Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’ve been going through 1 Corinthians 13 lately and seeing what the Apostle Paul has to say about love. Tonight, I’d like us to look at the question of if love is self-serving.
This should be obvious to us and it could be something we want to deny because we come to realize how much we are not acting in love. How often is it that we are making suggestions for someone and while we want to act like we’re acting in their best interests, in our minds we’re thinking “This will work out really well for me if they do this.”
This is not to deny that there can be benefits for us if some people do some things, but the reasons we should seek for them to do those things should be the benefits that they will incur from the actions and not the benefits that we will incur. We can enjoy those benefits for us, but we should realize that if they get benefited and we don’t, well seeing them benefit should be our benefit.
Why isn’t it so often?
We Christians should realize that to grow in true biblical love is to grow closer to God. When we act in the loving way, we are acting in the way that He would have us to act.
In his book, Sacred Marriage, Gary Thomas says that the man who says to his wife “I don’t love you and never really have” is not just a bad husband, but he is a bad Christian as well. For the Christian, love is not a choice. Love is a command. It should be what we are seeking to do. We cannot get up every day and say “Is it really to my benefit to love my neighbor today?” No. We get up and we love our neighbor. It is our choice only in the sense that we can choose to be obedient or not. It is not a choice in that God has given us no other options on how to act Christlike to our neighbor other than loving ones.
I get the Late Night jokes emailed to me regularly and before posting tonight, I read one from Jay Leno. While I know this was meant as a joke, I shared it with a friend of mine pointing out that this is something that could be said straight from the pulpit. Leno said the following:
“A right-wing religious group in Iowa is now asking all the Republican presidential candidates to sign a pledge to remain faithful to their spouse. Isn’t that the marriage pledge?”
Yes. That’s indeed what it is. That was the covenant made before God and men that a spouse is to abide by. I can often look at my wedding ring, which is of course on my hand as I type, and think about that awesome responsibility that I have taken on, which is hard for our society to recognize seeing as we don’t like the word responsibility. The problem is always someone else’s fault or we are someone else’s responsibility. There are some things we cannot do on our own and there are ways we can help each other, but let us seek to do what we can on our own.
That could be one reason many marriages have difficulties that drive them apart. To be sure, all marriages will have difficulties. It’s how we face them. The Mrs. and I have had several difficulties from surgery to finances to deaths in the family. We’ve made it through based on the devotion we have to one another. A statement I made to a counselor was one that he replied with by telling me that if more couples realized it, they wouldn’t need marriage counseling. I told him that when things don’t seem to be going my way and the Mrs. is acting in ways I can think of as hurtful, I keep in mind two things. First, that she loves me. Second, that she would never do anything to intentionally maliciously hurt me.
Do I do that perfectly always? Doubtful. But I try.
Our society tempts us to have us think that if we have problems, well the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. However, if a person cannot be trusted to be faithful to the one they have now, why should they be trusted to be faithful to anyone? (This is not saying there are no biblical grounds for the sadness of divorce such as a spouse who has been cheated on or is being abused)
The problem is we’re largely self-seeking. We seek to do things for ourselves. If the other is not making us happy, well we move on because it’s all about our happiness. Instead, we do not seek to make the other happy and realize that our happiness should largely consist in making them happy.
Jennifer Roback Morse in her book “Smart Sex” talks of a marriage therapist for women who had women come to her complaining about their husbands. “He doesn’t help with house work.” “He doesn’t help with the kids.” “He just watches TV all day.” The therapist gave them the exercise of going home and seducing their husbands for two weeks. The women scoffed at this thinking it absolute nonsense, but nevertheless, some tried it.
When they came back, the results were astounding. “He cleaned up the whole house.” “He was actually reading to the kids at night.” “We’ve never spend such great time together.” The women before could have been saying “Why isn’t my husband doing what I want him to do to provide for my happiness?” instead of asking “What can I do for the happiness of my husband?”
It’s also important for the two to understand what they mean with their terms and actions such as the love languages. My wife loves quality time for instance. If I’m just in the same room with her, she considers that as something special. She can be quite happy watching me play through a Final Fantasy game or if we play Samurai Warriors together.
For myself, my language is physical touch and so I prefer to get to be held by her. Both ways of love are okay. It is not right or wrong. It’s just different. Couples need to learn this about each other. Don’t just look at what you would want someone to do to you that would be loving. Look and say “What will the other person find loving from their perspective?” I could say “I would love to get a good book on apologetics, so I’ll get her one and that’ll go over well!”
Not a chance.
Neither would her buying me a sketchbook and some pencils for artwork go over well. We have different interests. Men and women in every other area know this. Women do not order flowers for their men usually. Men do not bring home hunting knives normally for their women.
Wouldn’t it just be great if we could all get outside of ourselves and stop looking for ways that others can please us, but ways that we can please others. Could it be that we might have a more biblical love then? Could it be that we might actually start to look like Christ on Earth?
Wouldn’t it be worth it?
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