Consumers spent $27.4 billion on Valentine’s Day last year. Not bad for a holiday named for a saint whose story is still disputed today.
Some accounts report that St. Valentine was a Roman priest and physician who was martyred by the emperor Claudius II Gothicus around AD 270. He was buried on the Via Flaminia, where Pope Julius I reportedly built a basilica over his grave. Other sources identify him as the bishop of Terni, Italy. He was martyred, apparently in Rome; his relics were later taken to Terni.
These could be different versions of the same account, thus referring to only one person. According to legend, he healed his jailer’s blind daughter, then left her a note on the day of his execution signed “from your Valentine.”
In AD 496, Pope Gelasius marked February 14 to celebrate St. Valentine’s life and faith. He is venerated today as the patron saint of beekeepers, epilepsy, and, of course, engaged couples and happy marriages.
This tradition eventually made its way to the New World. Factory-made cards, a product of the industrial revolution, became popular in the nineteenth century. In 1913, Hallmark Cards of Kansas City, Missouri, began mass producing valentines. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Whatever our view of St. Valentine and the day that honors him, it is clear that loving others is God’s intention for us. When Jesus taught us, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39), he echoed Leviticus 19:18 and the consistent teaching of Scripture (cf. John 13:34; Romans 13:10; 1 Corinthians 13; 1 John 4:16).
However, our Lord’s call to love our neighbors as ourselves requires us to love ourselves. How can we do this?
It’s impossible to give what we do not have or lead people further than we are willing to go. Before I can love anyone else well, I must learn to love myself well. The key to this decision is learning to see myself as God sees me so I can love myself as God loves me.
It would seem that learning to love ourselves well is not something we can achieve by ourselves. God’s word states this simple but profound fact: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). This principle applies not only to the way we love God and our neighbor but also to the way we love ourselves. In other words, the more we understand the depth to which God loves us, the more we are empowered to see ourselves as he sees us and to love ourselves as he loves us.
The more we understand the depth to which God loves us, the more we are empowered to see ourselves as he sees us and to love ourselves as he loves us. Consider these interconnected biblical facts:
One: God loves you as much as he loves anyone who has ever lived.
The most famous verse in Scripture proclaims, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16, my italics). God loves you as much as he loved Moses, David, Daniel, Peter, John, St. Augustine, and Billy Graham. He loves you as much as he loves the most faithful missionary and martyr in the world. As St. Augustine noted, “God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.” This fact leads to the second.
Two: God loves you as much as he loves his own Son.
In John 17, Jesus prayed “that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (v. 23). “Even as” means “to the same degree as.” Think of it: the Father loves you as much as he loves his perfect, sinless Son. This is because of our third fact.
Three: God loves you because he is love.
The Bible is clear: “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Love is not just what God feels or does—it describes his essential nature. In every moment and circumstance, God is love. Everything he does is motivated by love. To put it bluntly, God cannot not love you. He loves you because his character requires him to love you. He loves you not because you are lovable, but because he is love. This leads to a fourth fact.
Four: God’s love for you is in no way dependent on you.
Scripture teaches that “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). There is literally nothing you can do to make God love you any more or less than he already does.
Please, never again wonder if God loves you.