Love is the Sum of all Good

Love In Christ

"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become a sounding brass and a clanging cymbal." 

The sixth element of love is Unselfishness.  Observe that Love seeks not its own.

Saint Paul strikes deep here.  He tells us to not only give up our rights, but to give up ourselves.  Our rights are, after all, external.  Every individual, every citizens feels a sense of propriety over what we call our "rights." But there comes a time when one may exercise even the higher right of giving up their rights.  And here Paul calls  us to the much more difficult task.  It is to give up ourselves.  Seek not great costly things for yourself, or great quantities.  Seek them not, says the prophet.  Why?  Because there is no greatness in things.  Things cannot be great. The only greatness is unselfish love.  To not seek things for ourselves at all is the hard part.  Let me take that back.  Nothing is a hardship to love, nothing is hard.  The most obvious lesson in Christ's teaching is that there is no happiness in having and getting things, but only in giving.  And half the world is following the wrong scent in pursuit of happiness.  They think it consists in having and getting and in being served by others.  But Christ said, " Let the one who would be great among you, serve others. 

Excerpted from Love the Greatest Thing in the World by Professor Henry Drummond   1909