Forgetting Valentine's Day?

It is sometimes called the 'The Greatest Gift'. The subject is 'love' - a concept that comes to the forefront of many cultures every February 14th on what is called Valentine's Day.

Its origins, according to Wikipedia, was a holiday observed to honor one or more early Christian martyrs named Valentinus. It was first established by Pope Gelasius I in 496 AD, and was later deleted from the General Roman Calendar of saints in 1969 by Pope Paul VI. It is celebrated in countries around the world, mostly in the West, although it remains a working day in all of them. By the 15th century, it had evolved into an occasion where people express their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards known as "valentines".

Several years ago, I made the fairly serious mistake of forgetting a Valentine's Day. It was not one of the banner days of my married life. I did however survive and live to write about it through a kind act of undeserved mercy. My 'salvation' came about through a little-known related holiday. It was actually devised just for me by my loving wife the day following my rookie's blunder. She called it simply, "Valentine's Amnesty Day". Little or no explanation is needed. After using this one time only 'get out of jail free' pass that year, the holiday was forever abolished – at least for me!

It has been said that "Love makes the world go around" and in many ways that rings true. That is the reality for those who freely give it and especially for those on the receiving end. But without question, the single purest form is perhaps best seen through the lens that focuses on the cruelest instrument of agony ever humanly devised.

It is the cross - the most feared symbol of pain and shame in all of human history. It was upon this brutal tool of suffering and death that God's Son voluntarily sacrificed Himself for sins of the world. His pre-planned experience there revealed the unique level of love in the heart of the Creator. This love was the catalyst that would provide a lost race a chance for spiritual amnesty from the horrific power and penalty of sin. Verses abound that enlighten and prove the point. But maybe none better than John 3:16-17 and Romans 5:7-8.

- "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

- "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

In Philippians chapter two we find described the incredible depth of Christ’s commitment to the redemptive plan of His Heavenly Father. Verse 8 reads, "And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross."

The Son did His incomprehensibly difficult part to absolute perfection. How hard was His task? We may never really know, but it was far beyond just physical pain. The finite mind can't grasp what it meant to a holy Savior to do what He did. But at least 2 Corinthians 5:21 gives us the foundation and clue as to why it was so unimaginable and spiritually horrific for Christ to experience. "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."

His actions connected to His divine love secured salvation for all who would ever trust in His work on Calvary’s cross. This was the wretched, but absolutely essential, place where the plague of human sin was met head on and fully defeated. That greatest of all victories occurred at the precise moment when the suffering Savior cried out, "It is finished". (John 19:30)

But once the great act of salvation is achieved in a life, how is God’s love then displayed to others in and outside of God’s family? How should God's newly infused spiritual life be evidenced externally by those having been justified through faith?

Fortunately the answer to that rather large question has been summed up in one rather small portion of Scripture. Chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians is often called the "Great Love Chapter" of the Bible. Believers seeking to seriously follow Christ, and love as He did, need look no farther than this passage below. It is there that we discover how God defines true love. It is there that we see that it is an essential trait for all who know Him and represent Him in a lost and needy world. The great Apostle Paul, a man who was blessed of God with nearly limitless spiritual gifts, surprisingly wrote these words on this crucial topic:

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. Verse 13 eventually concludes the subject declaring, "And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love."

Oviously there will be some out there who will still find themselves some day in need of a "Valentine's Amnesty Day". Hopefully, when that sickening moment arrives, you will find the mercy and learn the painful lesson I did.

But do not, under any circumstances, miss the opportunity to accept and respond to the love of God in Christ. With salvation, the Bible offers no second chance. Regarding sin and its consequences, there is no alternative solution. To be saved and justified comes only through the cross - the ugliest symbol of the most beautiful love ever known to man. It was there that the Savior displayed what drove Him to procure spiritual amnesty for you and me! (Acts 4:12, John 14:6)

"And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. (1 John 5:11-12)

Bill Breckenridge