Dan Olinger

"If the Bible is true, then none of our fears are legitimate, none of our frustrations are permanent, and none of our opposition is significant."

Dan Olinger

Chair, Division of Biblical Studies & Theology,

Bob Jones University

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On Valentine’s Day

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Since Valentine’s Day is this week, I’d like to think a little bit about love.

Love is fascinating—all the popular songs are about it.

But it’s a mystery.

For some time there’s been circulating on the internet a series of comments on love by children. I haven’t been able to find its source—everybody quotes it, but as far as I can tell, nobody credits it. Here are a few of my favorites:

  • “No one is sure why it happens, but I heard it has something to do with how you smell; that’s why perfume and deodorant is so popular.” Mae, age 9
  • ”I think you’re supposed to get shot with an arrow or something, but the rest of it isn’t supposed to be painful.” Manuel, age 8
  • “It isn’t always just how you look. Look at me, I’m handsome as anything and I haven’t got anybody to marry me yet.” Brian, age 7
  • “Don’t do things like have smelly, green sneakers. You might get attention, but attention ain’t the same thing as love.” Alonzo, age 9
  • “Be a good kisser. It might make your wife forget that you never take out the trash.” Dave, age 8
  • “Don’t forget your wife’s name. That will mess up the love.” Erin, age 8
  • “Love will find you. Even if you hide from it. I have been trying to hide from it since I was five, but the girls keep finding me.” Dave, age 8

And it’s important.

It’s fundamental to our very nature; we’re made in the image of God (Ge 1.26-27), who, though one in essence, is—and thus has always been—in three persons, in perfect relationship.

And when one of those persons became man, he issued an insider’s commentary on God’s law: it’s all about loving God and loving your neighbor (Mk 12.30-31).

So life is as simple as that:

  • Love God: put Him first
  • Love others: put them first

It’s as simple as closing the door quietly and leaving the hall light out if someone is asleep. As simple as stopping to help someone who’s in difficulty. As simple as thinking about what you can do.

Years ago I was in the Las Vegas airport headed home, and a woman came up to me and asked me, in broken English, if I had a quarter for the pay phone. She was unexpectedly stranded and needed to call a family member. I fished a quarter out of my pocket and gave it to her and walked on toward my gate, feeling satisfied with having helped somebody out.

Then I thought, You could have done better. You could have let her use your phone, so she could make additional calls if she needed to. You could have asked if she was hungry, and bought her a meal if she needed one. You could have asked her where she was from and recommended a church in her town. You could have …

Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

Didn’t.

If I love my neighbor, I want to do him, or her, some eternal good.

Of course, Valentine’s Day is especially focused on local love, on committed love, love more deep and abiding than general love of neighbor. Our culture is filled with stereotypes about that.

Candy. Flowers. Jewelry. A candlelight dinner.

But as long-term couples know, lasting love is as much, if not more, about smaller, less affected things.

Putting your dirty clothes in the hamper. Putting the toilet seat down. Cleaning up after yourself. Keeping your promises.

Listening.

And it’s all based in God’s love for us: we love Him, because He first loved us (1Jn 4.19). If you’re going to love as you should, you need God’s example and His power. You find that, and develop it, in the means of grace: the Word, prayer, and fellowship.

As you walk with God, you’ll know, experience, and live out love.

First things first.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

On Valentine’s Day

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This a time for romance. For love. For commitment. For loyalty.

Interestingly, God describes his relationship with his people in those terms.

We know that “God is love” (1Jn 4.8, 16)—that he has always been in relationship among the persons of the Godhead; he has never been alone. Love is natural for him; it’s part of who he is.

We know that “we love him because he first loved us” (1Jn 4.19)—that he initiated the relationship with us, even though we had wronged him (Ro 3.23). In fact, he lovingly anticipated that relationship before we even existed—before the earth itself existed (Ep 1.4).

We know that his most oft-repeated description of himself includes “lovingkindness” (Heb hesed), a far-reaching word not captured by any single English word, but including loving loyalty to a covenant relationship. It’s the attribute that keeps 60-year marriages together in spite of everything.

That’s the kind of relationship God wants with us.

We can imagine, then, how our sin must grieve his heart. In fact, he describes the sin of his people as adultery, violation of the marriage relationship.

I’ve been a believer for more than 60 years. Every day of those 60 years, I have fallen short of the glory of God. I’ve been unfaithful to the relationship.

That’s over 22,000 days of adultery.

How many would it take for you to give up on your spouse?

Yet God continues to welcome us back, to forgive our unfaithfulness, to restore the relationship.

Hesed.

God illustrates his love for us in a couple of stories he tells his people. One is in the book of Hosea, where he tells the prophet to marry a woman who will be unfaithful to him—as Israel has been unfaithful to their God.

It’s heartbreaking.

There’s another story, a less-well-known one, in Ezekiel 16.

Ezekiel is writing long after Hosea—so long, in fact, that Judah has now gone into captivity in Babylon, and Ezekiel is prophesying to them in the Jewish community there. He speaks God’s words to the community—

  • One day God found an abandoned baby by the side of the road, newborn, unwashed, unwanted. He took her home and cleaned her up, and then he began to provide for her needs: food, clothing, shelter. For years he raised her—lavishly—as his own daughter.
  • When she became an adult, a beautiful woman, his love for her led him to take her as his wife.
  • But she was unfaithful. She went after other lovers, not merely being seduced by them but seducing them, and aggressively. She pressured them; she even paid them. She made Sodom seem mild by comparison. She broke his heart.

What a horrifying account.

But it doesn’t end in divorce, or retaliation, or expulsion, or murder, or any of the things we would expect from a human relationship of this sort.

It ends in restoration, reunification, love.

And not because the unfaithful wife pleads for forgiveness.

Because the maltreated Husband remembers and is faithful to the marriage covenant, to the permanence of the relationship:

60 Nevertheless, I will remember My covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you. 61 … . 62 Thus I will establish My covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord (Ezk 16.60, 62).

O wondrous love that will not let me go,
I cling to You with all my strength and soul;
Yet if my hold should ever fail
This wondrous love will never let me go!
(Steve and Vikki Cook)

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash