I am not a big fan of Valentine’s Day. Instantly you are thinking one of two things: Valentine’s Day was last month or how much bitterness does this guy have built up? Quickly I want to respond to those two points. First, I know I am two weeks late, but “it’s better late than never,” right? Besides, isn’t love something we should be pouring out 365 days a year? Second, I have no bitterness towards old loves who may or may not have broken my heart. My defense goes back to the first point about making love a priority all year long. However, there is one thing I appreciate about Valentine’s Day. It causes us to take a good look at what it means to love our spouses, families, friends, enemies, and everyone in between.
What is love? According to February 14th, it means fancy dinners, lavish jewelry, chocolates, cheesy cards, candles, and the like. I’m not “hating” on these things. I really like good food, chocolates, and the occasional tear-jerking greeting card. They are all good ways to express our love for one another, but, in and of themselves, they are not love. In fact, I would argue against many of the things we do in the name of love (thanks Bono). They all have the propensity to scream out “I love you,” but they often fail to live up to the expectations.
In the book the Power of Words and the Wonder of God, Paul Tripp states, “You don’t define love by a set of abstract concepts” (Piper, Taylor, et all, pp. 39). This makes love vague, subjective, and void of any real value. The way I choose to show love can be just as effective as the next person’s method of choice. There is no standard by which we can measure true love. Abstract concepts are the reasons why all sorts of heinous sins are “justified” on the basis of being propelled by love. Just look at the Pharisees in Jesus’ day. He called them “whitewashed sepulchers” for fostering injustice and tyranny all in the name of loving God and His people; “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (Matthew 15:8 ESV). Their attitudes echoed many of ours today. I am permissible to do whatever I want as long as I claim love as my motivation.
Thankfully 1 John 4:7-12 gives us a detailed glimpse into the reality of love. He makes it painstakingly clear exactly what love looks like. However, in our fallen nature, we still have been able to find ways to make love abstract and without meaning. We will proudly quote verse eight, “God is love” to the unsaved around us thinking such a statement places a concrete stamp on love. Are we wrong in claiming God as the very essence of love to be truth? Absolutely not! Where we are wrong is in our break down of who God is in the minds of the lost. To them, He is nothing but an abstract concept. Declaring one abstract concept to be the source of another abstract concept makes as much sense to me as my high school calculus course (let’s just say D is not just the first letter in my name).Our job as ambassadors for Christ, to both our spiritual family and the lost, is to show God’s love as being the most concrete reality on this earth.
This is where we need to read past verse eight of 1 John 4. Here, John drives home the preverbal nail. He leaves no room for abstract concepts because he makes love out to be something far better than words or, even, actions. “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (v. 9-10 ESV). As Paul Tripp bluntly states, “love is an event, and that event is the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ” (pp. 39 emphasis mine). Every physical and verbal display of love is fueled by the reality of this event.
And what concrete depiction of love does the cross of Christ give us? First, love is a willing sacrifice of self. God gave of Himself by sending Christ into the world. Christ gave of Himself by letting go of His eternal glory (Philippians 2) to become a man. Are we willing to give of ourselves as a reality of our love? Could we sacrifice our own desires for others? Second, love is redemptive. The cross is the story of redemption. God, in love, overcame our mess in order to bring us back to Himself. John called it living through Him. Is our love able to redeem the ugliness of others? Are we willing to swallow our own pride in order to make good out of a bad situation, even when we had nothing to do with it? Third, love does not demand reciprocation. Sure, we serve God as a result of His love for us, but our service is not to pay back what it cost Christ to die. Our service is out of response for the fact that Christ did die. The love of the cross graciously floods others with love without expecting anything in return. Are we willing to love even if it means going unnoticed or being taken advantage of? Do we operate out of a “what have you done for me lately attitude?” Finally, the cross teaches us that love and merit are not synonymous. What is more, love works in spite of merit. Our merit earned us eternal judgment and separation from God (Romans 6:23). But God chose to love us in our sinful state (Romans 5:8) with an everlasting and gracious love. We can live under the peace of knowing that regardless of how much we may have screwed things up, God’s love is greater. How well do we let our love look past the sins of others? Are we able to love someone regardless of the things they have done to us?
Love is not abstract. It is as clear Caribbean waters, visible all the way to the depths. As Paul says in Ephesians 3:18, we can know what love is. To be more specific, we can know “the breadth, and length, and height and depth” of the love of Christ made evident on the cross. So maybe instead of Valentine’s Day being exalted as the day of love, we should replace it with the day when love was made an event. The day when all of history and prophecy reached its climax and God’s voice thundered from the heavens; “This is love!”
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