The other day I received a disturbing newsletter in the mail. It was from a prominent evangelical denomination with a history of orthodoxy. They are in your city as well and some of you probably go to one of these churches.
I was drawn to the center headline “Be my Valentine”. I thought this was a strange front page headline, but then I realized who the ascribed author of this valentine card is. According to these guys, the cross is God’s Valentine’s day card to us.
According to the article (Under the title “Be My Valentine”):
“I am here to tell you that you are loved. God loves you and wants you to be His Valentine. The love that God gives us is not like the world’s love. The world’s love is as sturdy as the paper that most Valentine cards are made of. God’s Love is not a flimsy cheap imitation. It is the real thing. It is an all giving love that was and is willing to suffer and die for our deliverance.
Will you be God’s Valentine? It is your choice. Say yes and return in kind the love that God first gave you. And when you do, remember the first Valentine and the way he gave everything, including his life, to the God he loved.”
What the heck does this mean? I know the first Adam and last Adam…but the first Valentine? This thing is so full of bones I don’t even know where to start.
As I sat aghast when I read it and tried to unscramble this omelet, I realized, this isn’t even Christianity. I can’t unscramble it.
God is reduced to some sweaty palmed 6th grade girl handing out stale treats with uncontextualized messages on a Friday afternoon. The cross is reduced to an attempt to woo people emotionally. And Jesus is, well, a good example. In fact, I apologize, the cross is not mentioned, I just inferred it. They may well be talking like a full blown liberal here and talking about giving his life as an example.
This should be a good data point for evangelicals: “If your gospel message can be preached by liberals, Roman Catholics, Mormans and Hindus then you are probably not preaching the gospel.”
Listen, the cross is not God’s Valentine Card to us because we are so cute and lovable, but rather God’s simultaneous act of judgment and mercy because we are so unlovely and spiritually ugly! To confuse this is to short circuit the cross of its whole point. It ends up making God weak, Jesus’ work on the cross tantamount to a ‘hail mary’ pass, and us to be some sort of spiritually valuable people that God assisted by showing benevolence to us because we deserved it. This thinking confuses everything and everyone. It is not cute. In fact, it is gross.
If we were not so sinful then Jesus would not have had to die. If God were not so angry at us then Jesus would not have had to die. If sin was not so consequential then Jesus would not have had to die. God’s love is demonstrated by the fact that we are so bad and the cost is so much (Romans 5.5-11)!
(Rom 5.6-8) For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
God does indeed love sinners. This is the glorious truth of the gospel. But we cannot detach God’s love from the context of the gospel that teaches us about how he demonstrates that love, indeed what the love of God is really like! The glory of God, sinfulness of man, faithfulness of God to his promises, the glory saturated resolve of Jesus, the desperate plight of humanity, the exclusivity of Christ, all of these things shine 
forth brightly in the gospel and demand to not be dimmed by our dim understanding.
These little attempts to try to be cute or relevant with marketing or illustrations fail dreadfully. It actually makes you irrelevant because you message is nothing more than run of the mill pagan trail mix. What they have effectively done is dressed the gospel up in drag. They put lipstick on it, a pair of pumps, and a funny hat. And we are left saying, “This is not the gospel.” And similar to my response to transvestites, “This is not creative or beautiful. It is gross.”
This properly demonstrates the demand for Christians to have a thorough understanding of the gospel so that we do not find ourselves editing or adding to it. And this is my motivation for posting this. I want you to see that in real life people are playing dress up with Jesus and his gospel and they have made him someone he is not.
This is dangerous, disturbing and deadly.
As DA Carson has said repeatedly, “We are one generation away from apostasy.” This comes from assuming the gospel, then forgetting the gospel, and then eventually walking away from it.
The gospel must find its home in Christians (Col. 3.16) that it colors our whole life. It must never be assumed lest it become edited, confused and lost.
update: Christianity Today has chimed in with “Valentines from Heaven“. Gulp.