An Unselfish Religion

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 29, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 29.

An Unselfish Religion.

INFIDEL critics have discovered that the Christian faith is essentially selfish. “It wraps men up in their individual desires and hopes, and makes personal future felicity the sole aim of life.” The ground for this statement is the admitted fact that Christianity requires men to seek their own salvation, to look first and well to their own characters and lives, and promises them reward for so doing. Seeking one’s own spiritual safety cannot be selfish, since the element of injury to others is not involved. It is barely possible that some may seek their own salvation in ways that injure others; but their obvious antagonism to the whole tenor of Christian teaching should certainly exempt it from blame for their course. It commands us to labor for, help, love, sympathize with, suffer for, and save each other. No other book teaches self-sacrifice for others so abundantly and impressively as the Bible.

If anything more were needed to show the supreme absurdity of the accusation that the Christian religion is selfish, it is that we are taught that we can only be saved ourselves by laboring to save others, and that we are saved from sin only in proportion as we are saved from selfishness. One object of our conversion is that we may be fitted to win men to Christ. We are blessed that we may be a blessing to others. “Freely ye have received, freely give.” The converted soul becomes a blessing by the power of his example. He is a living witness of the power of Christ. Happy in the love of God and in assurance of pardon, the Christian’s strongest impulse is to lead others to the same experience. He can retain the experience that enriches his life only by making it a blessing to others. The law of his spiritual life is that he shall receive grace to use for God’s glory, and shall be ministered unto by the divine Spirit only as he ministers to others. “He that watereth shall be watered himself.” Spiritual leanness and apostasy are sure to result from disobedience to this law. In other words, he that endeavors to be a selfish Christian ceases to be a Christian.

Thus all the manifold ministrations of the Spirit to believers are intended to be a blessing to others. Not one is to be selfishly appropriated by or limited to the individual recipient. Paul teaches that divine comfort in sorrow is given that we may comfort others: “Blessed be the God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our tribulations, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.” No man can consciously receive comfort from God without perceiving that it is meant for others as well as himself. If he is not sure that any mercy comes to him from God, if the recovery of his health, or the saving of his fortune seems to him to be merely a piece of good luck, then he may be meanly and miserably selfish about it. If he recognizes God as the giver of his blessings, he will see that they are too great for him to keep to himself, and that they must be meant for a circle wider than his little life. The joy of his divine comfort will overflow him and bless others.

There is no Christian excellence attainable except by devotion to the welfare of men. Christian perfection is not a negative grace. It is not merely freedom from low temptations. It is positive, aggressive, self-forgetful, self-sacrificing devotion to the welfare of our fellow-men; a constant, joyful effort, inspired and sustained by the in-dwelling, constraining love of Christ to make our lives a blessing to humanity. Phillips Brooks says: “No man has come to true greatness who has not felt in some degree that his life belongs to his race, and that what God gives him, he gives him for mankind. The truth is, we are at our best when we try to be it not for ourselves alone, but for our brethren; and that we take God’s gifts most completely for ourselves, when we realize that he sends them to us for the benefit of other men.”—N. W. Christian Advocate.