Valentine’s Day was on Friday, so if this commentary is only now sparking a reminder to buy something for your loved one, you’re too late. However, it’s not too late to tell the story behind this “holiday.”

Before it devolved into the corporate creation of greeting card companies, Valentine’s Day was set aside to remember third-century Christian martyr Valentinus of Rome. As a video in the What Would You Say? series describes, there are a few historical uncertainties about the facts and myths of this man’s life. However, the most widely accepted version of his martyrdom is that he ran afoul of emperor Claudius II, who had prohibited marriage in Rome.

As The History Channel describes, the emperor believed that “Roman men were unwilling to join the army because of their strong attachment to their wives and families.” Defying the emperor, Valentinus married couples in secret. He was caught and condemned to die on or about February 14. According to legend, he left a deathbed note for the daughter of a Roman judge, a girl who was healed from blindness when the saint prayed for her. He signed the note, “From Your Valentine.”

Even if the story did not happen exactly this way, every ancient reference to Valentinus associates him and the date of February 14 with martyrdom and sacrifice. In contrast, most references to love, sex, and romance in our cultural moment are so twisted, self-centered, and dangerous that it can seem inappropriate to celebrate them. The Bible describes these things, however, as wonderful gifts of God to His image bearers.

After all, God could have created humans to “be fruitful and multiply” any number of ways, including without ever requiring a relationship with another. Romantic love, or what C.S. Lewis called “eros” in his book The Four Loves, is a beautiful human experience when properly understood and ordered. Eros, Lewis thought, can lead us to toss “personal happiness aside as a triviality and [plant] the interests of another in the center of our being.” Or rather, it should, but only if this love between a man and woman is properly ordered by agape, the self-giving, self-sacrificing love that defines God’s actions towards humans. Thus, romance, Lewis thought, could be for us “a foretaste, of what we must become to all if Love Himself rules in us without a rival.”

It’s tragic that this vision of eros reveals how disordered love can and has become. When either romance or sex are seen as only ends rather than means, eros is twisted. Rather than selfless and life-giving, it is reduced to a kind of mutant sensuality that leads to the selfish and damaging brokenness with which our culture must now reckon.

“This is how we know what love is,” St. John wrote in his first epistle. “Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” Notably, this is the same John who referred to himself throughout the Gospel of John as “the one whom Jesus loved.” There’s more to life than sensual pleasure, more to meaning than selfishness, and more to love than the shriveled-up version that has captivated our Western imaginations. True love turns us outward and upward, first to God and then to others. “If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them,” John’s epistle continues, “how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”

Throughout Scripture, the primary question to answer about love is always, “How am I responding to the unparalleled expression of love that God has shown us?” For Valentinus, the correct response required that he give up his own life as a testimony to the reality of God’s gift of love. For us to properly respond to God’s love, a kind of “death” will also be required, a death to self and to the desires that are treated as ultimate in our cultural moment.

To be clear, this does not mean that love and romance and even sex are not to be celebrated. Christians, of all people, are in the best position to celebrate these gifts of God as gifts of God. A great way to start is by telling the real story behind Valentine’s Day.

To be better equipped to counter the lies about love, sex, and romance that are so prevalent in our culture, visit identityproject.tv. The Identity Project is the most comprehensive library available of on-demand videos and resources about identity, humanness, and sexuality from a Christian worldview. Go to identityproject.tv.

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