Love is Not Self-Seeking.

Echoes of Truth

February 19th

Theme: True Love Revealed

God’s nature is LOVE – and the most important characteristic of love is that it does not seek its own — Zac Poonen

The world’s view of love is selfish. The world says if you love someone, forgo all else to claim them. The world says love yourself first. It says follow your heart, do what you love, do what makes you happy, go after it. Others don’t matter, you matter. The world says you fall in love and surely can fall out of love.

But God’s kind of love? It is not as the world calls love. God’s manifestation of love to us reveals to us that love begins with self-sacrifice. Jesus, in Philippians 2, captures God’s expression of love to us as selfless. Verses 3-4 reveals God’s love as free from selfish ambition, embodied in humility, choosing the interest of humanity over His own in the Person of Jesus Christ.

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Verse 5 reveals that there is a right mind to the God kind of love. Jesus reveals that mind by emptying Himself of all glory and honour due the Word that made all things. He chose the path of the fallen nature of man, to be tested in every way, the lowliest, servanthood. 

Since Jesus chose to identify with humanity, He experienced everything that makes us stumble and always fall short of the glory of God. He sacrificed yielding to the demands and cravings of His own human nature to yield to God’s will so that by doing so, we will have a pathway to walk in without stumbling.

Invariably, Jesus did not lust after a woman when he had the very chance to; He did not pursue carpentry competition for prize money when God needed Him at the synagogue studying the Torah; He did not shout angrily or keep malice with His siblings whenever they taunted Him about calling Himself the Son of God; He would not lie when a simple lie would save Him from a lot of troubles. Jesus did not take someone else’s property even though it could have been the finder’s keep. 

Jesus simply expressed love not as an emotional thing but an intentional surrender of His life that many may become joint heirs of the Father with Him. Jesus simply let go of anything that would make Him live beyond humanity’s means and chose instead that which everyone else despised, death. Through His selfless surrender, we not only get to experience God’s love but also  get to the call to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. 

No wonder Jesus clearly highlights that anyone who will follow Him must first deny self (Luke 9:23). This is because the greatest hindrance to the experience of the depths of God’s love is the selfish human nature. Self seeks her own, her own ambitions, will, desires, plans, purpose…

If anyone seeks the real experience and revelation of God’s love, let her begin by seeking the transformative power that is in self-sacrifice. Such a heart experiences the circumcision of the heart that draws deeper into the realities of not being self-seeking. 

Listen to this short video by Zac Poonen on knowing the love of God: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1WCw8A8-YQ

Let us Pray: 

Father, forgive me for embracing the world’s self-centered version of love. Cleanse my heart from selfish ambition and reshape desires to reflect Yours. Teach me that true love is found in surrender. And Lord Jesus, thank You for emptying Yourself so I might live. Form in me the mind of Christ that projects humility, obedience, and selflessness. Let my life reflect a love that trusts You completely. In Jesus name, Amen.