Love Does Not Seek Its Own

1 Corinthians 13:5

“Love…does not seek its own…”

Love seeks what others want, not what they desire. Love is never selfish. We all naturally look out for ourselves, so this is a battle we face immediately when we enter into this world as a baby. Babies want to be fed when they want, they want to get up when they want, and they want to receive attention whenever they want it. They naturally only think about themselves. If we were raised well we were taught to be respectful to others (especially adults), and to honor and obey our father and mother (Exodus 20:12; Ephesians 6:1). However, we still naturally seek our own.

We have already seen how Jesus thought about others at the feeding of the 5,000 in our article “Love is Kind”, but we are going to look at another example today. In Luke 17:11-19 we see the story of ten lepers that Jesus healed. Jesus, who is all-knowing being fully God, knows that these lepers will not all come back and thank Him for sparing them from a life of loneliness and abandonment. Yet He does not hesitate to heal them and send them to the priest to be declared clean (see Leviticus 13:2-3; 14:2-32 for an understanding of the law regarding leprosy). As they run to the priest to be declared clean and get back to civilization, only one stops and runs back to Jesus. This man thanks Jesus for healing them, realizing it was by His power and mercy that he was healed. In verse 19 we see that this man was saved because of his faith which brings up the point that these other men probably were not saved.

We don’t know what happened to the other nine former lepers, but there are a couple things we can confident they did. First, they showed themselves to the priests and were declared clean, and second, given the fact that they were unsaved men, they went back to a life of sin. Again, this is speculation, not fact, but we have no indication in Scripture that these men ever thanked Jesus or ever got saved. So Jesus selflessly healed 10 men knowing that 9 of these men would run off without even a thought of His goodness and mercy and go back to a life full of sin which He hates.

Jesus is fully God but also fully man. Therefore, He would have to battle against the temptation to be selfish. He could have only healed the Samaritan man who came back and thanked Him, yet He didn’t. He chose to heal them all. He was thinking of these men and their families and friends who would be rejoicing to see these men again, even at the expense of Himself. He showed His love by not seeking His own.

A common thread in this world is to think about ourselves. We are told to stop caring so much about other people and start putting ourselves first. While I agree that we should not blindly follow other men and women, living selflessly is something we ought to strive for. Living selflessly does not mean we need to never have an opinion, because the best thing for people is sometimes to tell them no. Living selflessly means we think about others before ourselves.

Personally, I am not a very good communicator. If someone does something that hurts me or frustrates me my reaction is not to lash out and get angry, but to shut down. But this is an example of being selfish. The devil tricked me into believing I was being caring by just excusing people for hurting me and (sometimes) not holding what they did against them, but I have learned that I am being selfish. No, I should never lose my temper and get mad at others, and yes, I should forgive, but the Bible says in Proverbs 27:5-6 that we should be willing to say what needs to be said to help our friend. This will in turn help our relationship. By bottling things up, I am not helping my friend see what they did was wrong. I am selfish because I prefer to not say anything, but I have learned this is at the expense of others; therefore, I am not seeking others, and therefore I am not being loving.

Selfishness is a battle we will face every day and, most likely, for the rest of our lives. We naturally put ourselves first and we need to fight that temptation. We need to put the needs of others ahead of ourselves. We may become better at putting our spouse and children first, but love puts all others first. We are called to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:39). Let us all seek God’s help every day to become more loving by growing selflessly.

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