He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 22:37-40).
Agape Love
The kind of love spoken of here is not a feeling, it’s an act of the will. It is the willing of the highest good of God first and foremost, and the willing of the highest good of others equally with our own highest good.
Selfishness
Selfishness is putting our interests above God’s and others. It is putting ourselves first and foremost. It is dethroning God as King of our lives and placing ourselves on the throne of our heart.
If “love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:10), and “sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4), then selfishness is the essence of sin. Sin is not missing the mark, sin is a wrong aim. It is aiming to please self rather than God. It is the root of evil.
Flesh, Sin, and Sins
The flesh is the tendencies toward selfishness, sin is the aim to serve self, and sins are the selfish actions that result from this wrong aim. They are selfish thoughts, words, and deeds.
Testimony of the Church
“Sin is due to the abuse, not use, of free will. The abuse of free will occurs when we put our egocentric interests above the common interests.” – Thomas C. Oden
“The root of all sin is selfishness, separating first from God and then from man.” – Andrew Murray
“We hold the essential principle of sin to be selfishness.” – A. H. Strong
“We have also seen, that all sin is selfishness.” – Charles Finney