Another season, another theme. As it was for Halloween and Christmas, so it is for Valentine’s Day. The stores are full of balloons, cards, and candies to give to the people we love.
Valentine’s Day is all about love, particularly love for those who mean the most to us: our spouse, children, family, and friends. With the holiday of love right around the corner, it’s good to stop and ask the question, what is love about? In particular, what does God mean when He says, He loves us?
Let’s start with the most famous verse of the scripture, John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
This is how the scripture often talks about love. Love that is expressed through Jesus, the Son of God, whom God the Father sends to this world to die for us all. In scripture, love is an act of sacrifice by Jesus who dies on the cross for the sins of the world. This is love in action. It is one thing to say I love you and to have feelings of love, but it is a whole other thing to actually show how you love someone.
The example of Jesus’ love is to give up your life for the sake of others. Jesus clarifies this love even further, “Greater love has no one than, this that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
Jesus not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. Jesus lays down his life for us all when he dies on the cross. Love is about sacrificing yourself for someone else. For us, this could be giving up your time, talents, resources, or our own life in order to save someone else. True love takes effort and sacrifice.
Love is the Ten Commandments. Jesus summarizes the meaning of the commandments when he is asked which commandment is the greatest, he responds, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matt. 22:37-40)
Some have falsely misunderstood this to mean that Jesus is creating a new law, but he is summarizing the Ten Commandments. It is loving to: to honor God as the only god, to honor His name, and to come regularly to worship Him.
It is also loving to honor our parents. It is loving to not cheat on our spouse in marriage, but work toward faithful God-pleasing marriage. It is loving to not murder our neighbor, but help and support him in his body. It is loving to not steal from our neighbor, but protect his possessions and income, etc. The Ten Commandments teach us how to love God and love one another.
Who do we love, just those whom we like? No, we should seek to love all people, even those who despise us, this is what Jesus does.
“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person — though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die — but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8)
Jesus loved us while we were still sinners, sinners who were in rebellion, sinners who were enemies of God.
When Jesus was on the cross, he said to those who mocked and killed him, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Jesus loves the unlovable; He loves the people who hated His guts, and as Christians, we are called to do the same.
Is this hard, 100% yes! No one can fully love as Jesus does, but we don’t have to. For when we fail to love with our whole heart, Jesus forgives us. Jesus helps us by giving us His Holy Spirit to love one another and love God.
This Valentine’s Day, I pray that you know you are loved! Loved by Jesus who died for you on the cross! Loved by Jesus, who is with you all the days of your life! Loved by Jesus, who gives people to us who love us and who we have the opportunity to love! May Jesus teach us in His word how to love our neighbor even those who might seem unlovable. For He loves and loved us even when we were sinners and at our worst.
