We, as men of God, are to be selfless, or in another word, unselfish. But what does that mean? Does that mean that we have to give up on all our dreams or give all our money over to God, or the poor, or to those who are in need? Are we do expend all our time and energy on endeavors that enrich and uplift other people? Well, the short answer is no, but you must keep reading to get the full answer. So, what does God’s Word say about all these things? Take a look at Luke 6:35:
35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
As we can see, this is our Lord Jesus telling us not just to love our family and friends but our enemies. We are to love those that hate us. Just pause here and really consider what that means. Think about what it means to love your family and friends and what you get in return for loving them, and being a loving member in their lives. Now love someone that hates you, love someone that will not reciprocate, love someone that wants nothing to do with you. That is what we are commanded to do. That is preciously what our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ did while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8) and while we were enemies and hostile to Him (Romans 8:7)
To be generous is relatively easy. Even to do good deeds is a remarkably easy task when we have the means and motivation. Even when we do not have the means or motivation, it is it is easy to do good deeds for those that we love, and those that we agree and get along with. But that is not what we are commanded to do. We are commanded to love those that do not love us. We are to give to them and lend to them with the expectation of nothing in return. Give without even expecting a simple thank you in return.
Let me back up for one moment to look a little deeper at the word love. We may overlook and sometimes undervalue this 4 letter word. We kiss the wife good-bye in the morning and say, “I love you”, or tell the kids that we “love you” before we send them off to bed. It is a simple word packed full of meaning. But it is also a word that has to be lived out. There has to be action behind that word to give it meaning. In 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 we can see what Scripture says about love
4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails.
The truest love is explained here, that is agape love. Agape love is usually the love that is expressed by God to His creation and upon His creatures. So how do we know that this is the truest and purest form of love? Again, let’s search the Scriptures. First John 4:8 says, “God is Love.” But what does that mean for us? The word love is translated from different Greek words, and that is how we get our different biblical love types. In this case, the word love is translated from the word agapos, which means that God is the very source of this love.
So, what does it mean to have agape love? It means that you choose to love them. It is a deliberate action demonstrated toward and for the highest good of someone else. God did this by sending His own son Jesus Christ to die in the place of penitent sinners. To say that you love someone that is a world away from you, that might not like you is a ‘nice’ gesture, but that is all it is, a simple gesture. Agape love is demonstrated in the other person’s life, you know, your enemy’s life. If you want to follow His command and be a selfless man of God, you must demonstrate a self-sacrificing love to someone that does not so easily or readily reciprocate your love. Or in other words, someone that demonstrates any love other than agape.
Getting back to our starting verses in Luke, we can see that God Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. The thing about the Scripture is that there are so many things that are clearly delineated into a right and wrong, good and evil, light and dark, and moral and immoral. God is kind to those that are ungrateful to Him and are, at heart, enemies of God. Yet He so loved us with agape love that He sent His son to take our punishment for the sins, the moral failures of His standards that we all committed.
God the Father is demonstrating how He is being selfless to those who are His enemies. He chose long ago, before the foundation of the world, that He would redeem sinners. The choosing of Abraham long ago is both the actual selection of a real people nation – Israel – and a foretaste of the calling of Christians. It is the deliverance of Israel from bondage under Egypt to the deliverance of sinners from under the bondage of sin. Now some might say that they did not need this deliverance and that they are not enemies of God, because He either does not exist, or they have not offended Him. But here is the thing, as I just stated in the previous paragraph. There are rights and wrongs and there are friends and enemies of God. Better said, there are those who are of the household of God and then there are those who are His enemies. God emptied Himself. He was selfless so that He could make His enemies His family and we are commanded to demonstrate that kind of love.
It is easier said than done, which is why we must do it in His Spirit and in His strength. For if we do anything on our own it will fizzle and fade, and if we could keep it up, it would ultimately be done for the wrong reasons. Even without us realizing it, we can do things with selfish motivations and self-glorification and for what we can get back. We can love like this because He first loved us (1 John 4:10). We can be selfless because we, who are in Christ, have the mind and the heart of Christ. We must have a heart that aches for those who hate and revile Christians.
God our Father has always been and is still this very day merciful to us. Those of us who seek to be men of God are to emulate that same characteristic through agape love. Now, demonstrating love does not mean accepting and tolerating all things that are going on in the world. That is not love. To be tolerant of all things is actually the opposite of loving. It is a demonstration of selfishness, showing/revealing that we do not really care enough to be concerned about others and their eternal destination or how they get along in their day to day lives.
This selfless love is a big deal. It is referenced many times throughout Scripture and it transcends so many of the issues within the contexts of Scripture, covering every issue that we encounter today. Here is the bottom line: for us to demonstrate, or more precisely to have selfless love, we must have that type of love for God and for our neighbors. We cannot love one another and especially not our enemies without a right and proper love for our God. The Good Samaritan story demonstrates just who our neighbors are. We must have both a right love for God, by loving Him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, and the second, is like it that we will love our neighbor as ourselves. Luke 10:25-37 is where we can find this interaction and story.
25 And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 And He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?” 27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” 28 And He said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.” 29 But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
30 Jesus replied and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. 31 And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, 34 and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you.’ 36 Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?” 37 And he said, “The one who showed mercy toward him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.”
You must understand the tension that exists here between a Jew and a Samaritan. There were racial, ethical, religious, and cultural tensions and differences and hatred that divided these two peoples. We could very easily say that the Jews and the Samaritans were enemies. Then Jesus basically tells the people and the lawyer that asked the question – someone who was very knowledgeable about the Mosaic law – that these are the ones they are to love unconditionally. Unconditionally love those with whom we might have racial, ethical, religious, cultural, political or any other differences. That is exceedingly hard to do if we do it without God. With God all things are possible, even loving someone that despises you.
To unconditionally love an enemy is to look beyond the differences and despite what separates us love them anyway. It does not mean to ignore or disregard what might be sinful issues, but to deal with them appropriately, which is a difficult thing to do. Dealing with sin in someone’s life is a most difficult task, but it is a selfless task. We live in a time of great sin, but that is no different than any other time in human history. Addressing sin in our own lives is a constant battle that we will never win without the assistance of the Holy Spirit and help from the fellowship of believers. When we have men of God who are actively fighting against their own sinful tenancies than we will have more Christian men who are selfless. I will echo our Lord Christ Jesus’ words when He exhorted the Lawyer and the crowd to go and do the same as the Samaritan.
Iron Striking Iron 