Love Is Not Self-Seeking (1 Corinthians Sermon 49)

Well, as you’ve heard from Andy Winn, we’re gonna continue our study this morning in 1 Corinthians 13, so go ahead and open at 1 Corinthians 13. We’re zeroing on just one aspect, negative aspect of love. Love is not self-seeking, or perhaps a little simpler; love is not selfish. As we look at that one assertion, you may well wonder why I think it worthwhile to spend an entire sermon on just this one aspect of love, but I consider this topic, love, to be the goal of our salvation, in terms of the massive change that God works on the human condition, the human heart. He moves us sovereignly by his grace by the power of the gospel, the power of the Holy Spirit, from being fanatically committed to self-interest. A selfish mindset that’s followed by a selfish lifestyle, he moves us from that to finding perfect fulfillment in ourselves in love, vertically for God, certainly, but 1 Corinthians 13 is primarily about that horizontal love that we have for other people. To be set free from selfishness into a perfectly loving frame of mind and heart and a loving lifestyle.

Now, that’s where we’re all headed, we who are in Christ, we’re headed there in heaven, we are going to be like that in heaven. And this may be the hardest aspect of our journey of sanctification, for from birth, we have had this monster of selfishness raging within our souls. Now, every Easter, my family decorates eggs, and we do it by taking eggs, hard-boiled eggs and putting them in containers of dye. So you could picture purple dye and putting an egg in there, and we all know that if you put the egg in there for 30 seconds, and then lift it back out, all of the dye will drip off the surface, the hard surface of the egg shell, and there’ll be no difference if you took it and ran it underwater, it would look exactly as it did a moment before. You have to leave it in there. And the longer that the egg is in the dye, the more deeply it is colored with that color, purple, let’s say. And so it is with our minds and hearts when it comes to the word of God. We need to settle in on key texts like this one and let it marinate into us, it needs to seep into the pores of our being. We can’t just go quickly past this, “Love is not self-seeking,” and think it’s going to make any difference at all.

And so as we come to this, we have, because of our hearts, we have this natural resistance to this message. We are staggeringly selfish, stunningly selfish, and honestly, we hardly see it. We don’t even realize it. We have blind spots. So this is a journey of sanctification, it’s right down the center of the transformation the Holy Spirit wants to work in us. A number of years ago, I remember I was preaching on Matthew 16, and there in Verse 24-25, Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me, for whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” So as I was thinking about that text, I realized how difficult it is for us to deny ourselves, and as I did, I began with an illustration, and it came from nature, the king salmon as it makes this incredible journey back upstream in order to spawn and die. The king salmon are born in some small tributary of a stream somewhere, of a larger stream, maybe in Alaska, and then it will swim down stream, that’s the easy part of the journey, all the way down into the Pacific Ocean. And as it enters into that water, amazingly biologically, it acclimates to a saltwater existence from the fresh water in which they were born. And then they’ll swim as much as 2000 miles or more in their lives until they reach full maturity. And then in the summer of their maturity, inner instinct and some other forces that we can’t even understand, something that God has set up within their being, they begin a journey back. They begin to navigate back, not only to their parent stream, but actually to the very tributary where they were born. It’s really quite remarkable.

Now, this journey upstream is staggeringly arduous, the fish batter themselves against the rocks as they leap waterfalls, as they jump upstream, occasionally unlucky ones, so to speak, are eaten by eagles or bears, but the ones that are able to avoid that, they expend immense amounts of energy to swim upstream. They stop eating once they begin this journey, once they enter fresh water, and so their bodies are being steadily depleted of fat, 90% of their fat reserves are used up, 50% of their protein is consumed as they make this incredible upstream journey. Then once they’ve completed it and they go back to that tiny little tributary where they were born, then they spawn and die within a week. Now, perhaps you’ve seen pictures of a fully mature king salmon jumping the waterfall, and it’s amazing. When you think about the power of the white water of the river, that they are fighting against every mile, every foot, really, of the journey. But they do it; it’s a natural journey. Jesus is calling on us to make a supernatural journey and to go against the flow of our sin nature, every step of the way. This upstream battling that the king salmon does is a picture of the fight that we are in for if we want to genuinely love our neighbor as ourself, that we can fight our self, self-interest, every moment. Jesus in Luke’s Gospel adds the word daily, Jesus calls on us to deny ourselves daily and take up our cross daily and follow him. And so this is the challenge that’s in front of us as we look at this text today, love is not self-seeking, or, love is not selfish.

Now, my mentor, as I learned this text has been, as I mentioned, primarily Jonathan Edwards, who wrote 17 sermons on 1 Corinthians 13, zeroed in on this in particular. Charity and Its Fruits is the overall work; you can get it and read it. And so I’m going to borrow his insights, I’m gonna lean on his outlines and some of his cross-references mixing in my own thoughts as well. But he has been an amazing mentor. Also along with that, some of you are aware that John Piper, in his book, Desiring God, which has really shaped his entire ministry, so much of it comes from Edward’s meditations on love and on the nature of self-love, what healthy self-love is, and what unhealthy self-love is. And we’ll get in. But all of that came from Edward’s meditations, quite remarkably. John Piper says that in the world, there are two irresistible forces at work shaping all of human history, and they really have to do ultimately with our salvation. The first and greatest irresistible force is the drive, the determination that God has to be glorified, that God be glorified; he is absolutely committed to his own glory. We human beings are absolutely committed to our own happiness, and these two come together in our salvation and in a slogan, that if you know anything about John Piper’s work, “God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied or delighted or happy in him.”

Sadly, however, that drive that we have, that is natural to us as human beings to be happy, to be satisfied, when Adam fell into sin, became twisted and perverted. Adam fell from the moral perfection in which he was created, his heart was corrupted with sin, his heart was designed to love God above all else, and then love other creations in their proportions. But instead of that, the heart became twisted. We were supposed to see the greatness of God and to love him. We were supposed to see the beauty of all creation, including other people. To love all of those creatures, especially human beings, created in the image and likeness of God, that we would delight in them. And so because of sin, our hearts were made to constrict instead of expanding and swelling up vertically to the infinitude and the magnitude of God’s greatness and then horizontally to the beauty of creation, especially other people. Sin acted as an astringent, it caused us to shrivel inward, to pucker inward, to contract within ourselves, and so love, self-love became corrupted. Self-love became the master of the soul of men, and Adam’s children, his descendants were all born in that cursed condition, made in his likeness, and made in his image in sin and in corruption. But God, God in his infinite mercy stepped into our helplessness and into our corruption and our selfishness in the form of his only begotten Son. He stepped into this world, he sent his only begotten Son to liberate us from sinful self-interest, to set us free from fanatical commitment to self, so that we will spend eternity worshipping God, but also cherishing and loving others. That’s where we’re heading.

Now, let’s zero in on Jonathan Edwards’ first adjustment as he begins in this sermon on “Love is not Self-Seeking,” he begins by a very critical adjustment in our thinking, an important disclaimer, “Christian love is not opposed to all self-love.” This is very important. Christianity does not cause human beings to cease loving themselves entirely or in all respects. It doesn’t tell us to cease trying to be happy or blessed or delighted. If Christianity were to do that, it would destroy our very humanity itself. We would cease to be in the image of God, for God made hearts to find delight and blessedness ultimately in himself. God is therefore not a cosmic killjoy, like he’s looking over the ramparts of heaven to see if anybody is happy anywhere and yelling down at us, “Cut that out!” Like you think about the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk stalking around in his heavenly kingdom, “Fee-fi-fo-fum!” Trying to sniff out any human happiness and crush it. That is not the God of the Bible, it’s not the God, it’s actually Satan. Satan hates human happiness. John 10:10, “The thief,” ultimately, that’s Satan. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.” Well, there’s the contrast right there, God is not a cosmic killjoy at all. He wants to fulfill our delights in himself and in all that he’s made.

“Christianity does not cause human beings to cease loving themselves entirely or in all respects. It doesn’t tell us to cease trying to be happy or blessed or delighted.”

The fact that God desires or even commands human self-love is obvious in the second great commandment. We are commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves. If God hated all self-love, why would he use it clearly as a measure of the way by which we should love our neighbor? Notice that the command does not say we should love our neighbor more than ourselves, but love our neighbor as ourselves, so that’s the measuring stick of how we do it. All of the commands and indeed the promises of God in the Bible appeal in some sense to our self-love or our self-interest or our desire to be blessed. He set before the Israelites blessings and curses. The ultimate blessedness he gives us in Psalm 16:11, where the Psalmist says, “You have made known to me the path of life, you will fill me with joy in your presence… “ Listen to this, “with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” That’s a direct appeal to us in our desire to be filled with pleasure and joy. What that Psalm says is, we’re gonna find it at God’s right hand in heaven. The saints in heaven will spend eternity swimming in a sea of pleasure. An ocean of happiness, that’s what heaven’s all about. They will love their own happiness to a level we can scarcely comprehend. And so if self-love were evil, then why would God perfect it so in heaven? He appeals for us to find our perfect happiness, our perfect blessedness in God in our heavenly home.

Interestingly, even this chapter itself appeals to a healthy self-love. Look again at verse 3, “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.” It’s like the Holy Spirit is saying through Paul, “Hey, you wanna gain something, then love while you sacrifice.” That’s what he’s saying. You don’t want to not gain anything, do you? So there’s a whole appeal here to a healthy self-interest or self-love. We also know instinctively, I think that for an action from any human heart to be genuinely loving, that heart has to delight in doing it, there has to be some enjoyment in the heart or it’s not really love, it’s robotic. If we were to do even the most sacrificial acts of service to another person and got literally no delight out of it, it would not be love. Conversely, you can imagine, and I want you to picture, a little girl who’s drawing a picture for her daddy because it’s his birthday, and she is smiling and she is humming to herself and she’s coloring the best she can. And she’s got an idea of what he would like and she is working on this picture and she’s just happy. And I don’t think she could put into words what she’s happy about, but I think I know what she’s happy about. She’s happy in the combination of his delight and hers coming together in the picture, in the giving of the picture. She is looking forward to the hug, the happy hug he’s gonna give her when he looks at the picture, that’s what love is. Her heart is filled with love for her daddy, because she’s happy in the gift she’s gonna give. So it is with worship vertically, any worship we really do, it’s our hearts kindled and heated up and delighted in God. That’s what worship really is, and heaven is gonna perfect that. So if all self-love were wrong, then how could we ever really love at all? God loves a cheerful giver, God loves a cheerful worshiper, God loves a cheerful servant. We are to find delight in loving God, and especially in this context here, loving others.

I. What Selfishness Does Love Oppose?

Alright, so if Christian love is not opposed to all self-love, what kind of self-love is it opposed to? Well, Christian love is opposed to unhealthy or inordinate self-love, says Jonathan Edwards. Sin takes the healthy self-love, which is essential to our very humanity and twists it to become unhealthy and inordinate, inordinate means outside of boundaries that God has set up, out of proportion. Imbalanced, grotesque, I’ve used the word twisted. You could picture a tumor which is vibrant with life, but it’s a deadly kind of life, it’s greedily taking resources from the body, and the tumor is growing and growing until at last it kills the person. And so this self-love is like that, it’s a vibrant lively, energetic, evil thing in our souls.

So the self-love that Christian is opposed to is love which finds happiness confined to self. It’s confined to me, to the exclusion of others, ultimately God above all else, but also horizontally, as this chapter is concerned about, the exclusion of other people. Love is not self-seeking. When we say that love is not selfish or self-seeking, it means a love that is limited to self, pushing aside everyone else. A healthy, mature Christian, therefore, is called to imitate Christ. I love that Wes chose the song, “Show us Christ.” I think this sermon, if you hear properly, you will see how selfless, beautifully selfless was the love of Christ, and we can and should imitate Christ. Jesus found delight- it was his good pleasure to give people the kingdom. He loved healing sick people, he loved speaking truth to truth-starved people; he loved driving out demons. Remember that woman that was bent over and hunched over and kept in chains, physically even, by demonic force, Jesus set her free on a Sabbath. She was a daughter of Abraham, and Satan has kept her bound and he just set her free. He delighted in that. He loved setting sinners free from their sinful lifestyle, like Zacchaeus setting him free from his covetousness. When he said… When Zacchaeus said, “I’m not gonna do that anymore, I’m giving back what I’ve taken wrongly, I’m gonna repay four-fold.” And Jesus delighted and said, “Today, salvation has come to this house.” And so there is a delight in Jesus’ heart in seeing the Kingdom of God take over, he just loved that. And so also we are called on to imitate that expansive, including others delight. I am delighted to see the blessings of the gospel work in somebody else’s life.

Now, contrast that with the selfishness, that inward focus, that astringent skewed kind of love that is natural to our sin nature. Again, I think about my favorite whipping boy in this: Ebenezer Scrooge, I can do that ’cause he was a fictitious character. But think about what Dickens wrote about him, “He was a tight fisted hand at the grindstone [Scrooge] a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner, hard and sharp as flint from which no steel had ever struck out, generous fire.” That is our sin nature personified, there’s nothing generous coming from it, it’s hard, self-focused. Scrooge’s pleasure was in money, and that’s a perfect display of idolatry. He loved it to the utmost as a creature, as an idol, without any delight in the God who gave it or the people it could bless until he was transformed. So it is with any recluse addict, binging on electronic entertainment or drowning his sorrows in drugs or alcohol, or a porn addict alone in the dark staring at images. Or a glutton, eating, stuffing his face, trying to get pleasure out of the food in and of itself, there’s a greediness and an inward focus in that idolatry. It’s totally self-focused, a pursuit of the pleasure of senses without any vertical love to God and thankfulness and any horizontal including of others in that idolatrous binge experience. Edwards put it this way, “A Christian spirit is contrary to that selfish spirit, which consists in the self-love that goes out after such objects as are confined and limited, such as a man’s worldly wealth or the honor that consists in a man’s being set up higher in the world than his neighbors. Or his own worldly ease and convenience, or his pleasing and gratifying his own bodily appetites and lust.” The wicked selfishness of the heart is to find love in these creaturely things, these creatures without any relationship to God or others.

“The wicked selfishness of the heart is to find love in these creaturely things, these creatures without any relationship to God or others.”

II. How Christian Love Opposes Selfishness

Alright, how does Christian love oppose that? How does it oppose selfishness or self-seeking? Well, at first, the work of salvation moves us out of ourselves to seek first and foremost, vertically, to glorify God. And then secondly, having done that, to move out horizontally and seek delight in the blessing of others. So when the Holy Spirit works salvation in us, he expands our constricted inwardly, self-focused, sinful hearts upward to himself. We are given a vision in our hearts of the glory of God in the face of Christ, this beautiful light that shines in the previous darkness of our hearts, and it is beautiful and it’s attractive, and it’s the glory of God. And we love him, and we are moved by faith, we see him and delight in him and move upward. Essential to that then, is a growing desire like the little girl drawing the picture, a growing desire to please him. We increasingly realize that we should desire nothing on Earth that does not please our heavenly Father. We would not want the whole world to be given to us if we should forfeit or lose our souls. We would not wanna have a golden bed of pleasure if we knew that God were displeased with it. We don’t want that, we want him to be pleased, we wanna find out what pleases the Lord, and we wanna do it. Beyond that, we also move out to seek and to please and bless other people horizontally. So first and foremost, there’s a health coming vertically in our relationship with God that’s very other-centered, but we find our delight there, then we move out in a lesser way, but a very important way, and it is the focus of this chapter, to other people. And we love them and we want to see them blessed, we want… Our hearts are wrapped up in their blessedness, we desire to alleviate suffering, we want to bring blessing. This is especially true when it comes to eternity. We want to alleviate eternal torment of hell that people would hear and believe the gospel and not spend eternity separated from God, we also want to see lesser blessings coming to Christians and non-Christians alike, we yearn for that.

Many commandments show this outward movement away from selfishness to blessing others. For example, Philippians 2:4, “Each of you should look, not only to your own interest, but also to the interest of others.” Or again, 1 Corinthians 10:24, “Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others.” Again, 1 Corinthians 10:33, same chapter, “I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many that they may be saved.” And then Romans 15:2, “Each of us should please his neighbor for his good to build him up.” and many such verses. The grace of God then works in us a deeply sympathizing and merciful spirit for us as Christians, we begin to sympathize, to not only rejoice with those who rejoice, but to mourn with those who mourn. Selfish people make much of their own afflictions as though no one in history has ever gone through as much suffering as they’re going through right now, and no one can understand the depth of their suffering, they make much of that. Also selfish people who are not suffering do not have it in their hearts to move out toward those who are suffering, so that they make sacrifices of time, energy, money, so they can alleviate other people’s suffering, they do not do that, they make much of their own sufferings and they make very little of other people’s sufferings. But the grace of God heals us from that narrow selfishness, it causes us more and more to see other people’s sufferings, even our own suffering, we see it in light of ways we might possibly be able to minister others that are similarly suffering. We see Christians that get a diagnosis of cancer, they have a serious life-threatening disease, but some of the most mature people I’ve ever seen saw that as a platform to minister to other non-Christians who have the same diagnosis. And so to some degree, that individual is minimizing their own suffering. They don’t think about it, “Oh, how much I’m suffering.” They’re thinking, “What can I do with the time I have left to minister to others who are suffering the same way?” Christian love takes delight in bringing blessing to others and supplying the needs of others, it also causes us to care about what’s going on around us.

I think about COVID-19 and so many opportunities we have to see the suffering in the world, we’re not as able as ordinarily would be directly to minister unless we are in the healthcare if we’re doctors, nurses, etcetera, we can. But we understand that this disease is leaving a trail of wreckage around the world, economic records, physical ailments, all kinds of things, and there’s gonna be much work for Christians to do and for us to have our heart expand to care about what’s going on here in Durham or in Raleigh, Chapel Hill, our geographical region. Edwards said this, “A man of right spirit is not a man of narrow and private views but is greatly interested and concerned for the good of the community to which he belongs, particularly of the city or village in which he resides, and for the true welfare of the society of which he is a member.” So in other words, it makes you civic-minded and care about what’s going on right in your own community.

Ultimately though, it has us care about the lost, the spiritual condition of the lost. Psalm 119:136 says, “Streams of tears flow from my eyes for your law is not obeyed.” So the Psalmist there has an emotional reaction to the brokenness of lawlessness. He’s not indignant and angry he just sees the brokenness of it. There is a righteous anger, I understand that, and Jesus showed that, but Jesus wept over Jerusalem, he wept over his enemies. Moses interceded for Israel and was willing that his own life be taken and Israel spared. The Apostle Paul said he had sorrow and unceasing anguish in his heart for lost Jewish people in his own generation, and he was willing even that he would be denied heaven, that he would give up his own soul if it could be, he knew it couldn’t, but that the lost of the Jews would be saved.

So Christian love will increasingly be willing to make sacrifices for the salvation of the lost. I think especially about the missionary enterprise has been going on for 20 centuries. I had my IMB trustee meeting this week, and the IMB is gonna be in a very challenging position economically because of what’s happened to the economy of the world, but especially in America. And so we need to begin praying for financial support for missionaries. But think about the missionary spirit, willing to go to some distant land to face challenges, persecutions, suffering, even death, death from disease, or in very rare cases, death from martyrdom, willing to do that so that others can be saved. So that’s being completely… Not completely, but as much as we can be, cured of the kind of selfishness that the Scripture is addressing. So the spirit of Christian love moves us out to make sacrifices for others. 1 John 3:16, “This is how we know what love is, Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” This is the opposite of the spirit of Scrooge, that stingy, grasping, hard as flint, selfish spirit. Instead, it looks at all the earthly blessings and opportunities we have as a conduit of blessings to those around us.

III. Evidence That Christian Love Must Oppose Selfishness

Now, what evidence, according to Jonathan Edwards, what evidence is there that Christian love must oppose selfishness? What scriptural or theological support can we put under this? Well, let’s begin by looking at the nature of love itself. Love by its very nature moves outward from itself; it goes out from itself to another. Imagine you’re at a wedding… I saw this in a movie, it had nothing to do with a wedding, but it had to do with one of these extravagant French kings, I don’t know if it was the Sun King or who it was, but he had a servant walking around with a full-length mirror so he could look at his outfit all day long. Imagine if you went to a wedding in which the couple didn’t look at each other at all, didn’t talk to each other, didn’t talk to the guest, they just looked at themselves in the mirror the whole time, like, “What in the world? Is there any love here? Can I introduce you to one another? You’re going to love each other for the rest of your life.” That’s what the wedding is, and so essentially love has to move outward to include another, it can’t be self-absorbed, it can’t be selfish. That’s what love really is.

But specifically, Christian love is opposed to all of the worldly counterfeits of love, there’s a lot of selfishness in apparent love. People make connections, non-Christian people make connections that are really all about self-interest, they join clubs with common interests, and they boast over one another in that and they’re really… It’s like a mutual admiration society, they know they’re gonna get a lot of feedback that stokes their pride and their ego. Back in the days of the flourishing of the Bible Belt, even in regions like this, like this city, people would join First Baptist Church for social reasons or business reasons or other connections, it was ultimately selfish, it wasn’t other centered at all, it all came back to me. But Christian love is the opposite. Christian love moves out supernaturally and causes us to include others, and ultimately God. Edwards calls it, and this is a beautiful image, “a plant transplanted into the soul out of the garden of heaven.” Isn’t that beautiful? By the Holy and blessed Spirit of God. So it has life, it has its life in God and not in itself. So this holy seed of love has been planted in you, supernaturally, from the garden of heaven, it’s a seed of love, and it starts to move out vertically toward God, but yes, sweetly, horizontally toward others. Thus Christian love soars high above all lowly motives and selfish connections.

This is seen especially in love for enemies; you get nothing back. Nothing. We’re called on to love our enemies so that we can be like our Father in heaven who causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous; he never gets thanked for it, but he just does it out of an overflow of love. So also Christian love moves us to make the same kinds of sacrifices. Jesus said in Luke 6, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone force you and takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic.” Now, this kind of thinking is so radical and so transformative that Jesus actually calls it a new commandment. He says in John 13:34, “A new command, I give you, Love one another as I have loved you, so you must love one another.” Jesus is very well aware that the Old Testament horizontal law could be summed up in this statement, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s right from the Old Testament. He knew that that command was actually an old commandment, but what is new is the measure, the example, the pattern of love that we have now that Jesus has come. Now that Jesus came and lived that life in front of us, that we read about in Matthew, Mark Luke and John, when we see what kind of selflessness, the kind of self-denial that went right to the cross, even to death on the cross, dying in our place under the wrath of God, and then being raised from the dead on the third day, so that in his death, we have our forgiveness and in his life, we have eternal life. And he did it all for us, and he lived out day after day. So that Jesus, when he says “A new commandment” what he’s saying is, “What’s new here is, I am the example of love, as I have loved you, so you must love one another.” Jesus actually takes possession of this commandment and makes it his own. In John 15:17, he said, “This is my command.” I love it that way, to say it that way. “This is my command, I own it, and I’m giving it to you. Love each other.”

So Jesus is a perfect pattern of humble service to everyone he met, everyone who came to him with a need, that is our new pattern of love that we should follow, and no one loved better than Christ, no one loved his enemies better than Jesus. It was while we were still sinners and still enemies that Christ died for us, and he gave them maximum display of love to those who could never suitably repay him. Christ has united his heart with ours. He speaks of us as though we are him like we are part of him. You remember what he said to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus? “‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ Saul answered, ‘Who are you Lord?’” It’s one of the great questions of all redemptive history. “Who are you, Lord?” Spend eternity working that one out, Saul. But in the meantime, “I am the one you are persecuting.” Same thing with the sheep and the goats, “‘I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger, you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you nursed me to health, I was in prison and you came and looked after me.’ ‘When did we do that?’ ‘Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me,’” there’s a union between Christ and his heart and his people. His heart is united with them, and he spent himself fully for our sakes, everything he had to give, he gave away. Edwards said this, “His love did not rest in mere feeling, nor in light efforts and small sacrifices.” Can I just tell you those words pierced me. Christ didn’t love that way, he didn’t love in light efforts and small sacrifices; he gave up his own ease, comfort, interest, honor and wealth in heaven, and then he became poor, outcast and despised, and he lived it to the end of his days. He had nowhere to lay his head, and he did it all for us. Not mere feeling, not light efforts, and no small sacrifice, that’s how he loved, and Christ did all of this without any expectation of any of us ever being able to suitably love him in return. So how has that applied to us? Well, “we become united with others, in our hearts, we shall seek not only our own things, but we shall seek,” says Edwards, “in our hearts to be so united with others that we shall look on their circumstances as if they were our own. We shall endeavor to be interested in their good, as Christ was in ours, we shall be ready to forgo and part with many of our own things in many cases for the benefits of others as Christ did toward us. And these things we will do without any expectation of being repaid by them, as Christ had no expectation of being repaid by us. In this way alone is this deadly, relentless principle of selfishness finally defeated and finally destroyed.”

IV. Examine Your Life and Seek a Transformed Heart

So examine your life. Examine your life and seek, in him, a transformed heart. Look at yourself first. I have to ask, are you a Christian? Are you born again? Have you received the gift of salvation? Jesus came because sinners like you and me are so selfish and we couldn’t heal our own selfish hearts, and we couldn’t do anything for our past selfish actions in wickedness and sin. And so what we could not do, God did by sending Jesus, living that sinless life, dying in our place, rising again. Have you confessed that Jesus is Lord, and do you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead? And if that happens to you, all of your sins, past, present and future will be instantly forgiven forever by grace through faith. But then something else will happen, he will give you a new nature, a new heart, and he will by the power of the Spirit working within you, increasingly transform you and make you loving like Jesus is. The Spirit of Christ, will come and live within you and increasingly teach you to live selflessly for others.

So if you are a Christian, I just wanna ask you again, examine your life, see if there are patterns of selfishness in your life. Is the Holy Spirit bringing to mind something right now? A pattern of self-love, self-focus, selfishness, that is sinful. Ask him to show you how you spend your time, your energy, your money, look at that, find out what you’re spending it on, acknowledge as you do this, you’re not your own, you’re bought at a price. Your body and all of your resources belong to Christ, bought with his blood. God has made you for himself, and he wants you to live daily for him and for others. He has also given you higher and nobler purposes than living like Scrooge, living for me, living selfishly. He’s set nobility and transcendent beauty in your heart, so you can live for that, storing up treasure in heaven by living for others and ultimately for the glory of God. He’s given you everything you need to live a selfless life of love for others.

“Your body and all of your resources belong to Christ, bought with his blood. God has made you for himself, and he wants you to live daily for him and for others. “

Acknowledge that you are united in Christ with other Christians. We are all part of one body, and when one part of the body suffers, the whole part suffers with it. Think about if you had a stomach ailment, significant stomach ailment and a lot of pain maybe not life-threatening or any chronic disease but you’re in a lot of pain. How much of the rest of the members of your body are motivated to help that one part of the body. It’s not like the eyes say, “Look, why should I search on the Internet for the best GI doctor? That’s got nothing to do with me. I’m an eye; I’m not part of the gastro-intestinal system. Your problem, not mine.” That just would never happen, the eyes will search online, the appointment will be made, the feet will carry you from the car into the clinic, everything that is needed for health, your body will be mobilized to do. Why should it be any different with the body of Christ? When one part suffers, the whole part suffers with it, and so we need to find out and minister to others as one body of Christ. If you live selflessly and give of yourself your time, energy, money, resources to others, God will be motivated to supply what you need. As he said in Philippians 4, “My God will meet all your needs according to his riches and glory in Christ Jesus.” So when you are generous and give to others, he’s gonna come back in and supply your need, however, there seems to be an opposite warning, if you choose to live selfishly, God will not be motivated to care for you in the same way, you’ll be on your own. “Fine, you wanna take care of yourself, then take care of yourself.” For me, I think Philippians 4 is to be able to generously give and then see how God gives to us. As it says in Luke 6:38, “Give and it will be given to you, a good measure, pressed down shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap, for the measure you use is the measure that you’ll receive.”

Now, at the end of this sermon, Edwards showed us a lot of grace and I’m grateful because he could be pretty tough. You read these things it’s like, “ugh.” But he said very clearly, speaking of himself and his congregation, “This is very difficult for us, this is hard.” That’s why I gave you that image of the king salmon swimming upstream every moment. This is hard to do; it’s very difficult. We will be fighting our native twisted selfishness the rest of our lives, and so we have to fight, but what Edwards said so sweetly is this, “Let all these things incline us, incline us all to be less selfish than we are and seek more of the opposite, excellent spirit of Christ-like selfless love.”

Close with me in prayer. Father, thank you for the word that we have this morning from 1 Corinthians 13, how it searches us, how it finds problems in our souls, but it also gives us hope, as we know in Christ our hope is that when we get to heaven, we will be so completely free from wicked sinful self-love, and we will find our greatest delight in the glory of God and in the blessedness of our brothers and sisters. We look forward to that day. In Jesus’ name, amen.

1 Corinthians 13:5 Love is not self-seeking

As we continue our study in this magnificent chapter, we come to another negative description of the supernatural love that the grace of the gospel works in all true Christians… “Love is not self-seeking” or simply… “Love is not selfish”

As we look as this one assertion, you may well wonder why I think it worthwhile to spend an entire sermon on this one small phrase. But I consider this topic—love—to be the goal of our salvation, in terms of the massive change that God works on the human heart. He moves us from being fanatically committed to selfish interests, a selfish mindset, a selfish lifestyle… to finding the perfect fulfillment of ourselves in love for God and for others.

To be set free into a perfectly loving frame of mind and heart… that is where all of us are headed in heaven. And this may be the hardest part of our salvation, for from birth we have had the monster of selfishness raging within our souls

To learn to DENY yourself daily… and to do so willingly and with delight for the pleasure of God and for the benefit of others… this is the hardest work there is, and the most glorious. It was for this very reason the Holy Spirit moved Paul to write each of these words two thousand years ago, and the same Holy Spirit wants to work them in all of us today. And since this is no light work, we must not hurry quickly through it.

Every Easter, our family takes hardboiled eggs and dyes them various pastel colors, as many of you do. And no doubt you have noticed that the longer you immerse the white egg in the purple dye, the deeper the hue when it comes out. If you dip the egg in and pull it right out, it will be dripping with the dye, but it will all run off the surface—the eggshell is unchanged.

But for the dye to permeate deeply into the cellular structure of the eggshell, it needs to be immersed in the purple dye for a long time. So it is with the minds and hearts as we study the scripture… we are called on to meditate deeply, and let the words permeate into the depths of our beings, so that we will be colored permanently with the rich deep purple color of God’s perfect love.

And it is even more difficult in that our hearts are naturally resistant to this message. We are staggeringly selfish. Stunningly selfish. And we hardly see it, hardly realize it.

A number of years ago, I was preaching on Matthew 16

Matthew 16:24-25 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.

‘To show how difficult it is to obey this command to DENY OURSELVES, I began that sermon with two illustrations… the Alaska King Salmon and the extreme rock climber.

One of the most awe-inspiring journeys in nature is that of the Alaska King Salmon

Born in some small stream, perhaps a tiny tributary of a larger stream in Alaska, a King Salmon will swim downstream to the Pacific Ocean, actually acclimating to a salt water existence from the fresh water in which they were born. They swim as far as 2000 miles in the Pacific and Bering Seas as they reach full maturity.

In the summer of their maturity, inner instinct and earth cues guide them back not only to their parent stream, but back to the exact tributary in which they were born.

The journey upstream is an arduous one. The fish batter themselves against rocks while leaping waterfalls. Unlucky ones are eaten by bears and eagles. A great amount of energy is expended in the swim upstream. Salmon in the Yukon River swim up to 2400 miles. Salmon stop eating once they enter fresh water, so their bodies are steadily being depleted of fat. 90 percent of their fat reserves and 50 percent of their protein are consumed in this upstream journey.

After this astonishing journey, the King Salmon reproduce, then die within a week

Who of us has not seen incredible pictures of a King Salmon jumping UPSTREAM against the pounding whitewater of a significant waterfall in northern Alaska? Truly amazing

The King Salmon defies the overwhelming power of Alaskan whitewater every mile of its journey upstream

BUT YET it is NATURAL… all the salmon do it

Jesus Christ is calling His disciples to follow Him in a SUPERNATURAL journey

The Christian life is truly a supernatural life. It cannot be lived in the simple strength of human power—not physical power, not willpower, not mental power… no human power is sufficient to follow Christ for one day.

Why is this? Because Christ calls on us to deny ourselves, take up our cross daily and follow him if we wish to go to heaven.

The constant battle against the raging flow of the pounding whitewater represents the difficulty of the journey of discipleship—to learn every single day to say no to selfishness and to love God and others.

It is the same as the journey up the El Capitan or the Eiger Northface made by a rock climber… every single moment, gravity is fighting the ascent; every move the rock climber makes is against his own weight pulling him down to the valley below.

So it is when we come to the command to love God and love others with a perfectly SELFLESS LOVE

My mentor, my guide here again is Jonathan Edwards… Charity and Its Fruits. I am shamelessly borrowing his insights and outline and supporting scriptures. Some of you who are John Piper fans will also recognize some themes from Desiring God as well, but Piper will tell you plainly he got those ideas from Edwards

Context:

Paul is writing to the Corinthian church, a church deeply divided by factions and selfishness and pride. He is addressing spiritual gifts, which are special abilities given by God through the Holy Spirit that enables each member of the church of Jesus Christ to play a special role in the building of the church to full maturity in Christ. These spiritual gifts, including prophecy, tongues, administration, giving, service, faith, healing, etc. were powerfully active in the Corinthian church. But the people were PRIDEFUL about their gifts, and ironically the gifts ended up dividing rather than uniting the church. So in the middle of describing the gifts by way of analogy (using the human body—one body, many members), he has to address their heart attitude…

1 Corinthians 12:31 And now I will show you the most excellent way.

LOVE is the most excellent way!

Even the most incredible displays of the spiritual gifts are WORTHLESS without genuine love as their motive:

1 Corinthians 13:1-3 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Then, he gives fifteen descriptions of love—some positive (what love IS), most negative (what love IS NOT). We have already begun to look at some of these:

1 Corinthians 13:4-5 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude

Love is patient = long-suffering; willing to put up for a long time with provocations, attacks, insults, sins… like God does with us

Love is kind = eager to do good—acts of kindness with a kind demeanor… a basic moral GOODNESS resulting in gentle acts of service

Love does not envy = not jealous over the blessings and prosperity that God chooses to give to others, but actually delights in the other person having those blessings and that prosperity

Love does not boast, love is not proud = Love sees every blessing and prosperity we have not as ground to feel superior to others, but as pipelines by which we can bless others… love is essentially HUMBLE… true humility before God results in love toward others, not being puffed up with yourself

Love is not rude = basic manners; not shoving yourself forward; thinking of the effects of your actions on the people around you; the word means to defy moral standards; it certainly includes table manners, holding the door for others, not interrupting, not talking too loudly on the cellphone in a public place… but it extends to a whole worldview of blessing people around you with your behavior

Now, we want to zero in on this one negative statement: LOVE DOES NOT SEEK ITS OWN… that is a literal translation; or more commonly, love is not SELFISH

Adam at creation:

The devastating ruin on the souls people began with the sin of Adam in the Garden of Eden. Adam fell from the moral perfection in which he was created. His heart was corrupted with sin. His heart was designed to LOVE, to expand to the dimensions of God’s own character and God’s magnificent actions in creation… to see the greatness of God and to love him; and to see the beauty of all creation, including other people, and to love all of those creatures… especially other human beings, because they were the most perfect displays of God’s nature… created in his image and his likeness. Man’s heart was made to swell and expand with love in whatever he knew and studied and learned and explored and discovered. To love God in all of it.

But sin acted as a terrible ASTRINGENT… it caused man’s heart to shrivel within itself and to contract and to pull inward to a shocking dimension of smallness and narrowness… confined WITHIN HIMSELF

Self-love became the master of the soul of man… and Adam’s children were born under that cursed condition; made in his likeness and image in corruption.

But God in his infinite mercy has chosen to enter into man’s selfishness and misery, and to heal us by the gospel of his blessed Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. He sent his Son into the world to liberate us from sin, and for our purposes here today, to set us FREE from fanatical commitment to seeking self, from selfishness.

This gospel of Jesus Christ will be perfectly victorious in the hearts and lives of the elect, and will save us all from sin. It will bring us in the end to a perfect world of love in which our hearts will expand again and for all eternity to appreciate the dimensions of the perfections of God and of the greatness of his works. We will LOVE PERFECTLY in heaven. But by the deposit of the Spirit, we can LOVE MORE AND MORE PERFECTLY NOW…as we learn to put selfishness to death.

I.   What Selfishness Does Love Oppose?

A.   Important Disclaimer: Christian Love is Not Opposed to All Self-love

1.   Christianity does not cause human beings to cease loving themselves entirely or in all respects

2.   Christianity does not tell you to stop trying to be happy or blessed or delighted

3.   If Christianity were to do that, it would destroy our very humanity itself… we would cease to be in the image of God, for God made our hearts to love ourselves

4.   When the Lord Jesus Christ was born into the world, angels were dispatched to make this announcement

Luke 2:14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men

5.   This does not destroy our desire for this kind of blessing, but greatly enhances and fulfills it

6.   For indeed, the saints and the angels in heaven are perfectly happy, and God is delighted to have them happy

7.   God is NOT a “cosmic kill-joy” leaning over the parapets of heaven and seeing any human being feeling any happiness whatsoever and yelling with a grumpy voice: “CUT THAT OUT!”

8.   Like the grumpy giant in Jack and the Beanstalk, stomping around his heavenly kingdom forever angry saying “Fee fie fo fum…”

9.   Actually, the true cosmic kill-joy is Satan and sin

John 10:10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

10. The fact that God still desires, even commands self-love is that he uses it in the Old Covenant as a measure of how we should love others

Matthew 22:39 ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

11. If God hated our self-love, why would he use it so clearly as the measure of all our love to others

12. Notice also that the command does not say we should love our neighbor MORE THAN ourselves but AS ourselves

13. All the commands and promises and blessings of the Bible appeal to a healthy principle of self-love

a.   God doesn’t want us to experience the misery that sin will bring upon us

b.   He appeals to our self-love to CHOOSE LIFE rather than death

c.   The gospel appeals to our desire to be happy

Psalm 16:11 You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand

The saints in heaven will spend eternity swimming in a sea of pleasure, an ocean of happiness… they will love their own happiness to a level we can scarcely comprehend; so if self-love were evil, why would God so perfect it in heaven? He appeals to us to find perfect happiness for ourselves in heaven

d.   Even this same chapter appeals to a healthy self-love

1 Corinthians 13:3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing

The Holy Spirit is saying, “If you don’t want to GAIN NOTHING from all your sacrifices on earth, be sure that you do them in love”

Furthermore, we all know instinctively that for an action to be loving, the person doing it must be GLAD and have some pleasure in doing it…

John Piper: A husband giving his wife “dutiful roses” for their anniversary, who says “I want you to know I get no pleasure at all out of giving you these” is likely to get them thrown back at him! She wants him to ENJOY giving the gift, or its no gift at all

So also a little girl who really loves her daddy is coloring a picture for him for his birthday and humming to herself with the anticipation of the happiness it will bring her to give it to him.

Her heart is wrapped up in his pleasure and in the gift.

So… Christian love is not opposed to ALL self-love. Then what kind of self-love IS Christian love opposed to?

B.   Christian Love is Opposed to Unhealthy or Inordinate Self-Love

1.   Sin has twisted our hearts and made them sick

2.   So the healthy self-love which is essential to our very humanity is twisted to become unhealthy and INORDINATE… inordinate means out of proportion, beyond boundaries, imbalanced, grotesque… like a TUMOR, which is filled with living cells multiplying inordinately, becoming larger and larger and larger until it kills the body

3.   So, FIRST, the self-love Christian love is opposed to is love which find our own happiness in a way that is CONFINED to SELF to the EXCLUSION of others; love is not self-seeking means a love that is limited to itself, pushing everyone to the side

2 Timothy 3:1-4 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money… lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God

4.   Now, healthy mature Christians can imitate Christ in pursuing their own love relentlessly in seeking the Kingdom of God and the salvation and blessing of others… Christ did that—it brought him GOOD PLEASURE to give people the Kingdom of God; he was delighted to heal people, to feed them, to tell them the truth, to see demon-possessed people set free, to bring in tax collectors and sinners into the Kingdom… he was not detached and emotionless in all this… he rejoiced with a joy that reached heaven. So also his most mature and loving followers relentlessly pursue their own happiness… but it is always in doing what pleases God and blesses others

By contrast, the selfishness this verse is opposed to is like that of Ebeneezer Scrooge:

“He was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire.”

His pleasure in money was a perfect display of idolatry… he loved it to the utmost as a creature, without any delight in the God who gave it or in the people it should bless

So also any recluse addict, binging on electronic entertainment, or drowning his sorrows in drugs or alcohol, or a porn addict alone in the dark, or a glutton who eats alone, stuffing the face with rich foods… it is a totally SELF-FOCUSED pursuit of the pleasure of the senses, without any vertical love toward God or horizontal love for others

As Edwards said:

“A Christian spirit is contrary to that selfish spirit which consists in the self-love that goes out after such objects as are confined and limited — such as a man’s worldly wealth, or the honor that consists in a man’s being set up higher in the world than his neighbors, or his own worldly ease and convenience, or his pleasing and gratifying his own bodily appetites and lusts.”

The wicked selfishness of that heart is to find love in those creaturely things with NO RELATIONSHIP to anyone else

II.   How Christian Love Opposes Selfishness

A.   The Work of Salvation Moves Us to Seek and Glorify God, and to Seek the Good of Others

1.   When the Holy Spirit works salvation in us, he expands our constricted inwardly self-focused sinful hearts first UPWARD

2.   We see the beauty and the perfection and the glory of God and move up toward him; we are reconciled to him and delight in him… we are moving UPWARD toward our heavenly Father

3.   Essential to that is a growing desire to PLEASE HIM; we increasingly realize that we should desire nothing on earth that does not please God; we would not have the whole world, and love our souls; we would not have a golden bed of pleasure if we knew God were displeased with it

4.   Beyond that, we move out also to seek to please and bless other people; we move OUTWARD! We yearn to be a blessing to other people

a.   We desire to alleviate suffering and bring blessing

b.   This is especially true when it comes to eternity; we do not want anyone we know to spend eternity in hell’s torments or to miss heaven’s pleasures

c.   Many commands show this outward movement from narrow selfishness to expansive love

Philippians 2:4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

1 Corinthians 10:24 Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others

1 Corinthians 10:33 I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved

Romans 15:2 Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up

5.   The Grace of God in Christ works a deeply sympathizing and merciful spirit in Christians

a.   Selfish people make much of their own sufferings and afflictions as if no one on earth has ever suffered like they are

b.   Conversely selfish people who are not suffering do not have their hearts move out toward those who are to spare their own time, energy or money to alleviate that suffering

c.   But the grace of God heals us from that narrow selfishness and causes us more and more to see the suffering and to make suitable sacrifices to alleviate that suffering

d.   Christian love takes delight in supplying their needs and bringing them comfort

James 3:17 The wisdom that comes from heaven is … full of mercy and good fruit

e.   The work of grace in Christians causes us to be generous toward the afflicted… to promote their welfare AS WE HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY

f.   Edwards: Christian love is also civic-minded

“A man of a right spirit is not a man of narrow and private views, but is greatly interested and concerned for the good of the community to which he belongs, and particularly of the city or village in which he resides, and for the true welfare of the society of which he is a member”

Jeremiah 29:7 Seek the welfare of the city I have deported you to. Pray to the LORD on its behalf, for when it has prosperity, you will prosper

g.   Christian love will also grieve over the spiritual condition of the lost

Amos 6:6 You drink wine by the bowlful and use the finest lotions, but you do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph

Psalm 119:136 Streams of tears flow from my eyes, for your law is not obeyed.

i)   Moses begged and interceded for the sinful Jewish nation and was willing to die that they might live

ii)   Jesus wept over the lostness of Jerusalem

iii)  Paul wept with deep sorrow and unceasing anguish over the lost in Israel and was willing to trade his salvation that they might be saved

h.   So Christian love will increasingly be willing to make sacrifices for the salvation of the lost… willing to take on persecution, sorrow, deprivations, loss, disease, pain… even death… so that the lost might be saved

B.   So the Spirit of Christian Love Moves Us to Make Sacrifices for Others

Acts 21:13 Then Paul answered, “Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.”

1 John 3:16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.

1.   This is clearly the opposite of the spirit of Scooge… the stingy, grasping, greedy, selfish spirit

2.   Instead, it looks at all earthly blessings as an opportunity to bring pleasure to God by sacrificially giving it to others

III.   Evidence That Christian Love Must Oppose Selfishness

A.   The Nature of Love Itself

1.   Love by its very nature moves outward, it diffuses to those around, it embraces the interests of others

Imagine how bizarre a wedding would be in which the couple didn’t look at each other, talk to each other, interact in any way, but each stared incessantly in a mirror—the woman in her spectacular flowing white wedding dress and perfectly coiffed hair with radiant makeup; the man with his expensive black silk tuxedo. Each of them totally self-absorbed. Not talking to any guests either. HOW WEIRD. Love is meant to go outward and it finds its perfect delight in being shared with others…

C.S. Lewis, “A Word About Praising”

all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise …The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game—praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. And just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: “Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?”

Bottom line… love is meant to spill out to others and include them in it

B.   The Specific Nature of Christian Love as Opposed to Worldly Counterfeits

1.   In the world, non-Christians have a principle of selfishness in everything they do

a.   It is because people love themselves that they join clubs in which they are with people who love what they do… whose interests and honors are linked with their own… MUTUAL ADMIRATION SOCIETIES

b.   Sometimes in non-Christian friendships, they give expecting to get back…

c.   Back in the days of the Bible Belt, people would even join the biggest church in town for the sake of self-interest—making societal connections or business connections; they are in these relationships for ultimately SELFISH reasons

2.   But Christian love is unique… it is SUPERNATURAL

Edwards called it “a plant transplanted into the soul out of the garden of heaven, by the holy and blessed Spirit of God, and so it has its life in God, not in self.

3.   Thus Christian love soars high above all lowly motives and selfish connections

a.   This is especially seen in God’s love for his enemies… his lavish generosity to the unthankful and evil…

Matthew 5:45 He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

b.   Christian love moves us to the same pattern; to make great sacrifices for even those who are most hostile to us

Jesus said there’s no special merit in loving those who love you… even the pagans and the tax collectors do that; but rather that we should

Luke 6:27-29 Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic.

Acts 7:60 Then Stephen fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he fell asleep

Luke 14:13-14 when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

4.   Christian love causes us to lay out banquets for people who will never repay us…

Luke 14:13-14 when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

C.   The Perfect Fulfillment of the Two Great Commandments

1.   The first and greatest commandment…

Matthew 22:37 “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’

Those who love God properly must devote themselves to him TOTALLY… they devote everything they are, all they have to someone other than themselves… to God the Creator and King

Someone who really does this holds nothing back from God; no reserve

Therefore, love for God has no room whatsoever for a SELFISH PRINCIPLE of the soul… God is infinitely above self, beyond self, superior to self, overcomes self; the ravenous selfishness of our native state can never coexist with this kind of love for God

For we naturally IDOLIZE self, feed it, care for it, love it above all others; the grace of God subdues this and conquers it

2.   The second commandment

Matthew 22:39 ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

a.   This is the Old Covenant statement

b.   It runs contrary to self as well; it actually looks at the neighbor as being ONE with the self… as though their hearts and their conditions are linked together

c.   We are to consider not only our own circumstances, and interests and well-being, but that of an OTHER… our neighbor; this is totally contrary to the native principle of SELFISHNESS

3.   But Jesus Christ upgrades this and makes it into a NEW commandments

D.   How the Love of Christ is a New Commandment

John 13:34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

1.   Not saying that the duty to love neighbor is itself new… but that it now has a new pattern, a new standard, a new measuring stick… namely “as Christ has loved me, I must love others”

2.   Jesus takes possession of this commandment and actually makes it HIS OWN

John 15:17 This is my command: Love each other.

3.   Jesus’ perfect pattern of humble service to everyone he met, everyone who came to him with a need, even to his bitterest enemies… Jesus displays perfect love for neighbor

a.   No one loved his enemies better than Jesus Christ

Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us

Romans 5:10 … when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son

Christ gave his greatest display of love while we were still his enemies… he gave the maximum display of love to those who could never repay him

b.   Christ has UNITED himself with us… he speaks of us as though we were his own body; to Saul of Tarsus, he said “Why are your persecuting me?” To attack Christians is to attack Christ; to all people on Judgment Day, he will say

Matthew 25:35 I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink

Matthew 25:40 I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me

c.   Christ SPENT himself fully for our sakes… for our blessing, he gave absolutely everything he had… his clothing given away to be gambled for, his reputation given away as he was mocked; his lifeblood given away as it poured from his veins

Edwards: “His love did not rest in mere feeling, nor in light efforts and small sacrifices… he gave up his own ease, comfort, interest, honor, and wealth [in heaven]; he became poor, outcast, and despised, and he had nowhere to lay his head… and ALL FOR US!”

d.   Christ did all of this without any expectation of ever being repaid by us for his love

4.   APPLIED to us:

Edwards: “We shall not only seek our own things, but we shall in our hearts be so united to others that we shall look on their circumstances as our own. We shall endeavor to be interested in their good as Christ was in ours; and shall be ready to forego and part with our own things in many cases for the benefit of others, as Christ did toward us. And these things we will do without any expectation of being repaid by them, as Christ had no expectation of being repaid by us.”

In this alone is the deadly principle of SELFISHNESS defeated at last!

IV.   Examine Your Life and Seek a Transformed Heart

A.   First, Are you a Christian?

1.   For if you are not, you are a slave to self-interest… you will do what is best for you at all times

2.   You will not love God with all your heart or your neighbor as yourself

3.   But perhaps this morning, you have a movement in your heart toward true love… the love of Christ; you see yourself properly as a selfish sinner—all of us are naturally that way from birth; and you see how in your whole life, you have walked by a selfish rule “What’s in it for me?!” Even if you have occasionally given to the poor and needy, you have not been able to transform that basic bent of your soul toward selfishness… in this, you are like every single person born on the face of the earth

4.   But Christ was not that way… he selflessly left a heavenly throne and was born of a poor Jewish girl in a backwater part of the Roman empire; she wrapped him in rudimentary cloths and laid him in a manger—a box where animals feed; he grew up sinless and walked in sinlessness all his life; he did great miracles out of a selfless love for others; he fed people, healed people, taught people, cared for people…

5.   But especially he died on the cross for sinners like you and me

6.   If you trust in him fully, repenting of your sins two great things will happen:

a.   FIRST: all your sins will be forgiven, drowned in the sea of Christ’s love and mercy

b.   SECOND: Christ’s Holy Spirit will take out your heart of stone and give you a new heart… a heart built to love God and love others SELFLESSLY

c.   COME TO CHRIST NOW!!

B.   Christians:

1.   Examine your life to see patterns of selfishness

a.   Ask the Holy Spirit to expose habits of selfishness

b.   Ask him to show you how you spend your time, energy, money

2.   Acknowledge that you are NOT YOUR OWN… that you neither created yourself nor sustain yourself in this world

a.   God has made you for himself, and wants you to live daily for him and for others

b.   He has given you higher and nobler purposes than a selfish life lived for entertainment and food and sensual pleasures

c.   He has given you everything you need to live a selfless life of love for other people, a life that will shine for all eternity

3.   Acknowledge that you are UNITED with Christ and ONE with your fellow Christians

a.   As we saw plainly in 1 Corinthians 12… we are all one body and each individually members of that one body

1 Corinthians 12:26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

b.   So get rid of a independent prideful lone ranger mentality!!

c.   If any member of the human body is in pain, every part does what is necessary to alleviate the pain… If you have a severe intestinal pain, the brain mobilizes the body to find the right physician; the eyes are employed in reading the websites and assisting with the driving; the feet carry the body to the car and to the doctor’s office; the ears listen to the instructions; the hands administer the medicine to the mouth, which swallows it

d.   All members of the Body of Christ should be mobilized to alleviate the suffering of one member… to promote every member’s happiness and health

4.   If you life selflessly and generously, God will be maximally motivated to meet your needs as well…

a.   you will not be a beggar left to suffer… GOD WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU!!

Philippians 4:19 And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus

Luke 6:38 Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you

b.   but if you are selfish, God will leave you to your own devices to care for yourself

c.   Beyond that, if you live for others here on earth, you will be blessed with eternal treasure in heaven forever… a crown of unfading glory will be yours!!

C.   THIS IS VERY DIFFICULT!

1.   Edwards said we will be fighting this native selfishness for the rest of our lives

2.   Like the Salmon swimming upstream, you will have to fight the flow of your own selfish nature every single hour of every day

D.   Edwards: “Let all these things incline us all to be less selfish than we are, and seek more of the opposite excellent spirit of Christlike selfless love”