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1 Corinthians 13, we're going
to be looking just at part of verse 5 this morning. But I'm
going to read 1 Corinthians 13, verses 1-8. 1 Corinthians 13,
verses 1-8. If I speak with the tongues of
men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy
gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy
and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all
faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions
to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do
not have love, it profits me nothing. Love is patience. Love is kind and is not jealous. Love does not brag and is not
arrogant, does not act unbecomingly. It does not seek its own, is
not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does
not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth,
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures
all things. never fails. But if there are
gifts of prophecy, they will be done away. If there are tongues,
they will cease. If there is knowledge, it will
be done away. Let's pray. Father God Almighty,
God of love, we pray for your help during
this next hour. Give us a deeper and better understanding
into love But Lord, help us not to just study this passage in
an aloof, academic way. But God, I pray that You would
move and motivate us to a deeper love towards one another and
a deeper love towards You. May we follow the example of
our Lord Jesus Christ who was the incarnation of love. In His name we pray, Amen. This morning, although this is
a familiar passage, I will be teaching you some things that
no doubt for some of you will be brand new. For others of you,
it will be something you've heard before, but you may find yourself
feeling a little bit uncomfortable with some of the things I'm going
to say this morning. And I trust that you will search
the Scriptures to see if they are true, as the scripture teaches
them. This is a teaching that will
be contrary to much of the evangelical world, but I'm convinced that
it is extremely important for you to understand this principle. And I'm also convinced that it
is an extremely liberating truth. It's been one of the most liberating
truths in my own life. We have been studying the doctrine
of love, the Bible's teaching on love. And this is the most
explicit section on the doctrine of love, I believe, in the whole
of the Bible. And if you remember, we looked
at the first three verses in chapter 13 and we called that
the priority of love. In other words, if you don't
have this necessary element, everything else is useless and
worthless. He makes that explicitly clear
in verse 1. If you have amazing gifts to
speak in the tongues of angels and of men, but you do not have
love, you're just an irritating noise, a clanging cymbal. In verse 2, if you have the gifts
of prophecy, you have all knowledge of biblical revelation of mysteries
and all knowledge and all faith so as to remove mounds, but you
don't have love, you're just nothing. Verse 3, if you do the
greatest acts of self-sacrifice, the greatest acts of giving,
so that you give all your money to the poor, so that you die
a martyr's death and give your body to the flames, but even
in those great acts of sacrifice, if you do not have love, that
most essential element, it profits nothing. And then in verses 4-7,
we've been looking at what I'm calling the practices of love. And then in verse 8, we're going
to see the permanence of love. But in this section, in verses
4-7, on the practices of love, we're seeing Paul give a description
of love, and he uses 15 verbs to describe the practices of
love. In your English translation,
they come out as adjectives, but make no mistake about it,
this is Paul's description of what love does and it does not
do. And we looked, if you remember,
several weeks ago in verse 4, that love is long-suffering.
Love is willing to endure ill-treatment from others. And also, love is
kind. It's willing to respond with
usefulness and kindness towards others even when they would seek
to do us ill or harm. Also, we saw several weeks ago
that love is not jealous. Love is not pulling for position. Let's get that out of the way. Love is not pulling for a position. Love is not seeking to do a kind
of one-upsmanship on other people. Seeking to have the place of
preeminence. Love is not jealous. And then
we also see in verse 4 that love does not brag. It does not talk
a lot about itself. And also love is not arrogant,
but love is humble. Love seeks the low road. Love
seeks the position of lowliness and humility to serve others.
And in this week, in verse 5, we're going to look at the next
two practices of love. Love does not act unbecomingly
or rudely, and it also does not seek its own. So first of all,
let's see that love does not act unbecomingly, or love is
not rude in verse 5. The idea of acting unbecomingly. One commentator says that this
means that love does not act with ill-mannered impropriety. Alexander Salk says it means
to act disgracefully, contrary to the established standards
of conduct and decency. Robert Thomas says, quote, poor
manners and rude conduct are not a part of love's repertoire. Good deportment is. And this
seems like a strange transition. If you remember, just in the
previous verse, Paul is plumbing the depths of the human heart
and the profundity of the human heart and showing that love is
not jealous. It cuts to the recesses of the
heart and those internal inclinations to seek our own honor and our
own glory. And he says that love does not
practice arrogance. And then it seems like he makes
a little shift here and says, Love does not behave rudely.
As if he's gone from the profundity of the depths of the human heart
to the mundane of belching and other activities. But this is the practicality
of the section, that it's deeply theological, yet it's intensely
practical. That it really does matter how
you behave before others, because you can act in such a way that
is inconsiderate and rude, which demonstrates you are not loving
others. You're not considering others.
You're not thinking about the well-being, the happiness of
those around you. And this was typical with the
church at Corinth. Remember, in chapter 8 of this
book, in chapter 8, some of those people there were eating meat
that had been sacrificed to idols. In a kind of rude way, they were
flaunting their Christian freedoms before others and defiling the
consciences of their brothers. That was rude. That was unbecomingly. In chapter 11, some of the women
were attending the worship service with great displays of rudeness
and unbecoming behavior. They were not coming in with
a head covering. Now that may not mean much in
our society, but in that society it meant a high-handed flaunting
of your own liberation as a woman. And even it was common for the
prostitutes not to cover their heads. And so this was rude behavior. This was acting in an unbecoming
manner. Also in chapter 11 of 1 Corinthians,
there was some who at the Lord's table, this kind of a love feast,
were eating all the food before everybody else got there. And
Paul says, love's not rude. Love doesn't eat all the food
before everybody else gets a chance to eat. Not only that, love does
not act unbecomingly in the sense that they were getting drunk
at these feasts as well. And Paul says, love does not
act rude, it does not act unbecomingly. This is the idea that Paul is
seeking to communicate. And then even in the context
of these chapters, in chapters 12, 13, and 14, Paul is in the
middle of a context in which some people are flaunting their
own spiritual gifts in a very rude manner. And their public
worship service had become something of a circus, so everybody was
elbowing their way in to try and exercise their own spiritual
gifts. exhorts them in this section
on love. He says at the end of 1 Corinthians
14, in 1 Corinthians 14.40 he says, but all things must be
done properly and in an orderly manner. The idea of properly
is the idea of decently. It's the opposite of rude. And
so this was definitely a problem in the church at Corinth. So
you see that love is intensely practical. It does not behave
in a rude and unbecoming manner. You see, love is contrary to
acting in a rude and unbecoming manner. Alexander Strock says,
Thus, inappropriate dress, inconsiderate talk, disregard for other people's
time or moral conscience, taking advantage of people, tactlessness,
ignoring the contributions and ideas of others, running roughshod
over others' plans and interests, inappropriate behavior with the
opposite sex, Basic discourtesy and rudeness and a general disregard
for proper social conduct are all evidence of a lack of love
and have no place in the local church. You see, rudeness only
cares about self. Acting in an unbecoming manner
only cares about self and what you want to do. But being courteous,
is considering others, thinking about others, thinking about
how they might respond to this, thinking about how they might
be annoyed about this certain behavior. This comes as well in the manner
of our speech and the way in which we talk to one another,
that we can talk to each other in a rude way, in an unbecoming
manner. There's a man who once said to
his pastor, my talent is to speak my mind. The pastor replied,
that's a good talent to bury. Proverbs 18.2 says, A fool does
not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own
mind. And somehow we've considered
it a virtue in our culture to say what we want, when we want,
and how we want to. It's been considered a virtue
to be able to speak your mind whenever. Friends, that's no
virtue. That's rudeness. Love considers
others. This manifests itself in marriage
relationships, because there's hundreds of issues that are not
found as principles from the Scripture, but areas of preference
in which we must seek to prefer one another. So whether you're
a person who likes the toilet paper roll going over or under,
love would seek to be considerate towards others and let it be
the way that it is. Love is considerate in regards
to slurping soup or sipping coffee. Love is not rude. In fact, John
MacArthur, in his teaching on this section, tells of a story
when he was younger, he couldn't understand why his mom would
always yell at him when he would slurp his soup. Until he heard
somebody else slurping their soup. And he realized his mom
wasn't just instructing him in this way so that he would keep
from soup getting on his clothes, but because it was intensely
annoying to listen to somebody else slurp their soup. And the
Bible says that love does not act in an unbecoming manner because
it seeks to be considerate of others. This happens in our friendships. This is intensely applicable
in the way that we treat our friends because it becomes easy
to kind of step on our friends and act in a rude fashion because
we know, well, they'll forgive us anyways. It's better to ask
for forgiveness later. And so we can be discourteous
and unbecoming in regards to people's time, in regards to
wearing out your welcome, in regards to talking in a right
way and right manner towards your friends. In fact, I love
this proverb in Proverbs 27.14. It says, He who blesses his friend
with a loud voice early in the morning, it will be reckoned
a curse to him. You bless your friend with a
loud voice early in the morning. In other words, there is a time
and a place to speak with people. And you can speak in such a way
that's rude towards others, that's unbecoming. This happens in many
of our churches. There will be church splits over
different styles of music where you have a younger generation
of people who want to listen to more contemporary music and
behave in a rude and unbecoming fashion towards the older people
in that congregation. And then you have the older people
in the congregation who think that A mighty fortress is our
God, as written by the Apostle Paul, and they're acting rude
towards the younger people, and there can't be any harmony because
there's no love. But love behaves in a considerate,
courteous manner towards one another. Also towards unbelievers. The Bible commands us to be considerate
and not rude towards those who are unbelievers. So if somebody
is a homosexual, that does not mean that we talk about them
behind their back in an evil kind of way, make jokes about
them. We behave in a courteous manner. Or even if you're a neighbor
who's an atheist, we behave in a courteous manner, in a considerate
manner. Love is not rude. So, we see that rudeness or unbecoming
behavior is contrary to love. It's contrary to love towards
others. But also, not only does love
not behave rudely, but love does not behave selfishly. Look at
verse 5, the next phrase. does not seek its own. It does not seek its own. This is the controversial section. And I've listened to a handful
of sermons on this passage, read probably about ten different
commentaries, and there's only a couple who I believe do a right
treatment of this phrase in 1 Corinthians 13. Because there is a way in
which you can interpret 1 Corinthians 13.5, love does not seek its
own, in a kind of way that I believe does not do full justice to the
immediate context and to the whole of Scripture. So let me,
first of all, start by saying what this does not mean. The
common interpretation of love does not seek its own can be
summarized by an old theologian by the name of Charles Hodge,
a man that I greatly respect. But in his commentary on this
section, he gives his comment on love does not seek its own,
and he calls it disinterested benevolence. Now, that's a big
word. The idea is that in love there
is no self-interest. And this is common in our thinking
today. If there's any kind of motives towards self in love,
then it's not true love. It's sometimes spoken in philosophical
terms with the idea of altruism, that it's just seeking to do
good for the sake of good without any benefits towards self, without
any self-motivation. And I'm going to give you five
reasons why I think this is not true. Because, first of all, the immediate
context. The immediate context of this
would demonstrate that love does not seek its own, does not mean
that there's no self-interest, no benefits in love. Look at
verse 3. He says, And if I give my possessions
to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do
not have love, what's it say? It profits me nothing. What do
you mean there's self-profit in love? What do you mean? I
thought it says love does not seek its own. Well, we're going
to try and tackle exactly how those two blend together. But
when the Bible speaks of love, there is profit in love. It may
be an eternal profit. It may be the joy and delight
of the sacrifice of the love. But there is self-profit in love. Also, look at verse 6. It says, Love does not rejoice
in unrighteousness. But notice this, but rejoices
with the truth. Love is glad and happy and rejoices
in the truth, so there is a kind of self-benefit to love. There is a self-happiness, a
self-interest in love, and based upon just the immediate context,
there must be this kind of self-interest in love. But not only because
of the context, but because Natural self-love is assumed in all our
actions in the Bible. A kind of natural self-love. What do I mean by that? In Matthew
22, verse 38, remember Jesus says, the first and greatest
commandment is what? To love God with all your heart,
soul, mind, and strength. And the second is like unto it
what? To love your neighbor As yourself. That self-love is implicit in
the Bible. It's assumed in the Bible that
there is a kind of inherent self-love, that the people in heaven, the
people on earth, and the people in hell all love themselves. In Matthew chapter 7 verse 12
it says, Do unto others, how? as you would have them doing
to you. Implicit in that is that you love yourself. You don't
want somebody to treat you nasty. You don't want somebody to do
you harm. That there is an implicit self-love in all that we do.
Also, Ephesians chapter 5 verse 28, that exhortation to husbands,
so husbands also ought to love their own wives as their own
bodies, as their own self. He who loves his own wife loves
himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes
it and cherishes it just as Christ also does the church. So when
Paul exhorts husbands to love their wives, he's saying, love
them as your own body. He's assuming that in each and
every human heart, it's natural to the existence of us as creatures
that we always pursue our highest happiness. But the question is,
where do we pursue our highest happiness? And are others included
in that happiness? Jonathan Edwards, who I lean
heavily on in this teaching, also John Piper as well, Edwards
says that a man should love his own happiness is as necessary
to his nature as the faculty of the will. And it is impossible
that such a love should be destroyed in any other way than by destroying
his being. The only time any creature will
stop loving him or herself is when they cease to exist. That's
a kind of natural self-love and it's inherent in the will and
the things that we choose. We always choose that which will
bring us the highest happiness. What do I mean by that? Well,
let me give you an example. If I choose to go home and eat
Rocky Road ice cream, I'm making a choice. for my highest happiness
at that moment, what I think is going to bring me the most
happiness. So I go home and I scarf down
this bowl of ice cream. Okay, in that decision I'm seeking
my happiness, but even if I made the opposite decision, if I looked
at the bowl of ice cream and I said, no, I'm not going to
eat that ice cream. It'd probably be because I decide
I'm on a diet and I'm trying to lose weight, and I see that
my higher happiness, even than the enjoyment of eating the ice
cream, will be in losing weight. That there will be a greater
happiness in me losing weight than there will be in eating
that ice cream. So I choose to not eat the ice cream. In every single decision that
we make, we are always pursuing our greatest happiness. But the
question is, are we on that right path to happiness? Are we on
God's path to happiness? Or are we on our own selfish
path to happiness that only pursues our own happiness, not in the
happiness of others, not in loving others? See, the Bible is shot through
with motives that work on the principle of self-love. Did you
ever think about that? That every promise and every
warning in the Scripture assumes that you want to do what's best
for yourself. I mean, that simple and basic promise of John 3,
verse 16, For God so loved the world, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish, but will have eternal life. You say,
well, you look at that and you say, I want to go to heaven.
I want to be with God in heaven. I want to be there with Jesus.
I don't want to be in hell. So you choose to believe. You
place your faith in Christ and it's based upon what you think
is best. You believe that this is what's
best. This will bring you the highest happiness. So you choose
to follow Christ. The same thing with the threats
concerning hell. Because the Bible also says in
John 3, verse 36, He who believes in the Son has eternal life,
but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the
wrath of God abides upon him. So you see verses like that and
you say, well, that looks like it's not a happy place. Jesus
talks about hell where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth,
where the worm never dies and the fires never quench, and all
those are driving and appealing to the reality That you don't
want to be miserable. You don't want to be in a place
of eternal torment. You don't want to be under the
hand of God's wrath for all eternity. And so the Bible, the principle
of self-love is inherent in each of us in the very faculty of
the choices that we make. Once again, Edwards says, Such
are all the promises and threatenings of the Word of God, its calls
and invitations, its counsels to seek our own good, its warnings
to beware, to misery. These things can have no influence
on us in any other way than that they tend to work upon our hopes,
or upon our fears. For to what purpose would it
be to make any promise of happiness or to hold any threatening of
misery to him who has no love for happiness or dread of misery? In other words, to hold forth
those promises without the implicit assumption that we want happiness
and don't want misery would be a farce. So, when we see this verse, love
does not seek its own, we know that it can't mean that there's
absolutely no self-interest in love, because there's always
some kind of self-interest in any choices that we make, whether
good or bad. And also because the context
of this passage won't allow it. But also because of God's character
Himself. When you think, about the happiest
being in the world, the one who pursues his own happiness, that's
God. In fact, in 1 Timothy 1.11, it
speaks of the blessed or the happy God. Mercurius, the idea
of the blessed or happy God. We also see that at the end of
1 Timothy, in 1 Timothy 6. In Psalm 115 verse 3, it says,
But our God is in the heavens, and He does whatever He pleases. And yet, who is the most loving
being in the universe? The same God who pursues His
own happiness is the same God who is the most loving being
in existence. In fact, the Bible says in 1
John 4, verse 8, that God is love. And 1 John 3 verse 1 says, Behold
what manner of love the Father has lavished upon us. That there
is a strange and kind of foreign love with God's love, because
it's unlike our human love. So the character of God demands
that this kind of love, which is a love that comes from God,
does have some kind of self-interest. So that love, when it says love
does not seek its own, it does not mean that there's no self-interest
in love. But also, because of God's commands
towards our own happiness. Did you know that? God commands
you to be happy. You don't have an option with
that. In Psalm 2, verse 11, it says, "...worship the Lord with
reverence and rejoice with trembling." Those seem like contradictions,
trembling and rejoicing, but God commands us to rejoice with
trembling, to pursue our own joy in the Lord. Also, In Psalm
37, verse 4, a familiar verse, it says, "...delight yourself..."
In who? "...in the Lord, and He will
give you the desires of your heart." Delight yourself in the
Lord. You're commanded to pursue your
own delight and joy in God. Philippians 4, verse 4, another
command, "...rejoice in the Lord always, And just in case you
didn't get it the first time, and again, I say, rejoice. We are commanded over and over,
shot through the whole of the Bible, to rejoice in God, to
pursue our own gladness and happiness in God. But it also should be
noted that to pursue your happiness outside of God and His commands
in the Bible is considered high and cosmic treason against God.
When we seek our own happiness apart from God's ways, that's
when we get into trouble. But the problem is not pursuing
our own happiness, the problem is not self-love, but it's self-love
our own way rather than God's way. In Deuteronomy, there's
a stern warning. Deuteronomy 28, 47 and 48. It
says, because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and
a glad heart, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord
will send against you in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, in a
lack of all things, and He will put an iron yoke on your neck
until He has destroyed you. God's promise to Israel for their
lack of obedience with a glad and joyful heart. So that this
is intensely important that we understand that this kind of
love is not a disinterested love. It is a love that we can reach
out towards others, and in our reaching out towards others,
we can be pursuing our highest happiness. But not only because the context
of 1 Corinthians, not only because all the Bible's implicit commands,
warnings, and threats that imply our self-love, not only because
the character of God Himself, not only because God's commands
to pursue our own happiness, but also because what I'm calling
just some sanctified common sense. I mean, imagine if you got very
sick and we're sent to the hospital. You're in the hospital, very
ill, they check you into the hospital, they put you in a room,
and I come and visit you. and read some Scriptures to you,
pray with you, try to encourage you during your difficulties,
during your trials, and you're just very encouraged, you're
happy and joyful that I came to visit you, and it was just
a breath of fresh air, and you just thanked me for coming to
visit you, and I respond by saying, Yeah, I know that I took a class
when I was in seminary on pastoral ministry, and it said that we're
supposed to do these kinds of hospital visits. I'm really not
happy doing this, I didn't enjoy it, but here it is. How do you
think you would respond to that? Would you be very happy about
that kind of love? That disinterested love? I know it's my duty, but I'm
doing it. I'm not enjoying it, but I'm
going to do it. That's a disinterested love.
But what if, rewind the clock, and you thank me and everything,
and I say, you know what? It was a joy for me to be here.
In fact, I think I may be more blessed by this than you were.
And this has just been a blessed time. Which one of those is biblical
love? I think the Bible would teach
us the latter. That the love that the Bible portrays is not
a self-disinterested love. It's a love that is pursuing
our highest happiness in reaching out towards others. Somebody may say about this time,
Well, what about self-denial? Doesn't the Bible teach self-denial? In fact, you could turn to Matthew
16, verse 24. Matthew 16.24, it says, then
Jesus said to His disciples, if anyone wishes to come after
Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow
Me. A verse about self-denial, slay
yourself, deny yourself, and you say, well, Matt, how does
that fit into the idea of self-love? I mean, this is like a Marine
Corps verse. Self-denial, take up your cross. Read the next verse. For whoever
wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his
life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man
if he gains the whole world and forfeits its soul? Or what will
a man give in exchange for his soul? You see, self-denial in
the Bible is always denying self for something better, for something
that will be more happy, something that will be more joyful, so
that you deny yourself. In other words, you deny yourself
of the temporary pleasures of sin for the ultimate joy and
satisfaction of following Jesus Christ, and then to be able to
go to heaven and enjoy pleasures forevermore in the presence of
the Lord God. So that this kind of self-denial
is not, God wants you to be miserable in this life. No, this is a self-denial
that is calling you to deny the glitter of the world. To deny
the carrot of sin that hangs before you. To deny the sad reality
of playing in the sand when you could be having a wonderful feast. It's denying yourself of these
lesser pleasures. So, in other words, if you really
want to love God and love others, then it's going to include your
own love of self. Also, let's flip over to Matthew
13, verse 44. This is one of the kingdom parables
that Jesus gives. Matthew 13, verse 44, it says,
The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field,
which a man found and hid again, and from joy over it he goes
and sells all that he has and buys that field. Here's the situation. Jesus likens the kingdom of heaven
to a man who's just walking down the road and all of a sudden
he trips over something. He brushes the dirt on the ground. He sees this is a treasure. This
is amazing. He opens it up. This is worth
a lot of money. And he realizes that what is
in this treasure trove here is worth more than everything he
has. But he doesn't have the money
to buy the field. So he goes. sells everything he has, self-denial,
gives it all up. But for what? For a far greater
treasure. It's something that is far more
valuable, far more precious than anything he could possibly imagine.
So God is not in the business of being a kind of a cosmic killjoy
who wants us to be miserable. No, God wants us to be happy,
but He wants us to pursue our own happiness in Him. He doesn't
want us to be duped and deceived by the trinkets of this world,
but He wants us to enjoy the fullness of joy His way. One more passage in Mark 10,
verse 28. Remember the situation, this
conversation Jesus has with the rich young ruler who was not
willing to part with the trinkets for the greater joy of eternity
in heaven. He was not willing to forsake
his money for the joy of eternal life. And the disciples are baffled
by this and they say, who then can be saved? And Jesus says,
with God all things are possible. Verse 28 of Mark chapter 10,
Peter wants to make this statement about how sacrificial they've
been. Perhaps even he may have been thinking how selfless and
disinterested we were in our own prosperity and success and
our own happiness. In verse 28, he says, Peter began
to say to him, Behold, we have left everything and have followed
you. What sacrifice? And it was a
sacrifice. But notice verse 29, Jesus said,
"...truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house,
or brothers, or sisters, or mothers, or father, or children, or farms
for My sake and for the gospel, but that he will receive a hundred
times as much now in the present age houses, brothers, sisters,
mothers, children, and farms, along with persecutions, and
in the age to come, eternal life. In other words, Jesus is telling
Peter, it seems like a great sacrifice, it seems like there
was no self-love or self-interest, but Jesus reminds Peter, oh,
there is self-interest. That those who have denied the
pleasures of this life, the houses they've made sacrifices, they
will experience a hundredfold the joy in this life. And we
know it's not just material possessions, because notice lodged within
all those things is the word persecution. Persecution. And Peter himself, whom Jesus
promised this to, who made this great sacrifice, was one who
was crucified upside down. We don't even know if Peter had
a home to lay his head in. But yet the promise here, and
if we read in 1 Peter 1, Peter speaks in the midst of the fiery
trials, he speaks of this joy unseekable and full of glory,
that amidst the difficulties of the trials, he was able to
have an unutterable happiness in God. That's what this passage
is talking about, so that God wants us to pursue our joy, our
highest happiness in Him, so that the love in the Bible is
not a disinterested love. We could go on and on with different
passages like that, and perhaps we can discuss some of them during
our question and answer. But the question is, so what
does this mean? I told you what it doesn't mean. But turn back
to 1 Corinthians 13, verse 5. does not seek its own. So we've established the fact
that we are always seeking our own in some kind of sense, so
then what does it mean that love does not seek its own? I think
the best way to understand that is that love is not selfish in
that it seeks its own to the exclusion of others. Love does
not pursue its own agenda outside reaching out to others. But love,
biblical love, can pursue its highest happiness in loving others. That you can reach out in love
towards others and that is where your greatest happiness will
be. But it's not a kind of selfish love that pursues your own happiness
to the exclusion of others, or pursues your own happiness outside
of God Himself. It's a kind of disproportionate
self-love, a self-love that excludes any love towards others. And if you remember, even before
the fall of man, Man was born innately with a kind of self-love. But there was also a divine love
that was in the Garden of Eden. But then after the fall of man,
the divine love from God departed and man was born into this world
only left with self-love and no love towards man and no love
towards God. And so that it's not until the
miracle of the new birth that God plants and infuses a love
towards others and a love towards God that can help balance out
that love towards self and that can enable man to pursue his
love towards himself, his pursuit of his own happiness in loving
others. And friends, we are all born
into this world with this kind of seeking its own. to the exclusion
of seeking the good of others. This past week I had the opportunity
to babysit my niece and my nephew, two of some of the cutest babies
you'll see. And yet even now, as they're
not even two years old, Just when we were babysitting them,
Bernie was trying to hold on to both of them, and the one
did not want the other one to enjoy the same satisfaction and
happiness that they were enjoying in the arms of my wife, and began
to push away the other one. That's what it means to seek
your own. Seeking your own to the exclusion of others. And
you know the wonder of that? The idea of seeking your own,
it's always the most miserable people in the world who are the
most selfish people. It's always the people, the person
who's only concerned about self and not concerned about others
who's the miserable person. And yet if they really wanted
to pursue their own happiness, their own joy, then they would
begin to reach out in love towards others. Because the Bible says
that it's more happy to give than it is to receive. It's more
blessed. Mercurius again, the idea of
happiness, it's more blessed, it's more happy, it's more joyful
to give than it is to receive. So that if you really want to
be happy, then you reach out in love. But this kind of love,
this kind of idea that Paul is against, is the kind of idea
that pursues only your own self and not others. pursues only
your own happiness without the happiness of others and outside
the plan of God. But Philippians chapter 2 verse
4 says, do not merely look out for your own personal interests.
Once again, it assumes self-love that we all seek our own personal
interests. Do not merely look out for your own personal interests,
but also for who? The interests of others. You
see, that's biblical love that finds its own interest in the
interest of others, finds its own happiness and joy in serving
others. We see this even if you flip
back to 1 Corinthians 10. Verse 24, Paul makes a similar
statement. Let me start with verse 23. He
says, all things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not
all things edify. Let no one seek his own, but
that of his neighbor. Eat anything that is sold in
the meat market without asking any questions for conscious sake.
What is he talking about here? Let no one seek his own good,
but that of his neighbor's well. The Corinthians were exercising
their freedoms in the Lord in a way that was not being considered
of others. They would eat this meat that
had been sacrificed to idols without acknowledging the fact
that this may defile another person's conscience. And Paul
was saying to them, this is what it means to seek your own. It's a kind of selfishness. Edwards
once again says, If you are selfish and make yourself and your own
private interests your idol, God will leave you to yourself.
That's a scary thought. God will leave you to yourself
and let you promote your own interests as well as you can.
But if you do not selfishly seek your own, but do seek the things
that are of Jesus Christ and the things that are of your fellow
beings, then God will make your interest in happiness His own
charge. And He is infinitely more able
to provide for and promote it than you are. Don't you love
that? The resources of the universe move at His bidding, and He can
easily command them all to subserve your welfare, so that not to
seek your own in a selfish sense is the best way of seeking your
own in a better sense. Did you get that? So that not
to seek your own in a selfish sense is the best way of seeking
your own in the better sense. It is the most direct course
you can take to secure your highest happiness. So, if you want to
pursue your own happiness, then you need to pursue it in seeking
to reach out in love towards others. To seek the cause, the
good, the welfare of others. To seek the salvation of others
who don't know the Lord. And in doing that, you will be
pursuing your greatest happiness. Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that
liberating? That God does not want us to
be miserable. But He wants us to abandon the
foolish trinkets of the world, the fleeting pleasures of sin,
so that we can understand the fullness of joy that is in Him
in reaching out to others and in serving Him. This is a liberating truth. So how are you doing in this
area of selfishness? You find yourself a miserable
person because you look only to your own interests and not
also to the interests of others? I commend you to really pursue
your own interests by pursuing the good and happiness of others.
If you want to pursue your own joy and happiness, then pursue
it in God's way in reaching out towards others. This kind of selfishness manifests
itself frequently in our lives. It manifests itself in the home,
in our own personal agenda. I mean, every time I've ever
counseled a married couple who were miserable, always at the
root of everything was that both of them were extremely selfish.
Both of them wanted their own agenda, their own way. None of
them wanted to seek the good and happiness of others. It was
all about me, myself and I, that unholy trinity. This manifests itself. even in
our children from the youngest age. So I plead with you parents
to admonish teacher children in the way of love. Don't cultivate
that kind of selfishness in them, but show them that there's joy
and there's happiness in reaching out for the good of others. That
there's joy and happiness in serving the Lord. Paul rebukes this selfishness
even in marital relationships. Did you know that? In 1 Corinthians
7, the Bible gives exhortations for husbands and wives not to
seek their own interests in the marriage bed, but to seek the
interests of others. It's the only passage in the
Bible that I know that speaks of a woman having authority over
a man. A woman having authority over
a man's body in that relationship. You didn't know the Bible talks
about that kind of stuff, did you? It's very clear. Very clear. And Paul cuts to
the heart of that and says, love does not seek its own in that
sense, but it seeks its own in the sense of seeking the good
of others and reaching out in love. This manifests itself in the
church as well. Even in the church at Corinth,
remember once again, the church in Corinth, they were trying
to exercise their own Christian liberties at the stake of others. They were only looking for their
own personal interests and not for others. When they would come
to the Lord's table, each and every one of them, they all stuffed
their face before the others got there. That's selfishness.
That's seeking your own. But if they really wanted to
pursue their own happiness, then they would have and more courteous
in sharing towards the others. And so, friends, this is glorious
and wonderful news, but it is a gut check to each and every
one of us. It's a gut check to see, are
we pursuing our own personal interests at the exclusion of
others? And then to evaluate if we are going to really pursue
our own personal interests, then we better start reaching out
in love towards others. Because the highest place of
happiness is the place of reaching out in love towards God and in
love towards others. And friends, there's no greater
example of this than the Lord Christ himself. See, on the one hand, we can
look at what He did, and we could say, boy, it seems like there's
no self-interest in that. In fact, we see in John chapter
15, Jesus Himself says, greater love has no one than this, that
a man should lay down his life for his friends. That's great
love. He reached out in love for the
good of others. He reached out in a sacrificial
way for others. And even when you look at the
Garden of Gethsemane, as he contemplated the very wrath of God that it
was about to be poured upon him on the cross, and he's in the
garden, and there's the agony there so much that he's sweating
drops like blood. He gave up the glories and splendor
of heaven to embrace the poverty of this earth, so that he would
say, Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests, but the
Son of Man has not a place to lay down His head. In other words,
He didn't even have a home. He endured the mockery on the
cross. The mockery. Making fun of Him. Putting a robe on His body. Acting like He was the King.
Putting a crown of thorns on His head. People wagging their
head at Him as they walk by, as He's hanging on the cross,
saying, He saved others, let Him save Himself. That was great
sacrifice. That was great demonstration
of love. That was the greatest demonstration
of love of all time. And yet even in that demonstration
of love, the book of Hebrews gives some of the motivation
of why Jesus did it all. It says in Hebrews 12, verse
2, It was for the joy that was set
before Him that He endured the cross, scorning the shame that
His highest happiness was reaching out in this kind of sacrificial
love to redeem a race of people, to have the wrath of Almighty
God poured out upon Him so that He could give the forgiveness
of sins to those who repent and believe. and that you too can
secure your highest happiness, not in the temporal pleasures
of this world, but in the joy of knowing the Creator God as
you forsake, deny self, but for something that is entirely more
precious, so much better. Turn to Philippians 3. Philippians 3, verse 4, Paul
gives his own testimony. He says, Although I myself might
have confidence even in the flesh, if anyone else has a mind but
confidence in the flesh, I far more. I was circumcised the eighth
day of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew
of Hebrews, as to the law of Pharisee. Paul was one of the
most religious, devout people on the face of the earth. Verse
6, as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness
which is found in the law, found blameless. But whatever things
were gained to me, those things I have counted loss for the sake
of Christ. In other words, at one point
in his life, he valued these things above all else. His own
self-righteousness, his own religiosity, his own sin. But then he came
to a brink point in his life. And he says in verse 7, but whatever
things were gained to me, those things I have counted lost for
the sake of Christ. He would deny himself and follow
Christ. But notice what he denies himself
for in verse 8. More than that, I count all things
to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus
my Lord for whom I suffered the loss of all things and count
them but rubbish. Why, Paul? So that I may gain
Christ. You see, friends, Deny yourself
of the sin, the selfishness of this world, for something that's
far more enjoyable, that will secure your highest happiness
in God, knowing the Lord Christ. And I plead with you this morning,
if you've been enticed and duped by the lies of this world, and
think you can find your happiness in things outside of the Lord
Christ Himself, I want to tell you this morning, you've been
deceived. You've bought into a lie. But if you really want
to secure your highest happiness, deny yourself of the ugliness
of the fleeting pleasures of sin, to have the Lord Christ
Himself, which is far better, not thinking that somehow you're
going to have the promises of prosperity in this life. But
amidst the trials, amidst the difficulty, you will have joy
unspeakable and full of glory. Charles Spurgeon said, if I had
50 lives to live, I would live them all for the Lord Jesus.
Because there's more joy in that than in anything else. Let's
pray. Father God, Lord, I know a lot
of these things are challenging to our thinking. But Lord, I glory in You that
You have worked it out so that our highest happiness is found
in You and glorifying You and reaching out in love towards
others. So God, I pray that You would
help us, You would move us, You would motivate us to reach out
in love. Lord, forgive us for the selfishness
of our own hearts. May we cast them upon the cross
this morning. And find the forgiveness of sin
that you offer from that Calvary experience. God, forgive us for pursuing
happiness outside of You. Lord, liberate us to pursue our
own joy in You. In Jesus' name, Amen.
1 Corinthians 13:5 Your Love Must Not Be Selfish
Series 1 Corinthians 13
| Sermon ID | 92311012512 |
| Duration | 1:02:18 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | 1 Corinthians 13:5 |
| Language | English |
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