So, horizontal love has its place, and while broken, it still has a very powerful and very significant influence over the human experience.
But here’s the mistake we all make at some point in our lives. This mistake causes us to be despondent, disappointed, hopeless and cynical about love. What’s the mistake? We have asked horizontal human love to do what it was never designed and is never capable of doing.
So much of the hurt, disappointment and anger that we experience in our relationships is the result of us placing an impossible burden on another person. We expect and demand what no human being is capable of, and when we do this, we’re not just asking the other person to love us. No, we’re asking that other person to be our own personal messiah.
IV. VALENTINE’S DAY LOVE
Let me take a moment to pause, because I don’t want you to misunderstand me. I’m not writing this post to minimize human love—I already expressed how important it is.
I also want you to know how much I appreciate Valentine’s Day, because any occasion that provides us with an opportunity to directly and specifically express our love for one another is a good thing.
We should build relationships of love with one another. We should look for ways of communicating and demonstrating that love. We should be grateful whenever someone blesses us with their love, and we should pay the blessing forward.
But, as we commit ourselves to the lives of love that God calls us to, we must be careful not to ask of loving people what only our loving Lord can deliver.
V. VERTICAL LOVE
So, if we were designed to hunger for love, but human love is horizontal and broken and unable to satisfy our souls, what’s the solution? The answer is vertical love—from God, to us.
Vertical love will give us peace. Vertical love will make our hearts content. Vertical love will give us the ability to love others. Vertical love will plant in our souls an unshakable joy. Vertical love will give us ultimate worth and identity. Vertical love has saved us, is saving us and will continue to save us.
Vertical love—from God, to us—makes for the best Valentine’s Day card ever. It’s not only a story of undeserved love, but of the ultimate sacrifice being willingly made so that love can be given to those who aren’t seeking it and who don’t deserve it.
This sacrifice of love is best pictured and summarized by Jesus in one moment on the Cross, an unthinkable moment when the Father turns his back on his son. Jesus, in the horrible pain of utter loneliness, now rejected both by people and by God, cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Here’s what we need to remember: Jesus was willing to be utterly alone so that we would never be alone again. That’s how much he loved us yesterday, today, and will love us tomorrow and for all the tomorrows to follow.
VI. INVISIBLE LOVE
That all sounds very encouraging, but if you’re anything like me, this thought has crossed your mind: It’s hard enough to deal with the love relationships with people that I can see and touch. How will I ever rest in the love of someone I can’t see?
God, in tender love, helps us in two ways:
1. God makes his invisible love visible by sending people of love to give love to people who need love.
Why does God call us in Colossians 3:12-14 to treat one another with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness and love? He calls us to this lifestyle, not primarily so that we would have comfortable human relationships, but so that we would experience his love.
We’re called to be ambassadors of his love, that is, to make his invisible love visible in one another’s life. We’re called to be the look on his face, the tone of his voice and the touch of his hand.
God knows how hard it can be to grasp the love of someone we can’t see, so he makes his love visible. Through the people of love he sends our way, he reaches into our locations and situations and touches us with love we can see, hear and touch. That’s how much he loves us!
