These Bible verses for love and friendship celebrate the loyal friends who stay close in hard times, speak honest words and share both joy and sorrow. They include the deep bond of David and Jonathan, the practical wisdom of Proverbs on choosing friends well, and Jesus calling his disciples friends. Share them with someone who has walked beside you.
A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
Proverbs 17:17 (KJV)
A true friend loves at all times, and hard seasons reveal that kind of loyalty.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13 (KJV)
Jesus says the greatest love is laying down your life for your friends, as he did.
Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.
John 15:15 (KJV)
Jesus no longer calls his disciples servants but friends, sharing with them all he heard from the Father.
A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.
Proverbs 18:24 (KJV)
Being friendly builds friendship, and there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.
Proverbs 27:17 (KJV)
As iron sharpens iron, good friends help each other grow wiser and stronger.
Ointment and perfume rejoice the heart: so doth the sweetness of a man’s friend by hearty counsel.
Proverbs 27:9 (KJV)
Heartfelt counsel from a friend is as sweet as fragrant oil.
Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.
Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 (KJV)
Two are better than one, because a friend can lift you up when you fall.
And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.
1 Samuel 18:1 (KJV)
Jonathan’s soul was knit with David’s, and he loved him as his own soul, a model of deep friendship.
Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.
Proverbs 27:6 (KJV)
Honest correction from a friend can be trusted, even when it stings.
Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place; Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite: for they had made an appointment together to come to mourn with him and to comfort him.
Job 2:11 (KJV)
Job’s three friends travel to mourn with him and comfort him in his suffering.
He that covereth a transgression seeketh love; but he that repeateth a matter separateth very friends.
Proverbs 17:9 (KJV)
Covering an offence builds love, while repeating it separates close friends.
Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.
Romans 12:15 (KJV)
Paul asks us to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.
Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do.
1 Thessalonians 5:11 (KJV)
Believers are urged to comfort and build one another up, as good friends do.
And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God.
James 2:23 (KJV)
Abraham believed God and was called the Friend of God, showing friendship with God himself.
Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go: Lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul.
Proverbs 22:24-25 (KJV)
Proverbs warns against close friendship with an angry person, lest you learn their ways.
My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.
1 John 3:18 (KJV)
Love should be shown in action and truth, not just in words.
Proverbs 17:17 says a friend loves at all times. That love shows up in small, faithful acts: a message on a hard day, remembering what matters to someone, showing up when it is inconvenient. Job’s friends in Job 2:11 came to mourn with him, and their first gift was simply being there.
Good friends also help each other grow. Proverbs 27:17 compares friendship to iron sharpening iron, and Proverbs 27:6 values honest words given in love. Ask God for the courage to speak truth kindly, and the humility to receive it when a friend does the same for you.
Use these verses to encourage friends directly. Write one in a card, send it in a text, or pray it for a friend going through a difficult season. And remember John 15:15, where Jesus calls his followers friends; his friendship is the pattern for every other friendship we have, loyal, honest and generous to the end.
John 15:13 works well shared directly with a close friend, as a statement of how deeply you value the relationship.
You might also turn to Bible Verses About Hope and Healing and Bible Verses About Overcoming Anxiety.
Want the wider context? The complete King James Version is available at Blue Letter Bible.
Bible Verses For Patience and Bible Verses For Baptism explore related themes.
This subject overlaps with Bible Verses For Work and with Bible Verses For Peace During Difficult Times.
For a related angle, see Bible Verses For Prayer and Protection or Bible Verses For Children's Protection.
Readers of this page often go on to Bible Verses For Unconditional Love or Bible Verses About Unconditional Love.
Bible Gateway makes it easy to compare a verse across several English translations.
To trace a verse through the rest of Scripture, the cross-references on Bible Hub are useful.
Return to this verse for whichever friendship is on your mind right now.
These verses were never meant to sit on a page as decoration \u2014 they’re meant to shape how you actually respond the next time you want to be a better friend but aren’t sure where to start.
You don’t need polished or formal language for it \u2014 an honest, plainly worded sentence is enough, something as simple as telling God directly for practical ways to love your friends well this week.
As Elijah’s ministry drew toward its close, 2 Kings 2:1-6 shows Elisha refusing to leave his side no matter how many times Elijah told him plainly to stay behind, saying each time, as the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. That stubborn persistence was rewarded when Elisha witnessed Elijah taken up into heaven in a whirlwind and received a double portion of his spirit afterward. Bible Verses For Love and Friendship built on this bond show devotion that refuses convenient exits, choosing to stay present through an ending rather than stepping away early.
Acts 9:26-27 describes the believers in Jerusalem afraid of Saul, doubting his conversion was even real after everything he had done to persecute them, until Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles, vouching for him personally and explaining what had happened on the road to Damascus. Without Barnabas, Saul might never have been accepted into the very community he later helped lead for years. Bible Verses For Love and Friendship built on Barnabas’s example show friendship willing to risk personal credibility to vouch for someone everyone else still had good reason to distrust.
Acts 15:36-41 records a sharp contention between Paul and Barnabas over whether to bring John Mark on their next journey, so sharp that they parted ways entirely, with Barnabas taking Mark and Paul taking Silas instead. Scripture does not smooth over this real conflict or pretend it did not happen between two men who had served together closely for many years already. Bible Verses For Love and Friendship do not promise every friendship survives every disagreement unchanged; sometimes friends serve God well even while walking separate paths afterward.
Job 2:11-13 describes three friends traveling from their own homes just to mourn with Job and comfort him during his suffering, and when they saw his condition, they sat down with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights, and none of them spoke a single word, because they saw that his grief was very great indeed. Their silence, before their later unhelpful advice ruined it somewhat, was actually their best gift to him in that moment. Bible Verses For Love and Friendship sometimes ask for nothing more than showing up and simply staying quiet.
Exodus 17:10-13 describes Israel winning a battle against Amalek only for as long as Moses held his hands up toward heaven, but his arms eventually grew heavy, so Aaron and Hur stood on either side, held up his hands, one on the one side, and the other on the other side, until the sun finally went down. Neither man fought in the battle himself; they simply supported someone who could not keep going alone. Bible Verses For Love and Friendship built on this account describe friendship as sometimes doing nothing more dramatic than holding someone else steady.
Esther 4:12-16 shows Mordecai urging Esther to risk approaching the king uninvited to save their people from destruction, and Esther, after asking her people to fast for her for three days, decided to go anyway, saying, if I perish, I perish. Their relationship combined guardian, family, and something like the closest of friendships, built through years together long before this crisis ever arrived at their door. Bible Verses For Love and Friendship can include family bonds this deep, where loyalty holds even when the personal cost could not be higher.
2 Kings 4:8-10 describes a woman of Shunem who noticed Elisha passing through regularly and told her husband, let us make a little chamber on the wall, and set for him there a bed, a table, a stool, and a candlestick, so he could stay whenever he happened to pass by. She built a friendship through steady, practical hospitality rather than grand gestures, simply noticing a real need and meeting it consistently over time. Bible Verses For Love and Friendship can grow this quietly, one small kindness repeated regularly until it becomes a real, lasting bond.
Acts 3:1-10 shows Peter and John going up to the temple together at the hour of prayer, and it was the two of them together who healed a lame man begging at the gate that day. Acts 4:13 later notes that religious leaders recognized they had been with Jesus specifically because of how the two of them stood together under real pressure and questioning. Bible Verses For Love and Friendship include this kind of shared calling, where two friends serve side by side and are remembered as a pair rather than only as individuals.
Philemon 1:15-17 shows Paul writing on behalf of Onesimus, a runaway servant, asking Philemon to receive him back not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, and to receive him exactly as Paul himself would be received. This letter asked Philemon to rebuild a broken relationship on entirely new terms after real wrong had clearly happened between the two men. Bible Verses For Love and Friendship built on this short letter show reconciliation as something friendship can offer even after genuine harm and real, justified anger.
Proverbs 27:17 says iron sharpeneth iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend, describing friction that produces something sharper and more useful over time, not simply comfort or constant agreement. A friend who only ever agrees with you rarely helps you actually grow as a person. Bible Verses For Love and Friendship built on this proverb describe real friendship as something that occasionally challenges and refines a person, even when that process feels uncomfortable in the moment it happens, rather than only ever soothing or flattering them constantly.
A short daily reading can deepen a friendship that has settled into routine or quiet distance over time. Return to these Bible Verses For Love and Friendship whenever a relationship needs fresh attention right now.
Lord, I have let this friendship drift without ever meaning to, busy with other things that felt urgent at the time but really were not. Give me the courage to reach out first, even if it feels a little awkward after so long apart. Help me be the kind of friend who shows up, not only when it is convenient for my own schedule and mood. Let Bible Verses For Love and Friendship remind me that this relationship is worth the effort it will take to repair.
Many assume real friendship should feel effortless all the time, and if it takes real work, something must already be wrong between two people. Elisha’s devotion to Elijah took repeated, deliberate choices to stay close, not one easy feeling that simply carried him along automatically without any cost. these passages consistently describe friendship as something maintained on purpose, through specific choices like showing up, forgiving quickly, and reaching out first, rather than something that simply survives on its own without any attention at all.
A few small, consistent actions, the kind these verses on this page keep describing, tend to build a friendship more than one occasional grand gesture ever really can.
A few honest questions, worth sitting with alongside these friendship verses, can reveal which friendships need attention and which ones are already healthy.
Most of us think of friendship as something that grows quietly. The friendship between David and Jonathan started with a decision. After David defeated Goliath and stood before Saul, 1 Samuel 18:1 says that ‘the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.’ Then comes the detail people skip past. Jonathan was the king’s son, the heir to the throne, and David was a shepherd boy with no standing at court. Verses 3 and 4 say Jonathan made a covenant with him and stripped off his own robe, then handed over his garments, even his sword and his bow.
Think about what that gesture meant. A prince giving a robe to a rival for the crown was handing over his rank in public. He did it without bargaining, and he kept doing it. Years later, when Saul’s anger put David’s life in danger, Jonathan warned him, shielded him and wept with him at their last meeting in the field (1 Samuel 20:41-42). He ended that goodbye with the words, ‘Go in peace, forasmuch as we have sworn both of us in the name of the LORD.’
A friendship like that costs something real. If you have a friend who has never once had to give anything up for you, or you for them, it may still be a good friendship, but it hasn’t been tested the way Jonathan’s was. Ask yourself what your own robe would be: your time on a busy weekend, a favor that exposes you to a little awkwardness, the willingness to stand beside someone whose reputation is shaky.
Ruth had every practical reason to walk away. Her husband had died, her mother-in-law Naomi was bitter and broke, and the road back to Bethlehem led to a country where a Moabite widow would be a stranger. Naomi told both daughters-in-law to go home. Orpah kissed her and went. Ruth held on, and what she said is among the most quoted lines in the Bible: ‘Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God’ (Ruth 1:16).
Read it slowly and notice what is missing. Ruth does not promise to fix Naomi’s grief or to make the future look brighter. She promises to be there. Where you go, I go. Where you sleep, I sleep. That is friendship stripped down to presence, and it is often exactly what a person in the middle of loss can actually receive. Advice runs out. Someone sitting in the next chair does not.
Notice too that this loyalty crossed lines of nationality, age and religion. Nothing in the story suggests the two women had much in common beyond the husband and sons they had lost. Yet the book of Ruth ends with Naomi holding a grandchild, surrounded by neighbors who say Ruth is better to her than seven sons. Faithful company over a long stretch of ordinary days did that. It rarely feels dramatic while it is happening.
When Lazarus fell ill in Bethany, his sisters sent Jesus a short message that says a great deal about how He was known: ‘Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick’ (John 11:3). They did not write ‘your follower’ or ‘the man you taught.’ They wrote ‘he whom thou lovest.’ Jesus stayed two more days where He was, and by the time He arrived Lazarus had been in the tomb four days. Martha met Him on the road with an honest complaint, and Mary fell at His feet in tears.
What He did next is the shortest verse in the English Bible. ‘Jesus wept’ (John 11:35). He knew within minutes He was going to call Lazarus out of the grave, yet He stood in front of that tomb and cried anyway. The onlookers noticed: ‘Behold how he loved him!’ (verse 36). Grief was not something to hurry past because a miracle was coming.
That scene gives friends something to copy. When someone you care about is hurting, you do not need to have the solution in your pocket before you show up. You can be sad with them. Plenty of hospital hallways and funeral-home foyers have been filled with people who didn’t know what to say and stayed anyway, and those people are usually remembered long after the clever speakers are forgotten. Weeping with a friend is not weakness. The Lord of heaven did it.
Scripture is warm about friendship, but it is not naive. The same book that says a friend loves at all times also warns, ‘Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go: Lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul’ (Proverbs 22:24-25). Paul puts it more briefly in 1 Corinthians 15:33: ‘Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.’ Habits spread. Attitudes spread. If you spend most of your free evenings with someone who mocks everything you hold dear, you will eventually find the mockery coming out of your own mouth.
This does not mean you should drop a friend the first time they have a bad month. Everyone is difficult sometimes, and Jesus ate with people whose reputations were far worse than anything on your contact list. The question is the direction of the pull. Over a year, do you come away from this person more honest or less, more patient or less, closer to your family or further from them? Honest answers to those questions are worth more than a general feeling.
If a friendship is steadily dragging you somewhere you do not want to go, the kind response is usually a gradual one: fewer late nights, firmer limits, a plain word about what you are no longer willing to do. Some of those friendships recover. Some quietly shrink. Either way, you can release someone from your daily life without hating them, and you can keep praying for them long after the phone stops ringing.
If you want to keep going with this theme, try Bible Verses About Love and Friendship, Bible Verses About Fatherly Love, Bible Verses About Mothers Love, Bible Verses About Self Love and Worth and Bible Verses About Marriage and Love.
For deeper study, Bible Gateway, Bible Hub and Bible Study Tools are all free to use.
Proverbs 17:17 says a friend loves at all times. That love shows up in small, faithful acts: a message on a hard day, remembering what matters to someone, showing up when it is inconvenient.
This page brings together 20 King James Version references about love and Friendship, drawn from 11 different books of the Bible.
Yes. The verses about love and Friendship gathered here include passages from both the Old Testament and the New Testament, such as Proverbs 17:17 and John 15:15.
Proverbs 17:17 is one of the verses about love and Friendship referenced in this collection, alongside Job 2:11.
Yes, the verses referenced on this page, including Proverbs 17:17, are quoted according to the King James Version (KJV), and are suitable for daily reading, memorization, or devotional use.
