God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.
– 2 Corinthians 5:19

The month of February holds the day that often makes or breaks relationships: Valentine’s Day! It’s a day of engagement rings, flowers, dinners, and the hope for returned affections. For all the happiness of Valentine’s Day, it’s also bittersweet. For every happy or newly engaged or blissfully married couple, you can find someone who is sadly alone, someone who longs to be loved, someone going through a devastating break-up. No wonder the game is, “He loves me…He loves me not.”

Imagine if the pressure of Valentine’s Day was off. Imagine there was no doubt about how that special someone felt about you. Imagine that person did what the Bible says, “Love keeps no record of wrongs.”

We have to imagine, because our experience is that human love is conditional. It is usually based on how people look, or what they have, or how they treat us. As a result, we are led to think that God is the same. We think that he loves us if we’re lovable. We assume that he loves us if we show our love to him. The truth is that God loves us not because of who we are or what we do. The Bible clearly describes God’s amazing love by what he has done for us: “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.”

Honestly, we have to admit that there are all kinds of sins on our record before God. Our attempts at love throughout life—failures, breakups, lies, adulteries, divorces—all are an astonishing record of wrong. God ought to oppose us. But in amazing love, God doesn’t count our sins against us. That means that he doesn’t keep a record of all our actions, thoughts and words that violate his holy will.

God doesn’t keep a record of our sins because of Jesus. God took all our sins, the sins of everyone, and charged them to his Son. In our place Jesus willingly and lovingly suffered the punishment of death that we and all people deserved. This is the great love that God has for us…for you! Through Jesus Christ, our relationship with God is restored and by faith in Jesus we will enjoy the blessing of his love forever.

In our relationship with God, it’s not “He loves me…He loves me not.” In Christ, it is always, “He loves me…He loves me…He loves me.”