“Love” is a 4-letter word that means so many things to so many people. Our culture has set up the 14th of February, Valentine’s Day, as the day when we celebrate love. Copious amounts of money are spent every year on Valentine’s Day to try and prove or display our love to the one we love. Valentine’s Day is also a day that many singles or divorced snarl at. Memes drenched in sarcasm are often posted by singles on Valentine’s Day.
I was one of those singles. In my teens and 20’s, Valentine’s Day was a painful day. I was one of those guys whom girls liked as a good and loyal friend but would never see me as a romantic partner. This made me feel even worse. What I did not know, was that I had a Valentine who had proposed to me, even before I was born. I just didn’t know or see it.
Our love is often rooted in self-centeredness
Deep down in every human heart, we are all searching for true love believing that there is someone out there who loves us back just as much. We hope that they would be willing to give up everything for us, even to the extent of dying for us. Whether you like Romance movies or not, there is one epic love story that towers above all others and has swept the annals of human history. This love story has been hiding in plain sight right in front of our eyes. We just cannot see it because we are so self-absorbed.
When we speak about “the one” what we really mean is that this person ticks off all of the boxes of the kind of person I want as a life partner. This person meets all my needs and desires. They affirm me and make me feel good. Therefore, they are “the one” and I must marry them. However, this type of thinking is rooted in self-centeredness. So, we enter marriages in this frame of mind, which naturally leads to divorce. We use language like “we’ve fallen out of love” or “you are no longer the same person that I met…you’ve changed”. But the truth is, they’ve never changed. The cauldron of marriage just reveals their true nature.
What we all really need is to be rescued from our selfishness. What we need is a hero who chooses to love us, in spite of who we are, and not because we are lovable. Love based on beauty or affections doesn’t last forever because these things come and go. In order for us to be truly loved, someone has to be willing to love us even to the point of death. Many people have died for what they have loved, be it a cause or another person. No one’s death has ever made someone live. No one has ever chosen to die for those who hate them. No one except Jesus Christ.
God's love is sacrificial and other-centered
On our best days we struggle to even love those whom we like, let alone those whom we don’t like. That is why loving our enemies would be a concept so radical that no human being would contemplate this, let alone attempt this. But this is the miracle of God’s love. While we were His enemies, He sent Jesus to die for us on a cross. He took the punishment that we deserved by dying in our place for our sin (Rom. 5:7-8). As a result of this single historical act, people who have faith in His work are reconciled back to the God. They are reunited to their true lover. God proposed to us through his death on the cross and our faith in this one great act is the “I Do.”
Since our first parents, God had a plan to win us back. We would never be complete without him. We desperately look to find true love but we look for it in people, places or things that will always disappoint us. We put a burden on them that they could never carry. For many people this endless search leaves them unhappy, frustrated, bitter and angry. G K Chesterton once said that “A young man knocking on the door of a brothel, is actually knocking for God”.
The problem isn’t that true love does not exist. We’ve just looked for it in the wrong place. It’s time to look to the only one who could love us in such a transformative way that we would never be the same for the rest of eternity. We can all find true love. We just need to look to the true lover. He is our true Valentine. Only his love rescues. And oh, how desperately we need to be rescued!