Selflessness: The Forgotten Christian Virtue: A Biblical Study

By Joseph "Skip" Frazier

Selflessness: The Forgotten Christian Virtue is the result of a life spent working and interacting with thousands of people over a forty-five-year career. My experiences blessed me with an understanding of the human tendency to be selfish as I witnessed the need for self-denial.
This is not a theological book; rather, it demonstrates our need for the practical use of God’s Word in our lives. Scripture is meant to be lived every day. We are most happy when we yield to our Savior by submitting to His will. My motivation is to show the incredible benefits of a practical application of God’s Word.
It is my sincere wish to benefit your life specifically. It is essential for Christians to live for Jesus. The selfless life will help you to bring people to Christ and understand it is God, not self, who is able to pilot our life.
Finally, it is my goal to always apply God’s Word in the way it was intended.
This book has four objectives, to wit:
• to demonstrate how detrimental the self-oriented way of life is to people,
• to show the importance of selflessness in this life,
• to emphasize the commandment and example of Christ to deny self, and
• to disclose the remarkable benefits of a selfless way of life.
My sincere hope is that you will eliminate selfishness from your life as you strive to follow the Lord Jesus Christ.

—Joseph “Skip” Frazier

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Apr 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9798385018796

Joseph "Skip" Frazier

I’ve been in education for 45 years and I was a History Professor.

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Copyright © 2024 Joseph Skip Frazier.

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New American Standard Bible (NASB)

New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 979-8-3850-1878-9 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-1879-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024903138

WestBow Press rev. date:  04/11/2024

For my wife of almost fifty years, for her

selflessness throughout our marriage

right up to her death in 2017

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgment

Introduction

Chapter 1   The Need for Selflessness

Chapter 2   Selfism: The Foundation of Sin

Chapter 3   Life without Selflessness

Chapter 4   Biblical Examples of Selfishness

Chapter 5   Christ’s Selflessness versus Man

Chapter 6   The Trials of This Life

Chapter 7   Denying Self

Chapter 8   Influences of Selflessness

PREFACE

This book basically has four objectives. The first is to demonstrate how detrimental the self-oriented way of life is and has been to humankind. The second is to show the importance of selflessness in this life as Christ revealed to us. And the third is to emphasize the commandment of Christ of denying self. Finally, this book aims to disclose some of the products of a selfless way of life and their importance in society. Hopefully, these objectives will encourage an increase in sermons and Bible study to show that denying self is a necessity in order to live the Christian life.

The intent of this book is to make a better life for those in the workaday world so that they may have a closer walk with Christ and eternity with God. This second edition has considerable additions in chapters 2, 5, and 7, and some information added in other chapters in order to magnify this intent. Chapter 8 has been added to show there are many related aspects to selflessness.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to acknowledge and thank

Kathleen Woods and Dara Frazier for their

efforts in helping write this book.

INTRODUCTION

It is a tremendous responsibility to discuss the Bible, and so I hesitated to write this book. On the other hand, nothing is more important than living the Christian life—giving our life to our Lord—and so I wrote this to encourage you to live for Him and experience all the blessings associated with receiving forgiveness of our sins through the sacrifice made at Calvary.

I always thought of myself as a strong Christian; however, through the course of watching the suffering and death of my wife, I realized that much of my life had been lived from a self-oriented viewpoint. These experiences motivated me to strive to help prevent others avoid experiencing the pain of regret. I hope this book will show Christians and non-Christians alike the futility and destruction of a self-oriented way of life and the real love we can only experience when we deny ourselves.

This book is the result of a life spent working and interacting with thousands of people in public education over a forty-year period. My experiences have blessed me with an understanding of natural human conduct. While many experiences were negative, I learned from everyone and observed the need for self-denial on a daily basis. In other words, this is not the product of an ivory tower point of view. It is not a theological book, but rather, one generated through interactions with many in need of the practical use of God’s Word in their lives. Scripture is not meant to be severed from our daily life; in fact, we are able to be most content when we yield to our Savior by submitting to His will. And so my motivation is to attempt to show the practical application of God’s Word.

It is my sincere wish to benefit your life specifically and for Christians to see the necessity of denying self and to live the Christian life. The selfless life will aid in bringing people to Christ and understanding it is God, not self, who is able to pilot our life.

Finally, it is my goal to always apply God’s Word in the way it is intended.

CHAPTER 1

The Need for Selflessness

The greatest example of selflessness the world has ever seen was given to us by Jesus Christ. The sinless life Jesus led was the epitome of how to live. His thoughts, words, and actions consistently reflected His unselfishness as He completely emptied Himself for us. In the life of Christ, the self was completely denied. Jesus had no worldly interests as He provided the perfect example of how to live for God.

The world since Christ—up to and including today—has generally ignored or forgotten the idea of selflessness as a part of Christianity. It is seldom preached from the pulpit, studied in Bible studies, or written about. Consequently, humankind has enslaved itself to a life devoted to serving itself. As with Adam and Eve, humankind has made self a god. I will attempt to demonstrate the futility of this attitude and lifestyle as well as how it harms us, those we profess to love, and our ability to share God’s love with others.

It is essential to be selfless if we want to live a Christian life. God is to be number one in our lives (Matthew 6:33). We can’t serve God and self too. The emphasis on self in our culture is in complete contradiction of God’s Word. Christ commanded us to deny self in Matthew 16:24 (also in Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23). Self-emphasis negates God’s love. God’s love is selfless, not self-seeking. Self-love disaffirms Mark 12:30, which states that we are to love God with all of our being. We are also told in 2 Timothy 3:2 that self-love is one of the signs of the last days.¹ God has got to be our focus and what we depend on, not self.

Whether listening to the news or even an honest reflection of one’s life experiences, we realize perfection and humanity are not synonymous. Today’s self-oriented society has difficulty accepting a genuine assessment of humankind’s situation and how disastrous self-reliance—relying on self—can be. Even though the evidence is all around us, the idea that humankind is limited, flawed, finite, incomplete, incapable of competently directing their own lives, and not in control of their destiny is repulsive to most people. God’s placement of humankind in our subservient position (Hebrew 2:7, Genesis 1:26) is disgusting and repulsive to the overinflated ego of today’s society. The book of Ecclesiastes exposes the attempt of men and women to break out of their place to make themselves gods. In short, control of our lives and circumstances is unattainable. While it is true we were given dominance over the earth (Genesis 1:26), this privilege in no way implies our reasoning or logic is capable of allowing us to be our own god. This effort explains why humankind has made such a mess of our world and why so many people live in unhappiness and misery.

People make mistakes; God doesn’t. The idea of living a selfless life in dependence on God is a foreign concept to American culture. Our daily lives provide evidence of humankind’s inability to be in control. International relations? Chaotic! Corruption in business and government? Rampant! Drug and alcohol abuse and its disastrous impact on children and families? Epidemic! Crime? Widespread!

And yet most Americans—comfortable in spacious homes, without concern as to the source of their next meal, and overloaded with entertainment—fail to see their spiritual need and the emptiness of their materialistic lives. Living for eternity is a totally foreign concept.

Insurance companies make billions of dollars off the fact that people are fearful of what might happen next. This fear is due to an underlying sense of lack of control in our lives. In the latter part of 2013, a television commercial advertising insurance said, Even when we cross our t’s and dot our i’s, we run into problems—namely, other humans. This message aptly acknowledges our lack of control and propensity to make mistakes. Shouldn’t we be able to see the need to place our dependence on a higher power who is far more knowledgeable and reliable than ourselves? This power is, of course, the Lord God. He alone can protect our souls when all our efforts fail and provide for an