Matthew 7:12
Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do to You
12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
Matthew 22:36-40
The Greatest Commandment
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
John 15:9-17
Love One Another
9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.
John 10:7-11 (KJV)
Jesus Came So That We Might Have an Abundant Life
7 Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep.
8 All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them.
9 I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.
10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
11 I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.
Man has desires, and sometimes our personal desires can get in the way of things and be an obstacle in trying to follow Jesus...Our desires cause us very much to focus on ourselves...But God created us with desires...Suppose we are just using them in the wrong way...Could it be that our desires are too weak and not strong enough?...C. S. Lewis makes a point on this very subject...
Jesus talked a lot about love, when He taught on earth...He gives us in one of His last commands to love one another...And we can relate some of the things He said about being sharing and being unselfish...The Books of Law and the Books by the Prophets make up many of the books of the Old Testament...And what sums up the books of the Law and Prophets of the Old Testament...First He says, "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets."...Then later He says, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’...This is the first and greatest commandment...And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’...All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”...
C. S. Lewis had this to say about unselfish and love..."If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness...But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love...You see what has happened?...A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance...The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point...I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love...The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself...We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire...If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak...We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea...We are far too easily pleased."...
Lewis reminds us that unselfishness is not love in itself...Unselfishness is good, but still needs to have something in addition...Unselfishness by itself is not quite enough...Unselfishness still needs to exist with something, and that great something unselfishness needs is love...Jesus wants us to have an abundant life, not a life of self-denial, and feeling guilty about denying ourselves...Jesus said one of the reasons He came to earth was that we may have life...But not only life, but to have life more abundantly...He wants and says, He gives us life to the fullest...The more we have, know, and enjoy, the more we can share with our neighbors...Jesus did not come to earth for us not to have any things and deny ourselves and be place our priorities on being unselfish to ourselves...He came and walked the earth to teach us about Truth...He came to earth to teach us about Love...Love is necessary in all things...He came to earth to tell us to do unto others as we would do to ourselves...And He has this great gift of grace which shows us that in the great power of love, there is this joy in giving...