“CASABLANCA” AND THE LOVE OF GOD
People who know me know that I love the movie Casablanca. Humphrey Bogart (along with Denzel Washington and Charlie Chaplin) is my favorite actor. I don’t watch films like I used to, but I find myself coming back to Casablanca time and again. It’s one of those rare stories that never gets old. I can quote the lines before they’re said, and yet somehow, they still move me. Some folks roll their eyes when I bring it up because they don’t care for old black-and-white movies. But to me, Casablanca is the greatest film ever made. Beneath the smoke-filled air, the piano music, and the fog of that final goodbye, it’s a story about love, loss, and redemption. And, if you look closely, it tells us something about the love of God shown in Christ.
(If you haven’t seen it, I’d advise watching it before you read this)
The movie is set in the chaos of World War II, in the Moroccan city of Casablanca, a crossroads of fear and escape. Refugees crowd the streets, all hoping to reach freedom. The tension in the air is thick. And in the center of it all stands Rick Blaine—played by Bogart—a man who has been wounded by love and hardened by life. Rick runs a nightclub where everyone comes to hide or hustle, to forget or remember. He pretends not to care about anyone or anything. His motto is, “I stick my neck out for nobody.” But the story that unfolds is about what happens when love, real love, forces a man to care again.
Love is dangerous in Casablanca. It asks something from you. It costs you something. That’s what makes it such a powerful picture of divine love. Jesus said, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). That is the heart of the gospel. Love that is comfortable is not love at all. Real love risks. Real love bleeds. Real love gives. It’s not about getting what we want but giving what someone else needs—even if it costs us everything.
There’s a moment near the end of the film that never fails to get me. Rick has the chance to be with Ilsa, the woman he loves. After all their heartbreak and misunderstanding, she’s right there, ready to stay with him. But instead, Rick sends her away. He gives up the one thing he wants most so she and her husband can escape to freedom. He looks her in the eyes and says, “We’ll always have Paris.” Then, in one of the most famous scenes in cinema, he walks away into the fog. The music swells, and you realize something: Rick’s sacrifice, painful as it is, is what redeems him. Love costs him everything, but in the giving, he finds his soul again.
That is the love of God. He so loved the world that He gave His only Son (John 3:16). At Calvary, Jesus did not choose the easy way. He could have called down angels. He could have turned away from the cup of suffering. But love held Him there (Luke 22:42). He bore the weight of our sin because He would rather die for us than live without us (Romans 5:8). Like Rick in the fog, but infinitely greater, Christ turned His back on comfort and chose the cross—for love.
What strikes me most about Rick’s act is that no one really understands it in the moment. The world around him just sees a man letting go. Ilsa weeps. The soldiers move on. The story ends not with applause but with quiet understanding. Love often looks like loss to those who don’t see the whole picture. In the same way, when Jesus hung on the cross, the world saw defeat. They mocked Him and said, “He saved others; He cannot save Himself” (Matthew 27:42). But what they didn’t know was that in losing His life, He was saving ours.
Casablanca teaches us that love and sacrifice are woven together. That the purest love is not about romance or comfort but redemption. It’s about doing what is right, even when it hurts. Jesus said, “If anyone wants to follow Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). The call to discipleship is a call to love like He loved, to lay down our pride, our rights, and sometimes even our dreams for the sake of others.
Rick’s transformation in the story reminds me of what happens when grace touches the human heart. At the beginning of the film, he’s cold and cynical. He keeps everyone at a distance. But by the end, love has softened him. He still wears the same suit and smokes the same cigarette, but something in him has changed. Love has made him human again. Isn’t that what grace does to us? The heart that once said, “I stick my neck out for nobody,” becomes the heart that says, “Here am I, Lord, send me” (Isaiah 6:8).
When the Holy Spirit begins to work in a believer’s life, He does not just forgive sin. He transforms the will. The man who once looked out for himself learns to look up to God and out toward others. Paul said, “The love of Christ compels us” (2 Corinthians 5:14). That means love drives us, shapes us, directs us. It becomes the motivation behind everything we do. We no longer live for ourselves but for the One who died and rose again for us (2 Corinthians 5:15).
The story of Casablanca ends with Rick walking away into the mist beside a man who, just a few scenes earlier, had been his enemy. That’s grace, too. Love not only reconciles us to God. It teaches us to reconcile with others. Christ not only forgave us—He broke down every dividing wall between us (Ephesians 2:14–16). The love of God makes enemies into friends, strangers into brothers, sinners into saints. It’s the kind of love that changes everything it touches.
I think that’s why I keep coming back to Casablanca. It’s not just the music, or the setting, or even the acting. It’s because, in a way, the story echoes the gospel. It’s about a man who learns that love is not about what you get but what you give. And that truth, seen through the smoke of an old black-and-white film, still preaches as powerfully as it did the first time I watched it.
Love costs something. Always. But it’s worth everything. Jesus did not love us because we were easy to love. He loved us because it was His nature to love—because God is love (1 John 4:8). And that love—that fierce, redeeming, self-giving love—still calls us to follow.
So maybe the next time you watch an old movie, and someone walks away into the fog, think of another hill long ago, where the Son of God walked into the shadows for you. He did not do it for applause or recognition. He did it for love. And just like Rick’s final words to Ilsa, His words to us are full of both sorrow and hope: “I’m giving you freedom, because love demands it.”
Only His love could turn loss into redemption, pain into purpose, and sinners into sons. And that love, once seen, changes everything.
Bryan Dewayne Dunaway
