A second area in which self-sacrifice must be practiced is in the Christian home, particularly in love between a husband and wife. Today’s culture glorifies self-satisfaction. It teaches that if one is not personally and fully gratified in marriage, one has a right to break it off, whatever the cost to the other spouse or to the children. But this is not God’s teaching. God teaches that we must die to self in order that the other person might be fulfilled, for it is only as that happens that we will find the fullness of God’s blessing and personal satisfaction.
The title of Walter Trobisch’s little book, I Loved a Girl, is an illustration of this point. The book is a collection of letters between a young African boy and Trobisch, his pastor, after the boy had made love to a girl and had written to his pastor about it. One of the pastor’s letters says this,
One phrase in your letter struck me especially. You wrote, “I loved a girl.” No, my friend. You did not love that girl; you went to bed with her—these are two completely different things. You had a sexual episode, but what love is, you did not experience. It’s true you can say to a girl, ‘I love you,’ but what you really mean is something like this: “I want something. Not you, but something from you. I don’t have time to wait. I want it immediately.” …This is the opposite of love, for love wants to give. Love seeks to make the other one happy, and not himself.
Let me try to tell you what it really should mean if a fellow says to a girl, “I love you.” It means: “you, you, you. You alone. You shall reign in my heart. You are the one whom I have longed for; without you I am incomplete. I will give everything for you and I will give up everything for you, myself as well as all that I possess. I will love for you alone, and I will work for you alone. And I will wait for you. I will never force you, not even by words. I want to guard you, protect you and keep you from all evil. I want to share with you all my thoughts, my heart and my body—all that I possess. I want to listen to what you have to say. There is nothing I want to undertake without your blessing. I want to remain always at your side.”1
This is the standard of love that blesses homes and makes them stable. But it is only learned, as Trobisch later notes, from God as He is revealed in Jesus Christ.
A third area in which self-sacrifice should be practiced is in professional Christian relations. Terrible battles again and again divide the churches. These are usually portrayed as doctrinal battles, as they sometimes are. But more often they are simply personality struggles fueled by jealousy. Choir members can be jealous of one another and hate one another even when they are singing praises to God. Ministers can be jealous of other ministers, so much so that they rejoice in the other’s failures. Those in one denomination can have the same jealous hatred for those in another and can seek to undermine their ministry. These things ought not to be.
It is important, then, that we do not pass over the matter of the Christian’s obligation to emulate the giving of himself by Jesus Christ too quickly. But neither do we want to linger there forever, for it is also true that the Christian is called to show love in less exacting ways. Suppose that one believer sees another in need. And suppose that the first believer has the means to supply what the other is lacking. Well, then, he must supply it, John argues. For “whosoever hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his compassions from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” (v. 17). Here is very practical Christianity. A person may claim to be filled with God’s love and to be so motivated that he would gladly give his life for others. But this may be no more than sentimentality. What John wants to know is how we treat our individual brother (singular, not plural) and how we meet his particular, very tangible need.
His final words are a true conclusion. “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth” (v. 18). It is not by words alone that love is shown and those who are without Christ are won to Him, important as words are. It is by deeds, for these back up the words and give them meaning.
1Walter Trobisch, I Loved a Girl (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 3-4.