16 Days of Biblical Love #7: Love does not Insist on its Own Way

This one has taken a while to come, for two main reasons. 50% of the reason is because it’s taken me a long time to get my head around it – it’s not as easy as some of the others have been and it’s taken me a while to try to get a handle on it! The other 50% is slackness in not writing… but thankfully, we haven’t found a “Love is not slack” verse yet, so I’m off the hook there!

Love does not insist on its own way. That’s the ESV translation – the NIV says that “love is not self-seeking”. Either way, it’s a call to selflessness, which is something that I’ve always seen as being the highest form of love.

But that makes it difficult, because you have to ask yourself the question – can we ever do anything that is truly selfless? Even while loving others “selflessly”, there’s still an element in me that wants to do this because I get a kick out of doing the right thing, to put it completely bluntly. Even when loving someone gets no other reward apart from that, it’s still somewhat self-seeking it would seem.

You know what though? You can take that train of thought until the cows come home, but I’m not sure it’s the best description of selfless love. Because something I’ve realised while meditating on this verse is that if that’s my description of selfless love, then Jesus didn’t love selflessly. Have a read of this well-known passage:

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

I’ve heard that passage plenty of times, and it’s a good one because it rightfully reminds us to base everything that we do on what Christ has already done for us. That our motivation for doing anything is based on Christ’s love for us.

But take a look at how it describes why Christ died on the cross for us – for the joy that was set before him. If we take a stance that to love selflessly, we must be completely non-plussed by any potential outcomes for us, then Christ didn’t do that. The reason He died for us, the reason He showed His love in that way, was for the joy that was set before Him!

As I reflect on that, and realise that I’m supposed to be imitating Christ’s love through all of this, the whole selfless love thing starts to come a little more into focus. Christ was not self-seeking in His death for us. We see in the garden of Gethsemane that He would have much preferred not to go through with it – but He didn’t insist on His own way. Rather, He insisted on God’s way, because that’s what brought Him the most joy.

It’s the same for us. If we’re to truly encounter joy, then we can’t insist on our own way. We need to insist on God’s way. If we’re to love God, we can’t insist on our own way – we need to insist on His way.

And that takes itself into everything. As I reflected on this verse, I was plagued with the question, “But what about when people are making the wrong decision? Am I supposed to be selfless and let them just make the mistakes?” That would be a fair assumption to make, if we translate “not insisting on our own way” to mean “letting them have their way”. But that’s not what it’s about at all.

If I’m to truly love another person, I need to insist on God’s way. Instead of being self-serving, I need to be God-serving. That’s how Christ loved me, and that’s how I need to love others.

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