Celebrating Lent on Valentine’s Day - The Link Between Love and Sacrifice
This year Lent begins on St Valentine’s Day. It’s a fitting date for the start of a season that focuses on the ultimate expression of God’s love for the world - the sacrifice of his Son.
While Valentine’s Day is associated with romantic love, the Easter season points to a very different kind of adoration. This love isn’t flowers, dinner dates, and longing looks. It’s gritty, raw, and demanding. In the famous passage from Matthew 16, Christ sets the bar almost impossibly high:
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
It’s a big ask. In Lent, we’re called to reflect on that command and how we can begin to fulfil it. For that we go back to Jesus’ words and find the first clue right up front - ‘let him deny himself’.
Turning from temptation
For a masterclass in denial, we have to go backwards in Matthew and revisit the Lenten story in Chapter 4. Those 40 days in the wilderness and the resulting back-and-forth with Satan demonstrate Christ’s humanity as much as His divinity. He’s tempted, as we’re all tempted.
The first temptation is the most basic. Hunger. We all know it. Not just the drive to eat after a long day, but the pursuit of short-term satisfaction and a heady dopamine hit - alcohol, sugar, reality TV shows. Whatever your poison, the world will serve it up. But all the Tim’s donuts in the world aren’t going to fill the God-shaped hole in your soul. Jesus dismisses this temptation easily, “Man shall not live by bread alone.”
Gradually getting more brazen, the Devil throws down the gauntlet in the second temptation - if you’re the Son of God, prove it. Hurl yourself off a cliff and the angels will save you. We don’t all have a pack of angels on hand like a celestial emergency service, but we do itch to put God to the test. Every time we doubt Him, we test Him. Fear, depression, worry about the future - these are all very natural emotions, but they’re also a sign that we’re not wholly confident in our faith. Pure faith isn’t shaky, it needs no test to know it’s on solid ground.
The final temptation is all about power. The Devil literally promises Christ the world if he’ll just throw away his birthright, forgo his purpose, and deny his Father. After eight verses of escalating offers, the riveting interaction between Jesus and Satan comes down to an ultimatum - Him or me.
And isn’t that the truth? If we don’t worship God, we’ll worship something else - our careers, our sports team, ourselves. When Faith leaves the room, the Devil walks in.
Here the Devil may as well turn around and walk right back out. He’s met with more denial. Jesus turns down his offer, banishing him with an impatient, “Get away, Satan!” as if He’s grown tired of the game.
So what do we learn from Matthew 4 that we can apply in Matthew 16? That we can’t carry our cross and follow Him until we do the hard work of denial. Our sacrifice is the only road to His sacrifice.
As we celebrate Lent this year, you’ll see a lot of Lenten resources from different Christian organizations and churches. They all seem to have a different theme - creation, care, preparation - but the overriding theme this year and every year is offering ourselves up to God. We don’t take down the crosses after Easter. Christ is resurrected but the symbol stays; that empty cross an invitation to nail our own desires and doubts up there, clearing them from our hearts so we can make room for God’s eternal love.