How to Put Others First

Written by Ed Allen
Saturday, 06 February 1999 19:00

Building Great Relationships

"Love is not self-seeking" 1 Corinthians 13:5

In a Time magazine article entitled "Ain?t nobody?s business but my own" Calvin Trilling, writes a humorous piece about his tendency to hear all news stories in terms of how they affect him personally. "I actually found the crash of a Federal Express plane at Newark International Airport not long ago a nagging and persistent personal problem," Trilling says. "I tried to respond to the news on a high level ? to express gratitude that nobody was seriously injured, to listen thoughtfully to interviews about whether the incident has anything to teach us about improving runway safety ? but I couldn?t help wondering whether that plane was carrying an important FedEx package for me. Who from? How am I supposed to know?

When my wife finally persuaded me that a Fed Ex plane bringing electronic supplies from Anchorage was unlikely to have contained anything I desperately needed, I began thinking about the personal implications of a tiny news item I?d seen in the Toronto Globe and Mail about bears in Banff National Park," he continues.

Trilling?s article is humorous, of course, because all of us are the brunt of the joke. We all tend to place ourselves at the center of the universe. We have all developed strategies designed to promote, protect, and justify ourselves. We understand what it means to strive and strain and expect and consider and demand and require on our own behalf. But according to God, such self-seeking does not promote relationships.

"Love is not self-seeking," Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:5. "Love does not insist on its own way."

HOW DOES SELF-SEEKING CREATE PROBLEMS

1. Self-seeking cultivates isolation.

"The one who lives alone (one who is separated or the one who is separated from friends) is self-indulgent, showing contempt for all who have sound judgment." Proverbs 18:1

1. How many of you have made it your life?s ambition to be terribly lonely? That is the fruit of self-indulgence.
2. If I am constantly preoccupied with loving myself, eventually I will have only myself to love. Self-seeking cultivates isolation. If you want to grow lonely in your marriage, then pursue your own interests as a first priority. If you want your kids to desert you when you are older, then make your own ends your highest aim or see your kids as just an extension of yourself.
3. According to psychologist Michael, if self-seeking is taken to its logical conclusion, the only safe place to be is in a paranoid isolation tank where no one can place any demands on you.
4. The Bible records for us that on the very first day of man?s existence God confirmed what we all know from experience to be true. "It is not good for man to be alone."
5. Self-centeredness was one of the problems with the Corinthians.

• Paul had been made aware of great disunity.
• One of the principle themes of the whole letter is unity. Chapter 12 in particular is a call to unity. He compares the group of Christians at Corinth to the Body of Christ. "Just as Christ had one physical body, it was not divided, and its separate parts did not seek their own way, so you are a spiritual body whose separate parts should serve the whole."

1. Unity was also one of the major themes in Jesus ministry. On the last night of his life, prayed that we would be one.
2. The fruit of following the way of Jesus ? unity with others, great relationships. The fruit of self-seeking ? isolation.

 

1. Self-seeking cultivates conflict.

"For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind." James 3:16

1. Word translated "selfish ambition" here is used 7 times in NT and 4 of those times it is equated with or said to result in conflict, dissension and disorder.
2. Let me give you a guaranteed way to produce conflict. Put two preschool children in one small room together with one attractive toy. Conflict will happen! Let me give you another scenario guaranteed to produce conflict. Put two self-seeking adults in one another?s lives, introduce some situation about which they disagree and conflict will happen.
3. In fact, this conflict will remain unresolved and unresolvable until the adults decide to choose the relationship, and that means the needs of the other person, over their own needs.
4. Deep, unresolved conflict is a slow growing plant that eventually consumes all of our inner space and resources. It first takes root in the soil of self-seeking.

 

1. Self-seeking causes others to stumble.

"?Everything is permissible? ? but not everything is beneficial. ?Everything is permissible? ? but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek their own good, but the good of others.

Eat everything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, for, ?The earth is the Lord?s and everything in it.?

If some unbeliever invites you to a meal and you want to go, eat whatever is put before you without raising questions of conscience. But if anyone says to you, ?This has been offered in sacrifice,? then do not eat it, both for the sake of the one who told you and for conscience sake ? the other one?s conscience, I mean, not yours?

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Do not case anyone to stumble ? For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved."

1. Explain passage and the priority of not causing stumbling. "Here it is self-seeking that is offered as explanation for stumbling."
2. Whenever someone says they don?t want to go to church because "they?re all hypocrites there" I have two responses.
3. "You?re a hypocrite too, come join us."
4. I feel deeply sorry. God would have a great reputation if it weren?t for people like me. It was Christ intention to save the world. His sole strategy was to create a people who would love one another and love others. He had no other plan, because he knew that the world would respond enmass to an extravagant unselfish display of love. He still longs to form such a people, because among such a people He can do mighty things.
5. If I always look out for #1, eventually I will cause you to stumble. "Live and let live," simply doesn?t work. Our lives impact each other. When I am preoccupied with myself, my children suffer. I neglect them. They get mad, or frustrated. I forget them. They get hurt and withdraw.

 

Self-seeking is based on the false assumption that life is a zero sum game. In order for me to win, you have to lose because there?s only so much of whatever it is that we think we?re after to go around. So, I?m jealous when you loose weight and I can?t. I?m angry when I don?t get my way. I?m envious when your marriage seems to be going well. The assumption, again, is that happiness or fulfillment are in limited supply.

But the Bible makes it clear that God is rich beyond measure. He is able to bless us all to exactly the proportion that would make us most satisfied and to use us to exactly the proportion that would make us most fulfilled.

He does not encourage us to seek he good of others because we have to. He encourages us to seek the good of others because we can. Love is not self-seeking. When our lives are operating under the influence of love we will not strive to promote ourselves, we will not work to protect ourselves, we will not demand to be satisfied, we will not seek to be applauded for all that we do.

 

 

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE SEEK THE GOOD OF OTHERS?

1. Corporate upsizing (all are built up)

"Now to each one a manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good." 1 Corinthians 12:7

1. In rising tide all boats rise. In atmosphere of love, all are built up. "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up." (1 Co. 8:1)
2. Prayer for John ? I was blessed.
3. Ephesians 2:19-21 "You are no longer divided. You are united and in that unity you will rise to be what you should be." Goes on in Ephesians 4:2f ? "In atmosphere where all are giving to one another, all are blessed."
4. Chinese handcuffs ? the harder you pull, the tighter they become. Loosen up and they come off. The mirrors the law of the Spirit. Loosen up with the things God has given us. Let go of our grip on them. Give them away. And what we want, what will satisfy and fulfill us will come to us more easily. The harder we work for our own needs, the less likely we are to meet them.

 

1. Personal abundance (my life prospers)

"The greedy person stirs up strife, but whoever trusts in the LORD will be enriched. Those who trust in their own wits are fools; but those who walk in wisdom come through safely. Whoever gives to the poor will lack nothing, but one who turns a blind eye will get many a curse." Proverbs 28:25-27

1. "greedy person" literally means person who enlarges themselves.
2. "in wisdom" = walk in God?s way.
3. Whoever gives will lack nothing ? Personal abundance.
4. Again, the law of reaping and sowing: if we sow generosity, we will reap generosity in return.

 

At this point many of us are in danger of either turning off this message or feeling guilty about it. "Here we go again," we are tempted to say to ourselves. "Another message about how selfish I am. Another assault on my desire for pleasure and enjoyment. If I?m gonna be really religious, then I?m supposed to give everything away and not think about myself and act like a doormat." But I want you to know that that?s not what God is saying.

God tells us clearly that if we constantly promote ourselves, if we indulge ourselves, if we seek after our own cause first then we will not and cannot have healthy relationships. We will cultivate conflict, we will move toward isolation and we will cause one another to stumble. Love does not operate this way. God tells us that love is not self-seeking. But He does not tell us to disregard ourselves. He does not tell us to hate ourselves. He certainly does not tell us we should not want to enjoy ourselves.

Love is a choice made from strength, not weakness. If I truly love you, then because I want your best interest, I choose to act on your behalf. I am not choosing against myself. I am choosing for you. I choose to work to meet your needs. Not because I have to. Not because you are more valuable than I. Not because I need you around so I?ll do anything to keep you. I do it for you without regard for myself.

And in loving you, I do not love myself less. In treating you with kindness and patience and courteousness, I do not treat myself badly.

On the one hand, I can choose self-seeking. I can choose my own causes, my own wants, my own ease, my own defense. I can choose to meet these needs out of my own resources. On the other hand, I can choose love. In this case, I choose your needs, your ease, and your growth. I believe that if I allow God to use me to meet your needs, then He in His abundance will meet mine.

"If you asked 20 men today what they thought the highest of virtues, 19 of them would reply, unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old they would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than linguistic importance. The negative ideal of unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going withou them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ, and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from philosophy and is not part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

C. S. Lewis

 

It is not the absence of concern for ourselves that God desires. It is the active choosing of the concerns of others. Right relationships are not built on my or your personal, willful sacrifice. Dynamic, healthy relationships are built on our willful choice to serve others. They are built on our decisions to work for one another needs, to listen to and promote one another?s cause. Right relationships are not built on my ability to do without personal pleasure, but on my desire to bring you pleasure.

As with everything we have discussed over the last eight weeks, so today we find that love is not a feeling, it is an act of the will. And if I love you, I will resist the tendency to hear my own arguments without listening to you. I will resist my desire to please myself, not because I do not want to be pleased, but because I can bring you pleasure. And any attempt to bring myself pleasure will eventually sour. But if I seek your pleasure, then God can secure mine.