Getting Love Right (3)

Surely You set them in slippery places;
You cast them down to destruction.
Oh, how they are brought to desolation, as in a moment!
They are utterly consumed with terrors. Psalm 73.18, 19

One sin leads to another
We will not get love right until we recognize and control our natural inclination to self-love. Love as God intends it grows where self-love is suppressed, out of fear of God and the consequences of disobeying His order.

The problem with self-love – mere selfish desire – is that it has a tendency to take off and soar in directions which, in retrospect, we might wish we’d controlled a little better. Failure to rein in self-love can set one’s feet on a slippery slope of sin and more sin, the effects of which can be devastating in the extreme.
No one in Scripture illustrates this better than King David. In the affair of David and Bathsheba, self-love got the best of two people, with dreadful effects on two others. We read about this sorry account in 2 Samuel 11.

Wrong from the beginning
From the beginning it’s clear that David’s head was in the wrong place. Rather than fulfill his duty as king, by going out to reinforce Israel’s borders in the spring of the year (v. 1), David stayed back in Jerusalem and let the army fend for themselves under the leadership of the no-account Joab. He loved himself and his convenience and leisure more than his duty as king. This may have seemed a fairly harmless bit of self-indulgence to him, but it lit a fuse that would explode in sordid, deceitful, murderous ways.

“Then it happened,” we read in verse 2, that David was lolling about on his roof one afternoon, and he “happened” to notice one of his neighbors as she was bathing. He observed, our text tells us, that “she was very beautiful.” No harm in noticing that, right? Wrong.

David’s neglect of duty is about to lead to worse sin. His self-interest in failing to lead the army out to battle led to lust, and lust – a form of covetousness – led to David’s transgressing not only the tenth but also the seventh commandment and, ultimately, the ninth and sixth as well.

Neglect of duty, then lust, voyeurism, adultery. One indulgence of unbridled self-love leads to another, just as Asaph warned in Psalm 73.
But worse is yet to come. Bathsheba, in an act of unbridled self-love, consents to the king’s advances and lies with him. Subsequently, she advises David that she has become pregnant. David, seeking to cover his sin, sends for her husband from the front, ostensibly to hear a report of the battle. What he really wants is for Uriah to spend time with his wife, enjoy his conjugal rights, and thus provide an explanation for Bathsheba’s pregnancy that will keep David out of the public eye. Neglect of duty, then lust, voyeurism, adultery, deceit.

When this ploy fails, due to Uriah’s superior moral convictions, David, now totally in the grip of self-love, arranges for his neighbor’s husband to be killed in the heat of battle, and he draws Joab into the web of his transgression, making him, like Bathsheba, a willing participant in sin. Neglect of duty, then lust, voyeurism, adultery, deceit, conspiracy, murder, corrupting one’s neighbor. A slippery slope, indeed.

No fear of God
David feared not having the ease he imagined more than the God Who had charged him with certain duties as king of Israel. Self-love ran his heart, and the Law of God was shoved aside as David resolved on a course of mere convenience and self-interest. It did not matter to him who got hurt, or how. All he cared about was himself.

Sin is a slippery slope, and it can find its way into our hearts from even the slightest deferring to self-interest. Little deviations of self-love can lead to greater adventures in sin, with the result that our hearts are hardened, people get hurt, and God has to step in to re-establish us in the fear of Him (Heb. 12.3-11).

Our age that knows no fear of God, fears not to condone many of the worst forms of self-love.Taboos remain, it’s true, but will they also ultimately go the way of all the taboos previous generations guarded against so carefully?

In the Christian community, we must keep our hearts with all diligence against the corroding power of unbridled self-love, fearing God, and looking to Him to nurture love’s true and proper forms. Wherever self-love seeks to capture the flag of our hearts, we need to resist it, and raise the banner of Christ our King in the holy fear of God.

For reflection
1.  Can you think of any contemporary examples of the “slippery slope” of self-love?

2.  Looking at our society over the past generation, how do you see that we are already far down the slippery slope of self-love?

3.  Can you see how failing to fear God opens the door to unbridled self-love in the human heart? Explain.

Next steps – Transformation: Meditate on Psalm 73. Paul said that when temptation appears before us, God has provided a way of escape to help us bear up (1 Cor. 10.13). What “ways of escape” did Asaph use to avoid falling into the sin of covetousness and self-interest? How would you translate Asaph’s experience into a strategy for dealing with the temptation to put self-love first in any situation?

T. M. Moore

This is part 3 of a multi-part series on Keeping the Heart. To download this week’s study as a free PDF, click here.

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.