There is a new creation whenever a man comes to be in Christ; what is old is gone, the new has come. (2 Corinthians 5:17 MOFF)
This new creation is born of God and God is love, so the new creation is a love creation.
In our redemption, love went the limit. The cross and the three days of suffering was love’s limit.
Now we are born of that love, so we have become love creations.
We are partakers of love’s nature. We have the attributes of love. God reproduces Himself in the new creation. He makes a superman of love that “seeketh not its own” (1 Corinthians 13:5 ASV). This new creation is not provoked by persecution, slander, or anything that the people ruled by selfishness can do.
You see, the new birth made a new self, a new spirit, and a new man. It gives to man a new kind of selfishness and that is the selfishness that was manifested in Paul and the other members of that early organization called the church. It plans to give more than it gets, and it is perfectly selfish in this struggle to give more than another can give.
It denies itself to give more. It is really Christ let loose in us.
You can hear the cry, “Master, You died for me. I live now for those for whom You died. You became a slave of love for me. I will become a slave of love for them.”
For whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God: or whether we be sober, it is for your cause. For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. (2 Corinthians 5:13–15)
This selfishness to give, as I love to call it, is the kind of love that sought the cross for me.
You remember that dear old saint, Polycarp, a convert of John the Beloved. When he was eighty-two, he started on that long trip to Rome to confess before the Roman authorities that he was a slave of love for Jesus Christ. They pleaded with him in every town through which he went on his way, telling him that a stake and burning flames awaited him. His heart was set on giving his testimony in Rome. When he arrived, he was arrested; they tried him, but he refused to recant. They tied him to the stake and heaped the bundles of sticks around him.
The authorities pleaded with Polycarp to blaspheme the name of Jesus. Tenderly, he looked at them and said, “For eighty and six years have I been his servant, and he has done me no wrong, and how can I blaspheme my King who saved me?” Then he bid them to light the fire and doubtless cried, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”
One could hear him say, “He loved me. He gave Himself up for me. If He gave Himself for me, it is no more than right that I should give myself for others.”
It was love that led this dear man. It is love that leads the way of unselfishness.
Let us notice a basic fact: there are two great forces in the world. There is this new kind of love, agape, that Jesus brought, which springs out of the heart of the Father. And there is selfishness, which is the nature of Satan.
Satan is spiritually dead. Spiritual death has given birth to selfishness. Selfishness has dominated the human race.
Man is spiritually dead until he receives the nature of God
Then, the combat in the world is between eternal life and spiritual death, or between agape and selfishness.
The outstanding characteristic of natural man is selfishness. It has given to us every one of the major sins that are destroying the human race.
Selfishness is the parent of the liquor traffic, gambling, and every other sin.
The husband who comes home half-drunk doesn’t love his family as much as he loves himself. The mother who has taken on the unhappy habits of modern society and dares display these habits in the presence of her growing children loves herself and her appetites more than she loves her children.
The natural man cannot love his children as much as he loves himself. He cannot love his wife as much as he loves himself.
The natural human heart is a partaker of the satanic nature, selfishness, and when that selfishness gains the ascendancy, it makes the man a despot in his home, filling it with the spirit of tyranny.
I saw a couple who had lived very unhappily and had thought much about separating, but there were little children. The father had a godly background, and so had the mother, but neither of them had ever received eternal life.
After the children came along, the wife began to feel the irritations of bondage and said, “These children just rob me of my liberty.” The husband began to feel the same limitations. Selfishness began to grow apace. The home was not a home. It was just a place where they quarreled, made up, found fault, and cursed the children.
Then one day, my little book The New Kind of Love fell into the husband’s hands. He brought it home and started to read it. He became so engrossed in it that his wife wanted to know what he was reading.
You see, selfishness is always jealous. The keener and richer your selfishness is, the more sensitive you become. She became very curious about what that little book was.
Finally, she said, “What is that you are reading?”
He said, “It is the most wonderful book I have ever read.”
He laid it down on the table, and she began to read it. She hadn’t read half of it before she made her decision. She had seen things.
When he came into the house, she said, “How far did you read in that book?”
“Nearly all of it. One of the men at the office gave it to me,” he responded. “What do you think of it?”
“I only wish we had gotten hold of it when we were first married and life would have been different,” she said.
He picked up one of his children and held the child in his arms. “Wife,” he said, “would you like to go with me on this thing? I would like to have eternal life. I am sick of my selfishness.”
She looked into his face, reached out her hand, and said, “My dear, I will go the whole way with you.”
The two older children were not home when this happened, and the couple did not tell them about it.
Three or four days later, the oldest girl said, “Mother, what has happened to you and Dad? You haven’t quarreled since last week.” Then the mother told the story to her and the girl, in her mother’s arms, whispered, “Mother, I want it too.”
And so, love came to live in that house.
After a bit, every member of the household sought to give the others more than he or she received. Love’s rivalry began to develop. The husband and wife sought to outdo each other in love.
You see, when two new creation people, love-filled, begin to practice agape, the very atmosphere of heaven is in that home.
Love’s slogan is, “I am not seeking my own happiness, but yours.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could have classes that would take up the study of agape? There has never been a chair of love in of our colleges or universities, and yet it is the most important thing in life.
You cannot adjust the labor and capital situation by law or by force. It can only be settled with agape.
Oh, if there should arise in the labor world a great leader who could evangelize the workers and prove to them that selfishness has never yet built anything that it did not destroy!
Sense knowledge has built cities, but it always destroys them.
Few of us have recognized that there two kinds of ambition. One was born out of the desire to conquer and reign, to have and to hold, no matter what effect it has upon those who stand in the way. The other is the ambition to give, to build, and to make happy, to educate and to train, and to make beautiful, glad homes. This ambition is the Jesus kind. The other is inspired by Satan.
You know, one of the sweetest things that Paul ever said was that God counted him worthy to represent love, even to represent God and this new kind of love.
I render thanks to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has made me able for this; he considered me trustworthy and appointed me to the ministry. (1 Timothy 1:12 MOFF)
Saul the hater became Paul the lover.
I wish that there could be little societies of men and women who would come together to study how to develop this new kind of love so that they would have the new kind of selfishness.
I know a man and woman who lived very unhappily for nearly thirty years. They could not separate. They talked about it. They planned on it. They had even gone to their lawyer to talk it over, but when the real thing came, they could not seem to do it. They received a copy of my book The New Kind of Love, and then they came to my services and I happened to be speaking on this new kind of selfishness.
The husband came to see me a little while after that and said, “Do you know that my wife and I have found the thing we have been hunting for, for thirty years? We are playing the game now. Each one of us is trying to get the advantage of the other in love. Four or five of our neighbors have started to practice love also. One of them came the other night and said to me, ‘You know, I can’t practice this love. I don’t have it in my heart,’ and then my wife pointed her to the Lamb of God, and now she has that new kind of love, too.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every one of you who read this book would become an evangelist for this new kind of love, this new kind of selfishness?
We have seen the sons of selfishness become the sons of love. We have seen the old selfishness meet this new kind of selfishness and be defeated.
The great combat today is between selfishness and love. Satan is the symbol of selfishness; Jesus is the symbol of love.