Romance and expressions of affection and love are at the top of most lists and plans during February. Love is in the air. A cable television channel playing romantic movies during February has labelled February as Loveuary. Roses with red ribbons, heart-shaped containers of chocolates, and cards expressing love and affection are now staple gifts for Valentine’s Day.
The history of Valentine’s Day is a bit muddled with the ancient Roman fertility festival of Lupercalia (known from the 6th century B.C.) and the Roman Emperor Claudius II, who decided that single young men without families made the best soldiers for his army and forbade young men to marry. A Catholic priest named Valentine saw this as wrong and secretly married young couples in spite of the law. When Claudius discovered his soldiers were marrying, he ordered Valentine to be arrested and be-headed. While in prison Valentine reportedly fell in love with the jailer’s daughter, and on February 14, 269 A.D. before his execution, the priest wrote a final letter to his love signing it “from your Valentine.”
In France and England during the middle ages Geoffrey Chaucer, an English poet, was the first to record Valentine’s Day in his poem, “The Parliament of Fowls,” around 1380 A.D. The oldest known written valentine card remaining today dates back over 600 years to 1415 A.D. from Charles, the Duke of Orleans, who wrote his wife a valentine from the Tower of London after being captured at the Battle of Agincourt.
In the early 1700’s Americans exchanged handmade valentine cards until the 1840’s when Esther A. Howland was credited with selling the first mass-produced valentine’s cards. She is now known as the “Mother of the Valentine.” Hallmark reports that, second to Christmas cards, there are over 145 million Valentine’s Day cards of love and affection exchanged each year. For hundreds of years – even centuries, people have shown a desire to declare their love and affection for one another in writing.
But what is love really? Is it an emotion? Is it a feeling? Is it important? Where does it come from? Is it something strong or weak?
God too declares His love in writing with the Bible. John writes in First John 4:7-21 that God is love. Second, the Bible says love comes from God. Third, we learn that God calls us to love one another. The Bible says that “anyone who does not love does not know God.” God is integral to love, and us loving others is integral to us knowing God.
One of the most famous verses in the Bible is John 3:16 and it says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
In I Corinthians, Paul defines the attributes and characteristics of love by explaining what love is as well as what love isn’t. In chapter 13, the Bible says that even if we can speak the many languages of mankind and even the languages of angels but don’t have love, we are a “noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” If we have the powers of prophesy and understand all mysteries and knowledge and have a faith that can move mountains, we are nothing if we don’t have love. If we are extremely generous and give even our lives to a cause, without love, we gain nothing. Love is a big deal.
I Corinthians 13:4 and following goes on to explain that love is patient and kind. Love doesn’t envy or boast. It isn’t arrogant or rude. Love doesn’t insist on its own way (It’s unselfish.), and love isn’t irritable or resentful. Love doesn’t “rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
This statement in I Corinthians 13:8 is one of the most profound statements about love. It says, “Love never ends.” Like God, love is without end. Can we really comprehend that? Can we really love like that – with a steadfast and everlasting love as defined in I Corinthians 13?
I John 4:12 (NIV) says, “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is may complete in us.” The Bible goes on to say in verse 18 that “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.”
In this month where the world celebrates love, let us as Christians demonstrate the love the Bible describes. Let us remember that when we follow God and love one another – God abides in us.
In John 13, Jesus said to His disciples in verse 34, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” So let’s love one another freely and fully with the kind of love God teaches is true, real,
The world may think it knows about love, but real, true, everlasting love is the kind God and Jesus tells us about in His Word. It not a once a year kind of celebration like Valentine’s Day, but an everyday way of living. Let’s take to our hearts and our minds Jesus’ command to purposefully and fully love one another each and every day. It is the only way the world will know us as God’s people and for many, the only way the world will come to know God.
Robin House ©️
02/07/26