You would not confuse love for a selfish act. Love is pure and kind, with no alternate motives.
It turns out I have confused selfishness for love for most of my adult life.
How Can Love Be Selfish?
I think the best way to explain this is with a few personal examples.
Making dinner is something I do not enjoy. Something about the time the mess and the dishes and food crumbs it makes on the counter, none of that sounds appealing to me.
Every once in a while I will make dinner because I know it will make my wife happy and I love her. There is nothing wrong if that was the reason I make dinner, but truth be told I make most dinner with a voice in my head that says, “now she owes me” or “look how great I am for making dinner tonight.”
That is not true love, that is selfish love, I want to bring glory to me. I want to show my wife how great a husband I am.
Another place I find this selfish love showing up. Is the quality that I find most attractive in my wife are the ones that affect me the lest.
I liked here easy-going attitude, her gift of giving me thoughtful gifts, she thought I was fun (still think I am pretty funny), I am attracted to her.
None of these are bad, but compatibility is not love.
Why do I like her easygoingness? Because she goes along with what I have planned. Why do I like her gift-giving? I like people thinking of me. Why do I like being attracted to her? Because physically seeing someone is easier then truly getting to know someone.
I like easy love, I like opportunistic love that works for myself.
Is Any Love True Love?
I think the love I give at best is incomplete.
But we see the greatest example of unselfish love in Christ Jesus. He willing gave up his place in heaven to come to earth. He did not hang out with the affluent and wealthy of the day, but the poor, the sick, the despised.
God so despises sin that he covered the whole world with water killing everyone, but Noah and his family. God so loved the world that he gave us a way to redemption, a way to be saved through grace by the death of Jesus, the greatest act of love.
John 13:34 34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
As the Spirit works in me and I look to what Christ did for a sinnier like me, who deserves the harshes judgment for my sins, I have an example of true unselfish love.
