It's Easy To Take A Bullet. It's Harder To Die Daily.

“I would take a bullet for her, bro,” I said dramatically to a friend in China, lamenting a recent break-up. My friend Tony, wise beyond his years, looked at me, waved his hand as if dismissing my self-pity, and said, “It’s easy to take a bullet for someone. It’s much more difficult to take up your cross daily and die to yourself for them.” I had to pull my jaw off of the floor. He shattered my immature pity party and turned my perspective upside down. That sentence permanently changed how I understood love.

Valentine’s Day was one of the most difficult holidays during my single years. Sure, we Christians wax poetic about God’s love and all of that, but loneliness can feel inescapable. As I sit across from my beautiful wife in a café (by the grace of God) after sharing heart-shaped croissants, I’m reminded of God’s self-giving love to us. My love isn’t primarily shown to my wife in the gifts I give her or the nice things I do. It is rooted in a willingness to die to myself daily for her. I confess that I do this far from perfectly. But that’s part of the point. As Paul wrote to the Romans¹,

“For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For rarely will someone die for a just person—though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die. But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

God is love, and love initiates. He didn’t sit back and wait for us to seek Him or love Him. He loved us while we were still sinners. No cleaning up. No flowers. No chocolates. No grand gestures. In fact, Scripture teaches that we don’t even love properly without first understanding and receiving His love. John says it² this way,

“We love because He first loved us.”³

Paul emphasizes that our forgiveness is rooted in Christ’s love and forgiveness for us. I learn to love my wife, my family, and my friends as I look to Christ and remember how He loved and forgave me⁴. He laid down His life for me, and not only that, He was raised and continues to intercede for me⁵ even when I continue to fail Him daily.

As a young single man in China, I thought love was intense and heroic––like John McClane dragging bloodied feet across broken glass to rescue his wife. Now I know real love is quieter. It’s rooted in what Christ did and expressed in the daily deaths we embrace.

The irony is that I felt unloved and alone on Valentine’s Day while having been loved in the most costly way imaginable.

It’s easy to imagine taking a bullet for someone. It’s a thousand times harder to die to yourself in a thousand ordinary moments.

And that is exactly how Christ first loved me.

Happy Valentine’s Day.⁶

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References & Resources

¹ Romans 5:6–8

² 1 John 4:16–19

³ “God Loved First” Sticker

⁴ Ephesians 4:32

⁵ Hebrews 7:25

⁶ Boys, this is not an excuse to skip buying her chocolates and flowers. In fact, you should probably go and do that now.