Self and God

What could be wrong with the complete freedom that Eve sought to fulfill her desires? After all isn't freedom essential to love? The trouble is, in exercising her freedom Eve showed no love whatsoever either for Adam or God. Genuine love, made possible by freedom of choice, providentially carries within itself that which holds the reins on the freedom it requires. In contrast, "free love" destroys both freedom and love.

The law could never make us good. It could only tempt us, as Paul pointed out, to do what it forbids:

"What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I woul not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, 'You shall not covet.' But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produce in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead. I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me. Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good" (Romans 7:1 - 11, NKJV).

Love alone is able to restrict our conduct and even cause us to fulfill the law:

"Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law" (Romans 13:10).

Genuine Divine Love

Listen to Paul's beautiful description of genuine divine love:

"Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks now evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoice in truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away" (1 Cor. 13:4 - 8, emphasis added).

Love forgets self and abandons self-interest in order to please the one who is loved. How incongruous, then, is the term "self-love?" Where demands are made for self and complaints are voiced of not being treated fairly or not being "responded to," one may be absolutely certain that true divine love is not present, for love "does not seek its own." Our fallen hearts are not capable of such divine love. it can only be ours through the transformation of the new birth and the empowering of the Holy Spirit. But, even in the average Local Church, many so-called Christians (including some pastors) are transformed by the new birth, but few are empowered by the Holy Spirit. Why? Because of the love of self!

Love of self or Love of God

Affectionate feelings and deep passions do not necessarily spring from genuine love. The words, "I love you," from the lips of a couple "deeply fallen in love," though spoken with fervor, too often mean "I love me and I want you!" Beware, for lust habitually masquerades as love and had deceived multitudes. When the mask at last has slipped, as it eventually does, the horrible truth is revealed - but so often too late!

Where love's restrictions are not observed and self is not denied so that God can reign supreme, there is no love, no matter how eloquently it may be professed. Satan, being incapable of genuine love, knows not the difference between love and lust. Those who follow him become similarly blinded by their own sensual appetites. Self seeks nothing but its own desires and will protest its fervent and loyal affection to gain satisfaction for its cravings.

True love has no higher joy than pleasing the one who is loved. Jesus gave us the secret of victory in the Christian life:

Jesus said: "He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him. If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father's who sent Me" (John 14:21, 23, 24).

Love delights in obeying God - and in so doing brings blessing to those on earth who are loved as well.

It cannot be emphasized enough that the battle of the ages which began with Satan's rebellion now rages in every human heart. The conflict is between self and God. It is whom one love, self or God, that determines one's behavior. The crucial choice each one of us faces many times a day, is whether to love and serve self or to love and serve God. That conflict needs to be settled once and for all so that we are no longer double-minded.

Self-love, which is the very heart of Satan's rebellion, is the partner of lust. The "love" it gives exists only in order to satisfy its own needs by getting something in return. It cannot exist side-by-side with the love for God, which must be selfless. One cannot be devoted to God and at the same time be devoted to serving and pleasing oneself, which is what it means to love self. In order to be His followers, Jesus said we must deny this loyalty to and love of ourselves. We must give ourselves to God and others as He gave Himself for us. Even love between husband and wife, parent and child, neighbors and friends, must be selfless or it is not genuine.

While Satan was the originator of evil in the universe at large, it was Adam and Eve who introduced it to this earth. Eve was deceived, but Adam was not (1 Timothy 2:14). However, in God's eyes, his sin was worse than Eve's - he disobeyed God knowingly, and quite likely because he didn't want to be separated from his wife. Together, they were separated from God, a spiritual death into which we, as their offspring, are all born:

Paul said: "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned" (Romans 5:12).

Depravity and the Power of Choice

The many similarities of Lucifer's rebellion and fall which we find in the case of Adam and Eve are, of course, no coincidence. As it was with Lucifer, so with Adam and Eve (and with us as well). There was no "explanation" - and thus no excuse - for their willful and rebellious disobedience. Evil remains a mystey, hidden in the depths of the human heart where it was nourished by Satan. The power of choice was part of the image of God in which we were created, and it opened the door to both love and evil.

That Adam and Eve had the power to make a genuine choice is evident from the fact that God commanded them not to eat of "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (Genesis 2:17) and held them accountable when they disobeyed. That their offspring, though depraved and enslaved by sin, still have the moral capacity to choose either good or evil is evident by God's continued appeals to mankind to obey Him: "Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve" (Joshua 24:15).

Paul, being a natural man, declared: "For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find" (Romans 7:18).

He went on to explain that he lacked the power to put his good desires into practice. It was not the ability to choose to do good that was lacking, but the power to perform.

Obedience is a conscious choice that man has the capacity for, and must make from his heart. Disobedience is the choice of not to obey. There is no denying that choice is essential to our humanity as God made us. There is no denying that God gave each one of us a conscience on which He wrote His laws:

Paul said: ".... when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them ..." (Romans 2:14, 15, emphasis added).


Because of our conscience, we have the capacity to choose what is right and to resist what is wrong and we do so in varying degree. In other words, not every person engages in evil to the maximum. Because of this fact, "total depravity" of the natural man does not exist. We are all depraved, but we are not all Hitler. We are immoral creatures, but each of us resists much immorality while falling prey to some. Not everyone has robbed, raped, or murdered. Most of humanity has perhaps never even been tempted to commit such heinous crimes. If we were totally depraved, however, all of us would pursue evil without any restraint.


The Mystery of Evil and the Denial of Self


Adam and Eve were perfect creatures made by God in His image to glorify Him. Lucifer, too, was "perfect in his way from the day he was created" (Ezekiel 28:15). How is it possible that perfect beings living in the paradise of God's presence could rebel against the God who had made them, who had only loved and cared for and given them every benefit His wisdom could devise? It seems inconceivable! That evil could arise in such creatures and under such circumstances points to the mystery of evil that dwells in each of our hearts!


The central role played by the love of self in man's rebellion against God is the reason for Christ's unequivocal command that we must deny self:


"If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me" (Matt. 16:24). Read also Mark 8:24; Luke 9:23.


Someone said, to deny oneself means to say no to oneself. This self which must be denied, if we are to cease following Satan and become the followers of Christ, had its awful birth in the Garden of Eden. Eve's disobedience was motivated by her love of self, which produced and satisfied selfish desires.


The Cult of Self


Satan's claim that he alone had the correct interpretation of what God had said is the foundation of every cult. Those who join a cult do so because its perverted interpretation of Scripture appeals to them. Appealing, too, is the fact that its leader decides and dictates what each member should believe and do. Cultists mistakenly imagine that by submission to such absolute authority, whether guru, pastor or pope, they can escape personal responsibility of God. Self-interest motivates the members of any cult. Whoever truly loves and seeks God, however, will be delivered from self-deception.


Not so in the case of Eve. She had found a religious leader (the serpent) whose new interpretation of what God had said was exactly what she wanted to hear. God had forbidden the pair to eat the fruit of one particular tree and had warned that disobedience would bring death. The serpent dismissed God's warnings as restrictive and narow-minded and assured Eve that liberation from such dogmatic authoritarianism would bring glorious self-fulfillment. It would even turn her into a god.


Eve chose to put self ahead of God. There can be no doubt that she loved self instead of God. But is self-love wrong? After all, Christ did say: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matt. 22:39). True, but He was not commanding self-love; He was correcting it! His command proves that we innately do love ourselves.


The fact is that we all innately love ourselves - and far too much. That sentiment has been inherited from Adam and Even and has firm roots deep within us all. Do we not lavish attention upon ourselves? Is not self-preservation and self-protection our primary instinct? We zealously clothe and feed and comfort and care for ourselves. Christ was simply saying, "Give some of the attention and care to your neighbor that you squander upon yourself!"


The Image of God and Divine Remedy


We are created in the image of God. "Image," immediately brings to mind a mirror. Interestingly enough, a mirror's only purpose is to reflect an image of something other than itself.


If there is something defective about its image, the mirror needs two remedies:


1. To be cleaned so that nothing of self interferes.


2. To be restored to a right relationship with the one whose image it was designed to reflect.


Having been seduced by Satan, our natural bent is to try to develop God's image in which we were made from within self. But such effort can only destroy God's image that we are to reflect. So, what is the real remedy for us? God wants our repentance and then we'll receive His forgiveness.


In love, God desired to forgive these rebels (all of us) and restore them to Himself. It would, however take more than a bookkeeping entry in heaven. Both love and justice demanded that the full penalty for sin be paid. As finite beings we could never pay that penalty, but would have been separated for eternity from God. By God's grace, Christ, who is both God and man and thus both sinless and infinite, bore the consequences of our sin. As a free gift, He offers full pardon and eternal life to all who will admit their sin and accept his pament of the penalty in their place. How unsearchable is the wisdom of God!


Many parents fail to follow God's example when their children disobey. They back away from discipline, and the child never learns the serious consequences of rebellion. Failure to discipline shows a lack of love, encourages the self-will that dwells in every heart, and courts increasing disaster!