Selfishness

At a glance

Relevant Scripture

“Israel is an empty vine, he bringeth forth fruit unto himself.”

Hosea 10:1 KJV

UECF.NET summary

Finney begins by clearing away several common but mistaken definitions of selfishness. It is not the desire for happiness or dread of pain, not the wish for other people's good opinion, not any bodily appetite or emotional impulse, and not even mere desire as such — all of these are involuntary movements of our constitution and therefore carry no moral character in themselves, whether in saint or sinner. Real selfishness, he argues, begins only where the will steps in: it is the deliberate choice to let the sensibility's demands govern life instead of submitting them to the higher claim reason itself recognizes, namely, that God and the good of all being deserve supreme regard. Because this choice becomes the ultimate, governing intention of a life, selfishness cannot share a mind with genuine benevolence any more than two opposite supreme purposes can be pursued at once; the two dispositions rank every interest in exactly reversed order, one placing God first and self last, the other exactly the opposite.

Finney then catalogs the everyday marks by which this hidden choice shows itself — indifference to God's honor while jealously guarding one's own reputation, a taste for preaching that only soothes rather than searches, envy at others' advancement, sharp practice in business, reluctance to bear a fair share of shared burdens, and a persistent suspicion that other people's motives must be as self-interested as one's own. His most pointed claim is that every one of these is simply the same disease wearing a different costume: the miser, the sensualist, the status-seeker, and the respectable philanthropist who quietly expects credit are all equally guilty, because each has made some form of self-gratification his final end. On this basis he insists that selfishness in any socially acceptable form is exactly as fatal to salvation as the more obviously disgraceful sins, and that only regeneration — the will's actual turning from self toward disinterested love for God and others — can address it, since selfishness was, in fact, humanity's first sin and remains every person's first sin still.

Main theological themes

• Selfishness is not any natural appetite, desire, or emotion, but the will's deliberate choice to make self-gratification the ruling purpose of life.
• Selfishness and benevolence are opposite ultimate choices that order every interest in reverse priority, and so cannot coexist in the same heart.
• Every socially respectable form of self-interest — ambition, vanity, greed, love of comfort — is the same sin as the most disgraceful vice, differing only in its disguise.

Key ideas

• Constitutional desires, appetites, and even mere wishes for good are involuntary and morally neutral in themselves — they become sin only when the will chooses to gratify them against reason's higher claim.
• Because it is an ultimate intention, selfishness reverses the exact order benevolence keeps: self first, family and friends next, community and nation after, and God's interests last of all.
• Selfishness can be detected in everyday marks — indifference to God's honor, envy, guarded reputation, spiritual pickiness about preaching, and business practices that quietly favor self over others.
• Because all forms of selfishness violate the same law, no version of it — however respectable, cultured, or harmless it appears — is any more compatible with salvation than open vice.

Important concepts

• Selfishness (Finney's definition) — The will's choice to make the gratification of the sensibility — appetite, passion, desire — the ultimate end of life, in place of the higher end reason itself recognizes as obligatory.
• Constitutional vs. voluntary — Finney's recurring distinction between what belongs to our created nature (appetites, emotions, desires — involuntary and without moral character) and what belongs to the will's own choice (which alone can be virtuous or sinful).
• Regeneration as reordering intention — Finney's description of the new birth as the will's actual turning from selfishness to benevolence — not a change of feeling alone, but a reversal of the ultimate end a person lives for.

Related Bible references

• Philippians 2:3–4
• 1 Corinthians 10:24
• 1 John 3:16–17
• James 3:16
• Job 1:9

Practical Christian application

• Take an honest inventory of your spending, time, and attention this month, and ask what order of priorities — God, others, self — they actually reveal, regardless of what you would say if asked.
• Identify one 'respectable' form of self-interest in your own life (ambition, comfort, reputation, possessions) and take one concrete step this week to subordinate it to the good of someone else.
• The next time you notice yourself suspecting another person's motives, ask honestly whether that suspicion says more about them or about your own heart.

Questions for study