There are many things that sound right that are not.

I find that for many, there is a kind of feeling that is used when reading Scripture or asserting a theological position, that if a claim fits the overarching sense they have about God, the world and judgment, then they assume it has to be true. For example, there can be a hidden and unspoken assumption, particularly in fundamentalism, that the gnarlier something sounds, the more likely it is true. But I want to hit this from a different angle.

Take this quote from David Benner:

"Love always involves not just saying yes to someone but also saying no to self. The life of love is a life of death to the kingdom of self." –David Benner, Surrender to Love

This just kind of sounds right, doesn’t it?

But is this true?

I think it has the ring of truth to an evangelical tradition that has been influenced so profoundly (while simultaneously being totally unaware of this fact) by the Theologica Germanica (see my post on the Theologica Germanica here).

But no. This isn’t right.

New Testament scholar John Barclay gets closer to the heart of the biblical logic of love when talking about Paul’s view of what is required in our self-giving. For Paul, the

“opposite to selfishness (that is, the ‘self-apart’ or the ‘self-against’) is not the loss of self, but the ‘self-for’ that is also the ‘self-with,’ the self whose commitment to the other is not ultimately at the expense of the self (properly configured) but aims at shared benefit and conjoint flourishing.[1]

Put more economically, Barclay writes, “The goal and pattern of the Christ-narrative, for all its renunciation of ‘taking’ (2:6) and of power, is to be not self-less but self-with” (22-23).

For the past several years, I have been wrestling with some of these questions about love and the odd way Scripture speaks of love.

We have a tendency to treat persons as discrete and self-contained wholes relating at other discrete self-contained wholes, rather than seeing the more organic and interrelated connection we share with others. Modern individualism is at work here, among other things. But, interestingly enough, in my studies on Jonathan Edwards, I found exactly what Barclay describes.

For Edwards, we are to enlarge ourselves to move toward others in love (one key biblical text here is 2 Cor. 6:11-12; 7:2). The self-enlargement is not moving at others who are somehow other than ourselves, but sharing ourselves such that we can truly love our neighbors as ourselves.

I had the opportunity to spend a week with Barclay wrestling through this topic, as well as the broad features of grace, and my project for that week was to articulate a vision of love where we are not set in a competitive relationship to others when we truly love them. It is not either you or me in love. I give myself to you by enlarging my heart in love, just as I must receive your self-giving presence.

On this framework, which is more faithful, in my mind, to the biblical text, we are called to be self-full and not self-less. It is in the fullness of self in Christ by the Spirit that we have whole-hearted lives, and therefore can truly offer ourselves.

Too often we advance a virtue of selflessness that seems to call for self-giving from a depleted, diminished self — a self that is increasingly called to draw on diminishing resources — who cannot enlarge in love. “Faithfulness,” in this sense, leads to a kind of increasing poverty of self (shrinking as they try to draw from a dry well).

Rather, Jesus’ call to lose our lives is not about losing them but finding them in him.

Jesus’ call to embrace weakness is not to embrace weakness as a good, but to know that God’s power is found in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). Likewise, the call to be last is the call to be first (Matt. 20:16). Even Jesus did not just grit his teeth to do the good, but he set his face on the joy set before him, and in doing so, Jesus endured the cross (Heb. 12:2).

To stand face to face with others in love — brothers or sisters in Christ, spouses with whom we are one, neighbors we are called to love as ourselves — is not to stand before an isolated other, but one with whom we are called to be with as one. Love is what binds us together in perfect harmony (Col. 3:14), and we are called to be one in love (John 17:21).

Benner is certainly not wrong that we will be called to say no to our selfish desires and that the life of love will be a kind of death to selfishness. Of course this is true.

But being self-full is not selfish. Being self-full is being a self grounded in and sustained by the God of love, in whom we are hid, and who pours forth his love into our inner being (Rom. 5:5).

But what the call of Jesus is not is a call to become less, or to decrease, so that others can increase. Even when John the Baptist says that about his pre-cursor ministry, that he must decrease so that Jesus would increase, that was not a claim about his person, but his ministry. And perhaps more importantly, John the Baptist’s forerunner ministry has nothing to do with you.

In Jesus we do not become less. That is not the gospel, nor is it the truth of what we find in Scripture. But it is interesting that many Christians feel like it is right.

It feels right to folks who assume that creation isn’t good, and we have to become less than what we are to really be received, instead of seeing that the problem is not creation, but sin, rebellion and brokenness. We are not called to become less than what we are, we are called to become ourselves in and through Christ.

Our call is to lose our lives and find them in Christ. This is why “decreasing” isn’t nearly enough! You don’t need to decrease. You need to die and trust that our God is the resurrecting God.

Christianity is not a vision of life in competition with God, it is a vision of life that is always a life of death and resurrection. By faith in Christ, we have died and been raised, and therefore are able to become the fullness of who we are. Our call is not to become less, but to know our life hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3).

Find this blog and more on Kyle Strobel’s Substack.