Thinking of True Love On Valentine’s Day
Image by Ben Kerckx from Pixabay
It is Valentine’s Day as I write. I am single and this is a so-called holiday created by greeting card companies and geared towards couples. It is a day that triggers my childhood trauma. But can I perhaps remind myself of what love is and who is the origin of love?
What is true love?
Come on a journey with me as I remind myself of true love. Let us start with a single Bible verse. If you spent any time in Sunday school as a child, you undoubtedly memorized John 3:16. Or maybe you are aware of the verse but never memorized it. Either way, here it is in a few different translations:
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. (NASB)
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (NIV)
That verse tells me that God loved me so much that He came down in the form of a man named Jesus who lived and died for my freedom from sin. In American society, perhaps in Western society as a whole, love is generally spoken of in romantic terms. John 3:16 speaks of love in cosmic terms. It depicts a God showing love for His creation by living among them.
1 John 4:9 tells us that “ God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.” The next verse tells us that God “loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” In the old Jewish sacrificial system, people offered animal sacrifices as atonement for their sins. On the cross, Jesus offered Himself as an atonement for our sins. Not just all of our sins, or for some people’s sins. He died for the sins of the world.
According to Hebrews 10:12, Christ “offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins.” All means all. He died for every single sin you and I ever committed or will commit. His death, His ultimate sacrifice for sin, offers us a way of forgiveness for our sins. We are not condemned because we are imperfect if we are in Him. And that is true love.
Image by Jeff Jacobs from Pixabay
A love without end
The love of God never ends. It will never leave you or me. Romans 8:37-39 offers a great declaration about God’s love for us:
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The words of the old hymn, The Love of God echoes in my mind. “Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made; were every stalk on earth a quill, and everyone a scribe by trade; to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry; nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.”
That kind of love needs celebration. On this Valentine’s Day, I praise the One who loves me more than anyone else ever could. Here is the leg of my journey where I will remain. I will do what Psalms 136:26 urges us to do: “O give thanks to the God of heaven, for his steadfast love endures forever.” I will thank God for His great love for me and for you. I will not dwell on what I don’t have but embrace what I will always have and that is God’s love.