Intro Sermon: Love is Not Altruism

Intro Sermon: Love is Not Altruism

Love is meant to be sacrificial, but it isn’t selfless. I remember as a youth thinking that the greatest ideal of love without any expectation of return, but in reality that is belittling the power and potency of love. Love always has its return, it always has a benefit, it always rewards those who practice it. This doesn’t mean that everyone will always love us in return, but even in a negative response a person still experiences love and we have had the opportunity to live in it, even if for a short moment. Practicing Godly love has way more benefits than that and the bible is littered with them. We practice a godly sacrificial love because we know it is good for us, the world, and God. 

A baby is a great worldly example of this. Here is this little creature that can’t give much back. It doesn’t know what it's doing and it can’t do much, but the more we show, express, and act on love, the more we are filled as parents (even in the hard times). With God, we might not always see what he is doing and why, but in acting out his love, we can be filled all the more. 

There are more ways to understand this from a worldly perspective, the more we love, the more we will experience that love as we build deeper and richer relationships (even if we also get hurt more). The more we love, the more we will build a world of love. Love is like pregnancy and giving birth. At times it might be a great strain, it might exhaust and it might hurt immensely, but in the end, you know there is far more benefit than all of that pain combined. 

We get two images in our passages today I wanted to touch on. The first one is from Jesus when he tells you to take up your cross. We are called to take on suffering and struggle for his love. He says what good is it for us to gain the world if we lose our soul? What good is anything in this world if we lose ourselves? Anything that isn’t a loving obedience to God equates to that loss, because we lose God, we lose what we were made for, we lose relationships, we lose connection, significance, purpose, and so much more. We might not realize it, because we are often trading Godly sacrificial love for something we think is good for us and we are really good at misleading ourselves into thinking that something is good for us. 

Lastly, Paul relates our loving service to God as building a house. When we except Jesus Christ we have been given an unshakable foundation, but we have the choice what we build upon it. We can do these fickle things and the truth is that in this life and the next those things don’t last, but Godly love shaped the world and it is still shaping it. When we join in that Godly love, we are building something present and eternal for ourselves - something that is far greater and will last. 

I agree with C.S. Lewis when he said, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us“. Let us always remember and act on love for the immense benefit it is.