, what if love feels impossible? The New Testament treats love as a fruit of the Spirit, not a solo achievement, which ties it closely to Bible verses about faith and Bible verses about hope.
The Bible verses about loving others tell one story: God loved first, and He calls His people to reflect that love to neighbors, strangers, and even enemies. The command is ancient, yet in Christ it becomes new, deeper, and possible by grace.
As you keep studying the Bible verses about loving others, you may find encouragement in our Bible verses about peace, which show how love and reconciliation belong together, and in the practical companion page of verses for loving others well.
Genesis 45 contains one of the hardest scenes of forgiveness in the Bible. Joseph is now the second most powerful man in Egypt, and the men who threw him into a pit and sold him for silver are standing in his hall, hungry and afraid. He sends every Egyptian out of the room. Then he weeps so loudly the household hears it through the walls. “I am Joseph your brother,” he says in verse 4, and he tells them not to be grieved or angry with themselves.
Years later, after their father dies, the brothers panic again, sure that Joseph has only been waiting. His reply in Genesis 50:20 is worth reading slowly: “Ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good.” He does not pretend the pit never happened. He names it as evil. What he refuses to do is use his power to pay it back.
That is a working picture of love toward people who wronged you. Naming the harm is honest, and rebuilding trust can take years. But the heart stops keeping a ledger. If there is someone in your own family whose name you can’t say without your jaw tightening, Joseph’s hall is a good place to stand for a while before deciding anything.
The little letter of Philemon is a single page, yet it shows love running straight into a social wall. Onesimus was a slave who had left his master, Philemon, and somehow ended up with Paul in prison. There Onesimus came to faith. Paul now sends him home carrying this letter, and the request is startling for the first century. Receive him, Paul writes in verse 16, “not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved.”
Notice how Paul asks. He could give an order, and he says so, but he chooses to appeal on the basis of love instead (verses 8-9). He offers to cover any debt out of his own pocket. He reminds Philemon, gently, how much Philemon already owes him. Nothing in the letter is sentimental. Everything in it costs somebody something.
Sometimes love for another person means asking a hard thing of a third person, and doing it with respect on both sides. It might look like a boss receiving back an employee who failed, or a church family welcoming someone with a messy record. The letter doesn’t tell us how Philemon responded, but the fact that it was kept and copied suggests the answer was kind.
Most of the love the Bible asks for never makes a headline. It is the casserole left on a porch, the ride to a dialysis appointment, the text that says only “thinking about you today.” John writes that we should not love merely in word or in tongue but in deed and in truth (1 John 3:18), and deeds, as any parent knows, are usually small and repetitive.
Try something simple this week. Choose one person who is easy to overlook: a night-shift cleaner at your workplace, a widowed neighbor, a teenager at church who sits alone. Learn their name if you don’t know it. Ask one real question and then listen to the whole answer without checking your phone. That is not a grand program, but it is exactly the sort of attention Jesus gave to people like Zacchaeus up in his tree.
A word of honesty, too. You cannot meet every need you see, and trying will burn you out and make you resentful. Love includes knowing what is yours to do, and handing the rest to God and to other people who are gifted for it.
Sooner or later every caregiver, parent, and friend hits the wall. Paul wrote to tired people in Galatians 6:9: “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” He assumes weariness is normal. The advice is not to feel more energetic. It is to keep going in small steps, trusting that what is sown will eventually grow, even when you can’t see a green shoot.
Rest is not unloving. Jesus himself slipped away to quiet places to pray, and he slept in the stern of a boat during a storm. Taking a night off, asking a sibling to share the hospital shifts, or telling a friend honestly that you need a week before the next phone call can be the very thing that keeps your love alive.
If you are running on empty tonight, a prayer might sound something like this. Lord, I have given what I had, and it’s gone. Fill me with what comes from you, because mine has run dry. Show me who can help me carry this, and give me the humility to ask them. Teach me to love with your strength instead of my own. Amen.
It helps to picture how slowly this kind of love usually grows. A woman in my own church spent two years bringing meals to an elderly man down the street who never said thank you. At his funeral his daughter told the congregation that her father had stopped being angry at the world because somebody kept knocking on his door. Nobody planned a campaign. She simply decided, on a Tuesday, that he was her neighbor, and she kept deciding it. That is what the Scriptures above are asking for, over and over, in different voices and from different centuries.
If that feels too big, shrink it. Ask yourself who is the next person within reach of your hands today, then do one concrete thing for them before bedtime. The command in Leviticus and in the Gospels is the same, and it begins with whoever is standing closest.
There is a final caution for people who love by habit and rarely stop to ask why. The apostle Paul warns in 1 Corinthians 13:3 that a person can give away everything and still lack love, if the giving has no heart behind it. Check your motives kindly, the way you would check on a friend, and let God correct them without shame.
Nearby topics worth a look: Bible Verses For Loving Others, Bible Verses About Forgiving Others, Bible Verses For Praying for Others, Bible Verses About Praying for Others and Bible Verses For Loving Your Neighbor.
If you want to dig further, Blue Letter Bible, Bible Gateway and Bible Hub are good places to start.
Among the Bible verses about loving others, most teachers begin with Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 22:37-40, and John 13:34-35. Together they show the original command, Jesus’ summary of the law, and His new standard of loving as He loved. First Corinthians 13:4-7 and 1 John 4:7-21 are close behind.
The first explicit command is Leviticus 19:18, “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Jesus quotes it in Matthew 22:39, and Paul repeats it in Romans 13:9 and Galatians 5:14. It is the seed from which the other Bible verses about loving others grow.
No. Biblical love seeks another person’s true good, and Romans 12:9 pairs sincere love with hating what is evil. Love can disagree and still stay kind.
In 1611, “charity” carried the sense of self-giving love for God and others. The KJV uses it for the Greek agape in passages like 1 Corinthians 13, while many other places in the KJV translate the same word as “love.”
John says it plainly: “he that loveth God love his brother also” (1 John 4:21). Jesus placed the two great commandments side by side, and the apostles treat love for people as the visible proof of love for God.
