http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15221446/dont-we-still-wrestle-with-flesh-and-blood
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Christian Love Is Sacrificial Love: Ephesians 5:1–2, Part 2
http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14938876/christian-love-is-sacrificial-love
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You Don’t Need More Self-Love
Audio Transcript
After one quarter of a century at Bethlehem Baptist Church, Pastor John looked back and reflected on one of the most troubling trends he followed in Christianity. It was the trend of self-esteem and self-love, big in the 1970s and 80s. Self-esteem was said to be the key to Christian love: love yourself more, and then you will be able to love others more effectively. But such a model was a distortion. Actually, what the Bible demands from Christians is far more radical than self-esteem. It’s more radical because the Bible does not call us to love ourselves more, but to love others with the same earnestness and zeal that we already love ourselves with. This more radical calling to love is such a high and demanding calling, Pastor John will come right out and call this revelation utterly “devastating” — devastating because it really renders Christianity to be “an impossible religion.” Here’s Pastor John, explaining in one of his 2005 sermons.
How is the debt of love we owe to others related to self-love? Romans 13:9 is a quotation of Leviticus 19:18. It’s quoted by Jesus; it’s quoted by James; it’s quoted by Paul. This is the royal law of love: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” My question is, What does “as you love yourself” mean — “as yourself”?
I’ve been here 25 years now. We just celebrated that on Wednesday night. I can remember in the six years before I got here being over at Bethel, and I would say among the dominant concerns of my life from 1974 to 1989 was this issue. What does “as yourself” mean? I point out that little historical fact just because either I’ve got my head in the sand, or things have changed a little bit. I don’t hear as much now as I did, thirty and twenty years ago, the psychological scheme that was built on this verse that was so wrong. But I’m going to tell you what it is just in case my head is in the sand, and just in case it’s got a hook in you. I’m going to try to get the hook out right now.
Gospel of Self-Esteem
For many years, Christians would write articles and books in which they said that this command meant that the reason people don’t love others is because they haven’t learned to love themselves enough, and therefore the task of counseling and the task of education and parenting and preaching is to help people love themselves more so that they would have resources to love other people. And in that little scheme, self-love always meant self-esteem.
So the universal gospel that fixes all problems of children and marriages and business conflict is lack of self-esteem, and therefore the task of all counselors, all preachers, all parents, all educators is to get more self-esteem into these little kids’ lives and into these employees’ lives, and then things will go better because as they love themselves, they will spill over on love to other people. That was the scheme, and it colossally missed the point in several ways.
First, this biblical commandment assumes that all of us love ourselves and don’t need to be taught at all to love ourselves. It is an assumption. Every person in this room without exception has a massive love affair with yourself. You don’t need to be taught at all.
And it has, secondly, nothing to do with self-esteem. Your love for yourself is very simply your desire to be happy and to do whatever it takes to make your life the way you want it. He’s not talking as if first you must learn to esteem yourself, and then out of that rich appreciation for your qualities, you now are free to love other people — which presumably, then, would mean to help them appreciate how wonderful they are.
Everybody Wants to Be Happy
That’s just not the way Paul was thinking. The words are not a command to love yourself; they are an assumption: love your neighbor as you already love yourself — no questions asked about it.
Here’s an example in Ephesians 5. Paul is talking about husbands and wives in Ephesians 5. He’s taking the command to love your neighbor and applying it to husbands and wives. So how does a husband love a wife in these terms? It goes like this: “Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” Then he adds this amazingly crucial statement in verse 29: “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church” (Ephesians 5:28–29). Nobody ever hated himself, but nourishes and cherishes himself. Everybody, without exception, loves himself — whatever his self-esteem is, high or low.
Everybody wants food to eat and will do almost anything to get it if we get hungry enough.
Everybody wants to drink and not die of thirst, and we will do almost anything to serve ourselves with drink if we get thirsty enough.
Everybody wants to avoid injury and death, and we will do whatever it takes not to walk in front of a train or a truck or drink poison or get ourselves killed in some other way.We love life and our health big time. And if somebody raises the objection, “Well, what about masochists and suicide victims? Are they exceptions? I mean, they don’t treat themselves well, do they?” The answer is that masochists and suicide victims are not exceptions to this rule.
A masochist is a person who, for very sad and sick reasons, finds pleasure in hurting himself or pleasure in the tending of the doctors. I’ve talked to people who cut themselves. I asked one young woman that we were working with, “Why do you cut yourself?” She had big lacerations on her stomach. She said, “It’s the only time anybody ever touches me.” She wanted to be touched. She loved herself massively. “Touch me. Touch me, doctors.”
The same is true for suicide. The only reason people commit suicide is because life has gotten so painful, they can’t stand it anymore and they want to escape. They just want out of the pain, which is self-love. “I don’t want the pain anymore.”
“Everyone has self-love. Jesus does not command it; he assumes it.”
Everybody likes to be praised, and apart from grace, we all subtly say things and do things to be liked, to be praised. It takes a massive work of divine grace to free you from that idol. We love the praise of men. Everyone has self-love. Jesus does not command it; he assumes it.
Seek Others’ Good
Now, lots of people think it would be very radical if Jesus said, “So stop loving yourself like that, and start doing the duty of love to other people. Stop having those strong cravings for your own happiness and your own welfare. Stop that, kill that, crucify that, die to that, and start doing something that doesn’t flow from desires for your happiness and just do dutiful, loving things.” Some people would say that’s really radical, and it would be, I suppose.
But it’s not as radical as what Jesus says and Paul says and James says and Leviticus says. They say, “Love your neighbor that way: like you massively love yourself. Make your desire to be alive, make your desire for happiness the measure of your desire for other people’s happiness.” You talk about radical, you talk about life-changing, heart-exploding, impossible demands. Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
If you are energetic in pursuing your own happiness, be energetic in pursuing the happiness of your neighbor.
If you are creative in pursuing your own happiness, be creative in pursuing the happiness of your neighbor.
If you are persevering and enduring in pursuing your own happiness, be persevering and enduring in pursuing the happiness of your neighbor.“Make the degree of your own self-seeking, which is very high, the measure of your seeking their good.”
Paul is not mainly saying to seek for your neighbor the same things that you want; he’s saying, “Seek their good in the same way you seek your own good. Make the degree of your own self-seeking, which is very high, the measure of your seeking their good.”
Radical, Impossible Command
This is devastating. You’re sitting at home. You’re just enjoying an evening. It feels good — watching television, watching a video, eating a good meal, talking. And you hear Jesus say, “Love your neighbor as you want this evening.” That’s just devastating. Measure your pursuit of the happiness of others by the pursuit of your own.
How do you pursue your well-being? Pursue their well-being that way.
Are you hungry? Find a hungry neighbor and feed him.
Are you thirsty? Give your thirsty neighbor a drink.
Are you lonely? Find someone who’s lonely and befriend them.
Are you frightened? Find someone to comfort.
You want to make a good grade on the next exam. So do others. Help them.That is radical. It’s far more radical than saying, “Stop desiring and start doing duty.” It’s far more radical because it says, “Now, all these massive desires that I have for my happiness are not sent away; they are transposed into another kind of music. The same energy, the same longings, the same desires are now desires for you and your salvation and your happiness and your good, your stomach being full and your mind being educated and your life having significance. All the things I want, I now, with that same energy, want for you.”
Christianity is an impossible religion. This is a standard that is overwhelming, and it just makes me long to have a miracle done to me.
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Who Helps You Enjoy God? Christian Hedonists in Honest Community
Jesus did not come into this world to save isolated individuals scattered here and there. He came to gather to himself a new community — a new kind of community, a beautiful community, set apart by God’s grace, here in a world driven by idolatry and seething with rage.
Of course, Christianity is more than communal. It’s also personal. For example, in Psalm 23, David uses the first-person singular pronouns I, me, and my seventeen times in six verses. And Psalm 23 never uses we, us, and our. But who would accuse David of having written a narcissistic psalm? The gospel rightly leads us into a personal relationship with Jesus, for his glory, our salvation, and the good of others. If our Christianity is not deeply personal, then it is nominal, which is unreal and no good to anyone.
“Jesus is enough to pull people closer together than we would ever be without him.”
But what I’m emphasizing in this article is this: original, apostolic, authentic Christianity is, in the wisdom of God, richly communal. Our relational solidarity together is not an optional frill for extroverts. How dare we trivialize what Christ values? “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). It’s our overt love for one another that makes him more visible in the world today (John 13:34–35). Jesus is enough to pull us closer together than we would ever be without him.
The Communion of Saints
The New Testament repeats and deepens this emphasis. We are “joined together” as “a holy temple” in the Lord, “being built together into a dwelling place for God” (Ephesians 2:21–22). Together we embody his kingdom counterculture, a radiant “city set on a hill” (Matthew 5:3–14). We are like the parts of a human body, vitally interconnected (1 Corinthians 12:12–13). I could go on and on.
No wonder, then, that the Apostles’ Creed teaches us to declare, as essential to Christian orthodoxy, “I believe in the holy catholic church, the communion of saints.” If we are not pressing more deeply into this sacred reality together, then our Christianity is not just deficient; it is defective.
Sometimes I wonder about us. What keeps our generation of serious-minded, Reformed Christians from a more life-giving experience of community? Does our wonder stop at the familiar doctrines we keep returning to? Maybe it’s just me, but the relational vitality of real Christianity seems underdeveloped among us. Where are the Calvinists who are known for prizing and nurturing and guarding and enjoying and spreading the relational glories of our shared life in Christ?
Are lasting, deep, and honest friendships included in what we really, really care about? Good preaching, yes. But beautiful community? I don’t know a single Christian anywhere opposed to it. But then I wonder why we often seem to be busier with other concerns.
God Is More Glorified in Us
The central theme of Christian Hedonism is wonderfully stated with words many of us know and respect: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” So many of us embrace that vision, and we rejoice deeply in it.
“Christian Hedonism shines most brightly when it not only fills one heart but a whole room.”
But at a practical level, how does that bold conviction work best? We gain an insight when we focus on two words in there: us and we. Obviously, we wouldn’t be wrong to say, “God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in him.” But there is wisdom in articulating Christian Hedonism in terms of us and we. Consistent with the whole of authentic Christianity, Christian Hedonism shines most brightly when it fills not just one heart but a whole room.
Yes, delight in the Lord can be seen in me or in you as individuals. But it is seen more captivatingly in us together. When Christ is visible not only in you, and not only in me, but also in the relational dynamics between you and me, then we are more prophetic. Then we might compel the attention of our generation.
Where Weakness Belongs
Personally, I can’t imagine trying to walk this earthly path to glory except shoulder to shoulder with other fainthearted, weak-kneed stumblers like me. Here’s why. Sooner or later, we all discover that our hearts can go insane with impulses opposite to the gospel we revere.
And it isn’t preaching and books and articles alone that get us back on track. We need those helps, for sure. But a big part of our own theology is pointing us, over and over, toward the life and walk we can share together. How wonderful! It is so great not to be alone in our weakness and failures. God has mercifully located us in among his people, where aspiring Christian Hedonists who are sometimes lousy at Christian Hedonism still belong. Christian Hedonism doesn’t exist to keep the weak out; it exists to draw more sinners in — and keep them in, and keep them growing, by keeping them encouraged.
Here then is how all of us can grow. We come together, thanks to our God-given, grace-sustained belonging. We take it on faith, and we come on in. Then, again thanks to God’s grace, we dare to face our weakness. We dare to walk together in courageous honesty. Abstract ideals cannot help us, no matter how admirable they might be. But consistent honesty about our actual shortcomings does help.
Who Hears Your Confessions?
How do we start moving into that kind of community? James 5:16 leaps off the biblical page as a realistic path forward: “Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” That simple command raises a personal, practical question: To whom do I confess my sins?
Of course, if you and I are always fully glorifying God by being fully satisfied in him, then we don’t need James 5:16. But we do need it. We love Jesus, we delight in him, we long for him. He has won our hearts, way down deep. But sadly, we get complicated. Sometimes we get bored and “blah” with him, or restless to run from him, or proudly resentful toward him, and so forth. So much foolishness, so many contradictions, within! We are serious sinners. We are deeply flawed. We are pervasively weak. Aren’t we?
That is a big part of the reason Jesus put us in his church, where we’re all serious sinners, deeply flawed, pervasively weak. Let’s get real about it together, with concrete specifics, among the people we belong to in our own churches.
That We May Be Healed
I respect the realism of Martin Luther:
May a merciful God preserve me from a Christian Church in which everyone is a saint! I want to be and remain in the church and little flock of the fainthearted, the feeble and the ailing, who feel and recognize the wretchedness of their sins, who sigh and cry to God incessantly for comfort and help, who believe in the forgiveness of sins. (Luther’s Works, 22:55)
With Luther, we long for saintliness. But he understood that true saintliness gets traction in the fellowship of sinners who come out of hiding and start confessing. They live in James 5:16. It isn’t rocket science. It’s basically simple. We confess, we pray, and we start healing.
What chance does the holiness of Christian Hedonism have, then, if we hide our private failings while waving a public banner of theological correctness? Our own private willpower fails us. We need to get together, in our churches and small groups, and, with no coercion or shaming, come clean about how we aren’t living faithfully.Then we can bow together. We can pray for one another. And the promise of Scripture is that we will experience healing, renewal, and joy, all to the glory of God.