With Valentine’s Day approaching, many people celebrate this time of year by watching romantic movies. One such movie is The Princess Bride, based on a book by William Goldman that describes itself as a “Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure” and my dad calls “a wonderful collection of cliches.”
If you’re not familiar with The Princess Bride, the swashbuckling comedy revolves around the relationship of Buttercup and Westly. They fall in love, are separated by tragic circumstances, and face many perils—you know, the usual pirates, monsters, assassins for hire, etc.—in their quest to find one another again. Despite all that happens, Westly tells Buttercup that they will never be kept apart: “This is true love,” he says, “Do you think this happens every day?”
In fact, true love—or, as a certain elderly clergyman expresses it, “wuv, twue wuv”—is the main driving force behind the story. At one point, Inigo and Fezzik (a professional swordfighter and giant, respectively) bring a “mostly dead” Westly to Miracle Max, who asks Westly what’s “worth living for.” With air forced into his lungs with the help of a bellows, Westly is just able to reply “Trooooo luv.” Nearly convinced to save Westly’s life, Max describes true love as “the greatest thing in the world, except a nice MLT—mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich.”
So, it’s the greatest thing in the world. A thing that makes life worth living. A thing that can survive the Fire Swamp, the Dread Pirate Roberts, the Pit of Despair… What exactly is true love?
The Princess Bride may have one answer, but the Bible has another. In John 15:12-13 Jesus says, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” This is exactly what Christ has done for us.
Westly is right to say that true love is rare. According to Romans 5:7-8, “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Take joy in knowing that Christ died for you, for each of us, when we had done nothing to earn it. He showed that He loves us with the greatest possible love by giving His own life in exchange for ours. You can rest and rejoice in the fact that nothing can separate us from that love (Romans 8:38-39). After all, this is true love—do you think this happens every day?