For many Valentine’s Day is the opportunity to demonstrate their love for their significant other or those that they love in life – children, parents, teachers, friends. Love is demonstrated with flowers and cards, chocolates, jewellery even to name just a few of the myriad of options available to us. But before it became an international celebration sponsored by Hallmark, before even Chaucer in the middle ages began the tradition of courtly love, there was a man called Valentine.
Valentine, a priest in the 3rd Century, helped persecuted Christians and performed marriage ceremonies when marriage was prohibited. For this he was martyred. He demonstrated love and compassion for his fellow people and paid for it with his life. But if Valentine’s Day is about love, we must travel even further back in time, to before time even existed but where God resided.
For the origin of love lies in God. God who not only demonstrates love, but is love personified. And with God there is no unrequited love. For He loves us more than we can possibly love Him. His intent, love and heart is for us.
“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1)
“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.” (John 3:16)
Today, I received a phone call from a bank telling me that I was preapproved for a loan (and quite a substantial loan at that!). I didn’t have to apply or jump through hoops to secure it – it was all preapproved and the money was ready to be given to me. Fortunately for my husband’s sake I did decline the offer (but yes, my mind did spend a couple of minutes thinking of what a shopping spree I could have!). After I hung up the phone, the word “Preapproved” echoed in my mind.
Over the course of my life I have applied for credit cards and mortgages, applied just to open a bank account to put money in! All of these take forms (and forms and forms!) and checks and balances, proof of income and address, signatures and signatures not to mention time! Yet here I was being offered a loan without all that red tape.
Preapproved! I’ve decided it’s pretty awesome! Then I realised that my whole life has been preapproved! And preapproved by God! Jesus went to the Cross and took upon Himself my sin and shame and then died for me, so that in God’s eyes I would be preapproved! In God’s eyes there would be no black marks against my name to cause Him to turn away from me. I had all the credentials I needed for salvation before I was even born. Just as I am, I am accepted and loved by God.
And as with the loan I was offered today, it took just a simple yes from me to Jesus to make use of my preapproval and walk into the fullness and blessings of the life that He had prepared for me. But unlike the loan that would eventually have to be paid back, by grace I don’t owe God anything, (even though I owe Him everything!). There’s no fine print or hidden clauses when it comes to salvation, for it is by grace that we are saved.
“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.” (John 3:16)
“Even before He made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in His eyes.” (Ephesians 1:4)
