True love

It’s back. Valentine’s Day is upon us. Like clockwork, it comes around each and every year and, like clockwork, we husbands always seem surprised by its sudden arrival (with so little time between it and the Super Bowl).

We scramble to find that perfect special something to show our wives that we’ve been planning for the event for months. And while some may debate the merit of Valentine’s Day, I do not, for I find that the idea of love is truly worth celebrating.

There are many human definitions of love, ranging from the absurd to the truly noble, but love is properly defined only by the act of the Cross, for it is God who reserves the right to define Himself in this regard. And this He does quite clearly in the epistle of First John.

In the sixteenth verse of the fourth chapter of this excellent epistle, we are told that God is love. In the sixteenth verse of the third chapter we find this statement: This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. Jesus laid down His life for us upon the Cross.

Let us then perform a bit of mathematical reasoning: if A=B and B=C, then A=C. If God is love, and love is Jesus laying down His life for us, and Jesus laid His life down for us upon the Cross, then it is perfectly correct to say that God defines love and Himself by it, by the act of the Cross. The Cross defines love as it exists in the nature of God.

Jesus, Who is God, upon the Cross gave up everything for us who had nothing. He lost all; we gained all. He considered Himself unimportant and us as important. He who was sinless became our sin, which He hated, that we might be holy. His wrists and feet took the nails that by right should have been ours, and He experienced the despair of the separation from God that was our rightful inheritance for all eternity. It was the unshakeable, unconditional and willing commitment to serve another. True, biblical, God-centered love is an absolutely unselfish giving to the one loved, thinking nothing of oneself.

Can there be any better gift this Valentine’s Day than to love our spouses in this manner? Our children? Our parents? Our friends and neighbors? Or even our enemies?

Cards and chocolates and flowers are all very nice (especially chocolates), but would not our community be a much better place if the true love of the Cross burned in the heart of every Christian here this Valentine’s season and always?