"If you will devote yourself to God, as making a sacrifice of all your own
interests to him, you will not throw yourself away. Though you seem to neglect
yourself, and to deny yourself, and to overlook self in imitating the divine
benevolence,
God will take care of you; and he will see to
it that your interest is provided for, and your welfare made sure. You shall be
no loser by all the sacrifices you have made for him. To his glory be it said,
he will not be your debtor, but will requite you a hundred-fold even in this
life, beside the eternal rewards that he will bestow upon you hereafter. His own
declaration is, “Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters,
or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall
receive an hundred-fold” (the other evangelist adds, “in this present time”),
“and shall inherit everlasting life” (Mat. 19:29); and the spirit of this
declaration applies to all sacrifices made for Christ, or for our fellowmen for
his sake. The greatness of the reward for this life Christ expresses by a
definite number; but he does not God make use of numbers, however great, to set
forth the reward promised them hereafter. He only says they shall receive
everlasting life, because the reward is so great, and so much exceeds all the
expense and self-denial persons can be at for Christ’s sake, that no numbers are
sufficient to describe it.
"If you are selfish, and
make yourself and your own private interests your idol, God will leave you to
yourself, and let you promote your own interests as well as you can. But if you
do not selfishly seek your own, but do seek the things that are Jesus Christ’s,
and the things of your fellow-beings, then God will make your interest and
happiness his own charge, and he is infinitely more able to provide for and
promote it than you are. The resources of the universe move at his bidding, and
he can easily command them all to subserve your welfare. So that, not to seek
your own, in the selfish sense, is the best way of seeking your own in a better
sense. It is the directest course you can take to secure your highest happiness.
When you are required not to be selfish, you are not required, as has been
observed, not to love and seek your own happiness, but only not to seek mainly
your own private and confined interests. But if you place your happiness in God,
in glorifying him, and in serving him by doing good, — in this way, above all
others, will you promote your wealth, and honor, and pleasure here below, and
obtain hereafter a crown of unfading glory, and pleasures forevermore at God’s
right hand. If you seek, in the spirit of selfishness, to grasp all as your own,
you shall lose all, and be driven out of the world at last, naked and forlorn,
to everlasting poverty and contempt. But if you seek not your own, but the
things of Christ, and the good of your fellowmen, God himself will be yours, and
Christ yours, and the Holy Spirit yours, and all things yours. Yes, “all things”
shall be yours; “whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or
death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ’s;
and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. 3:21, 22).
"Let
these things, then, incline us all to be less selfish than we are, and to seek
more of the contrary most excellent spirit. Selfishness is a principle native to
us, and, indeed, all the corruption of our nature does radically consist in it;
but considering the knowledge that we have of Christianity, and how numerous and
powerful the motives it presents, we ought to be far less selfish than we are,
and less ready to seek our own interests and these only. How much is there of
this evil spirit, and how little of that excellent, noble, diffusive spirit
which has now been set before us! But whatever the cause of this, whether it
arise from our having too narrow notions of Christianity, and from our not
having learned Christ as we ought to have done, or from the habits of
selfishness handed down to us from our fathers, — whatever the cause be, let us
strive to overcome it, that we may grow in the grace of an unselfish spirit, and
thus glorify God, and do good to men."
(
http://www.biblebb.com/files/edwards/charity8.htm)
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