{"id":118939,"date":"2026-10-17T15:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T19:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=118939"},"modified":"2026-10-17T15:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T19:20:08","slug":"what-does-the-bible-say-about-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/bible-resources\/bible-answers\/what-does-the-bible-say-about-love\/","title":{"rendered":"What Does the Bible Say About Love? Not for a Wedding"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='booster-block booster-read-block'>\n                <div class=\"twp-read-time\">\n                \t<i class=\"booster-icon twp-clock\"><\/i> <span>Read Time:<\/span>11 Minute, 12 Second                <\/div>\n\n            <\/div><p>You have probably heard it at a wedding. Two people stand at the front, somebody opens a Bible, and out comes the familiar list. Love is patient. Love is kind. Everyone nods. The photographer edges quietly down the side.<\/p>\n<p>It is a beautiful passage and it belongs there as much as anywhere. But if you want to know what the Bible says about love, the wedding is the wrong room to hear it in. That passage was written to a church that was taking each other to court.<\/p>\n<h2>What Does the Bible Say About Love? The Short Answer<\/h2>\n<p>The Bible treats love as something you do, usually toward someone who has not earned it. That is the thread that runs through the whole book, and it is the part that gets lost in the flowers.<\/p>\n<p>You can see it in how Jesus hands it over. &#8220;A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another&#8221; (John 13:34). It is a command. You cannot command a feeling. Nobody can order you to find someone delightful. You can only be told what to do about them.<\/p>\n<p>You can see it in how God is described. &#8220;He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love&#8221; (1 John 4:8). And in how God&#8217;s love gets proved: &#8220;But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us&#8221; (Romans 5:8). Not while we were lovable. While we were not.<\/p>\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"bb8885f220\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/bb8885f220\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n<h2>The Famous Love Chapter Was Not Written for a Wedding<\/h2>\n<p>1 Corinthians 13 is a letter. Paul is writing to a congregation in the Greek port city of Corinth, and he is not writing because things are going well.<\/p>\n<p>Read the chapters that come before it and you find out what is actually happening in that room:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>They have split into factions. &#8220;Every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ&#8221; (1 Corinthians 1:12).<\/li>\n<li>They are suing each other. &#8220;Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another&#8221; (1 Corinthians 6:7).<\/li>\n<li>Their shared meal has gone wrong in the ugliest way. &#8220;For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken&#8221; (1 Corinthians 11:21).<\/li>\n<li>They are competing over who has the more impressive spiritual gifts, which is what chapters 12 and 14 are both about.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Chapter 13 sits in the middle of that. Not after it. Inside it. Paul is in the middle of sorting out a mess, he stops, and he writes the most quoted paragraph about love in human history.<\/p>\n<h2>Every Line Answers a Fight Paul Had Just Named<\/h2>\n<p>Once you know what is going on in Corinth, the famous list stops reading like poetry and starts reading like a mirror. Here is the passage in the King James wording:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;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&#8221; (1 Corinthians 13:4-5).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now look at where those same words were sitting a few pages earlier.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;Is not puffed up.&#8221;<\/strong> Five chapters back Paul wrote, &#8220;Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth&#8221; (1 Corinthians 8:1). He is using the same word about the same people. They were proud of what they knew. He tells them knowledge inflates; love builds.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;Charity envieth not.&#8221;<\/strong> In the chapter immediately before, Paul has the parts of a body arguing about rank: &#8220;If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body&#8221; (1 Corinthians 12:15). That is envy, written out as a little play.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;Seeketh not her own.&#8221;<\/strong> That is the answer to the man grabbing his own supper while someone else goes hungry, and to the believer dragging another believer in front of a judge. Paul had already asked them, &#8220;Why do ye not rather take wrong?&#8221; (1 Corinthians 6:7).<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal&#8221;<\/strong> (1 Corinthians 13:1). Tongues is the exact gift they were showing off with. He opens by naming it.<\/p>\n<p>None of that is hidden. It is all in the same letter, a few paragraphs apart. But most of us only ever meet chapter 13 on its own, printed on a card, with no idea what it was answering.<\/p>\n<h2>Why the King James Calls It &#8220;Charity&#8221;<\/h2>\n<p>If you read that passage in a King James Bible, the word is not &#8220;love.&#8221; It is &#8220;charity&#8221; &#8211; fifteen times in thirteen verses, ending with &#8220;the greatest of these is charity&#8221; (1 Corinthians 13:13). Yet a few hundred pages later the same translators wrote &#8220;love one another&#8221; in John 13:34. Behind both English words sits the same Greek root.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Charity&#8221; came into English from the Latin <em>caritas<\/em>. In 1611 it did not mean a collection tin. It meant costly care for another person. English has drifted since then, which is why the chapter can sound oddly formal now, and why the modern ear hears &#8220;love&#8221; and thinks of a feeling while the older ear heard a cost.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to go further into the Greek behind it, we unpacked that word on its own in <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/bible-resources\/bible-stories\/greek-word-for-love\/\">the Greek word for love: what does &#8220;agape&#8221; really mean<\/a>, and looked at the moment Jesus and Peter use two different love words in the same conversation in <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/what-jesus-teaches\/agape-vs-phileo-what-jesus-actually-said-about-love\/\">agape vs phileo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>The Old Testament&#8217;s Main Love Word Is Not a Feeling Either<\/h2>\n<p>This is not only a New Testament idea. The Hebrew Scriptures have their own central word for God&#8217;s love &#8211; <em>chesed<\/em>, often turned into English as &#8220;mercy,&#8221; &#8220;kindness&#8221; or &#8220;lovingkindness.&#8221; It carries the sense of loyalty. Not warmth that comes and goes, but commitment that stays put.<\/p>\n<p>Psalm 136 is twenty-six verses long. Every single one of them ends with the same line: &#8220;for his mercy endureth for ever.&#8221; Twenty-six times, no exceptions. The psalm is built so you cannot miss the point. God&#8217;s love is the thing that does not stop.<\/p>\n<p>Lamentations says it in the middle of a ruined city: &#8220;It is of the LORD&#8217;S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness&#8221; (Lamentations 3:22-23). Written by someone looking at rubble. Still true that morning. We went deeper into that word in <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/bible-resources\/bible-stories\/hebrew-word-for-lovingkindness\/\">the Hebrew word for loving-kindness<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>What This Changes<\/h2>\n<p>Here is the part that moves this from information to something you have to do something with.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Love is patient&#8221; is not a compliment. It is an instruction, and it is aimed at a specific person. Paul was not describing a feeling the Corinthians should try to have. He was telling them how to behave toward the particular people in that room who were driving them up the wall &#8211; the faction that disagreed with them, the one who ate first, the one who would not stop talking.<\/p>\n<p>Which means the test of love in the Bible is never the person who is easy to love. It is the one who is not. You already know who that is. You thought of them somewhere in the last paragraph.<\/p>\n<p>And that is strangely freeing. If love were a feeling, you would be stuck waiting for it to show up. Because it is behaviour, you can start this afternoon, in a bad mood, with a person you are not particularly fond of. The feeling is not the entry requirement. It is often what turns up later, after the behaviour has been going on for a while.<\/p>\n<p>A good place to start: <strong>30 Days Walking with Jesus<\/strong>. It is a short daily walk through how Jesus actually treated people, built so you can do it in a few minutes a morning. <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/30-days-walking-with-jesus-free-sample\/?utm_source=wordpress&amp;utm_medium=article-inline&amp;utm_content=hero\">Get the free guide<\/a>. Free.<\/p>\n<h2>Actions to Take<\/h2>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Read 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 before you read 13 again.<\/strong> It takes about six minutes. You will never hear the wedding reading the same way.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Pick the hard one.<\/strong> Think of the person you find most difficult this week. Take one line from Paul&#8217;s list &#8211; long-suffering, kind, not easily provoked &#8211; and apply only that one to only them, for one day.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Do the small, costly thing.<\/strong> Send the message you have been putting off. Let the thing go that you were planning to bring up. Pay a cost nobody will see. That is the kind of love the chapter is describing.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h2>Journaling Prompts<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>When you say you love someone, are you describing how you feel about them or how you treat them? Which of the two would they recognise?<\/li>\n<li>Which line on Paul&#8217;s list is the one you fail most often, and who is usually in the room when you fail it?<\/li>\n<li>Psalm 136 repeats the same line twenty-six times. What would change in you if you genuinely believed God&#8217;s love toward you did not run out?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>A Prayer About Love<\/h2>\n<p><em>God, I have been waiting to feel loving before I act loving, and it has not worked. Thank you that your love for me never depended on me being easy to love. Show me the one person I keep leaving out, and give me the patience to go first this week even when nothing in me wants to. Make my love something people can actually lean on, not just something I feel. Amen.<\/em><\/p>\n<h2>Discussion Question<\/h2>\n<p>If 1 Corinthians 13 was written to settle church arguments rather than to bless marriages, should we still read it at weddings? Tell us what you think in the comments below.<\/p>\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"bb8885f220\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/bb8885f220\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n<h2>Share This<\/h2>\n<p>&#8220;The most famous love passage in the Bible was written to a church that was suing each other. Every line in it answers a fight Paul had just named.&#8221; https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=118939<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Jesus commanded love. You cannot command a feeling. You can only command what you do. That changes the whole thing.&#8221; https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=118939<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Psalm 136 is twenty-six verses long and every single one ends &#8216;for his mercy endureth for ever.&#8217; The psalm is built so you cannot miss it.&#8221; https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=118939<\/p>\n<h2>Questions People Ask About What the Bible Says About Love<\/h2>\n<h3>What does the Bible say about love?<\/h3>\n<p>The Bible presents love mainly as action rather than feeling. Jesus gives it as a command in John 13:34: &#8220;A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.&#8221; Romans 5:8 defines God&#8217;s love by what it cost: &#8220;while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.&#8221; The clearest description is 1 Corinthians 13:4-5, where love is long-suffering, kind, not envious, not puffed up and seeks not her own. Every item on that list is something a person chooses to do, not something they wait to feel.<\/p>\n<h3>Was 1 Corinthians 13 written for weddings?<\/h3>\n<p>No. 1 Corinthians 13 is part of a letter written to a congregation in Corinth that was splitting into factions (1 Corinthians 1:12), taking each other to court (1 Corinthians 6:7), ruining their shared meal so that &#8220;one is hungry, and another is drunken&#8221; (1 Corinthians 11:21), and competing over spiritual gifts. The chapter sits in the middle of Paul&#8217;s correction of those problems. It is read at weddings today, but it was written to settle arguments inside a church.<\/p>\n<h3>Why does the King James Bible say &#8220;charity&#8221; instead of &#8220;love&#8221;?<\/h3>\n<p>The King James Version uses &#8220;charity&#8221; throughout 1 Corinthians 13, including &#8220;the greatest of these is charity&#8221; in verse 13, while using &#8220;love&#8221; in other passages such as John 13:34. Both English words translate the same underlying Greek root. &#8220;Charity&#8221; entered English from the Latin caritas, and in 1611 it meant costly care for another person rather than donating money. The modern narrowing of the word is why the chapter can sound formal to a present-day reader.<\/p>\n<h3>What is the Hebrew word for God&#8217;s love in the Old Testament?<\/h3>\n<p>The main Hebrew word is chesed, usually translated in the King James Version as &#8220;mercy,&#8221; &#8220;kindness&#8221; or &#8220;lovingkindness.&#8221; It describes loyal, committed care rather than an emotion. Psalm 136 is twenty-six verses long and every verse ends with the refrain &#8220;for his mercy endureth for ever.&#8221; Lamentations 3:22-23 uses the same idea in a destroyed city: &#8220;It is of the LORD&#8217;S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h3>How can love be a command if it is a feeling?<\/h3>\n<p>This is the point of how the Bible frames it. A feeling cannot be commanded, so when Jesus says &#8220;love one another&#8221; in John 13:34 he is directing behaviour. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 lists actions and restraints, not emotions: being patient, being kind, not envying, not insisting on your own way, bearing and enduring. This means a person can begin loving someone before any warm feeling arrives, which is why the Bible applies the word most often to people who are difficult rather than to people who are easy.<\/p>        <div class=\"booster-block booster-reactions-block\">\n            <div class=\"twp-reactions-icons\">\n                \n                <div class=\"twp-reacts-wrap\">\n                    <a react-data=\"be-react-1\" post-id=\"118939\" class=\"be-face-icons un-reacted\" href=\"javascript:void(0)\">\n                        <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/booster-extension\/\/assets\/icon\/happy.svg\" alt=\"Happy\" title=\"\">\n                    <\/a>\n                    <div class=\"twp-reaction-title\">\n                        Happy                    <\/div>\n                    <div class=\"twp-count-percent\">\n                                                    <span style=\"display: none;\" 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The famous 1 Corinthians 13 passage was written to a church taking each other to court &#8211; and every line answers a fight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":118938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[669],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible-answers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118939"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118940,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118939\/revisions\/118940"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}