Christ Did Not Please Himself

We live in such a way that we are always trying to please ourselves. Every desire that we have is something that we are encouraged to indulge, and to indulge it immediately. We don’t limit ourselves to what is necessary, we don’t delay gratification to see if we will still want something later. We rush to acquire whatever we want so that we may be happy in this moment. To even suggest that we should deny ourselves things or delay the gratification of our desires if we have the power to acquire or fulfill them is so unthinkable in our society. Some would even suggest that we harm ourselves by not “living fully” in the time that we have here on earth. 

With this kind of mindset prevalent in the world around us, the words that Saint Paul gave us this morning in the epistle to the Romans that we probably passed over without consideration are truly shocking: “Even Christ did not please Himself.” The gods of the nations satisfied their lusts. They warred against each other in order to gratify their desires. They accepted sacrifice not as gifts offered by men to a benevolent god, but as attempts by men to appease the gods or be protected from them. We have an expression, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority.” But when Christ comes, he doesn’t please Himself.

This is something that we should not pass over. It tells us something very important about the God that we worship and about how we are called to live. In the gospel reading this morning, we heard about Jesus healing two blind men, and then a mute and demon-possessed man. His life was not His own, it was given to the people that He encountered. Long before He died on the cross, He gave His life for the life of those He met. And it came at a cost. 

When you asked Zeus for rain and it rained, you offered a sacrifice in thanksgiving to him so that he would make it rain again the next time you needed it. When Christ healed the man who was mute and demon-possessed, the Pharisees said that He did it by the power of demons. After this we read that “Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.” Our Lord didn’t stop because He was not recognized as God, because He was not properly thanked, or because we hated Him when we should have loved Him.

And this is the command that He gives to us as well. “I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,” “if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” And “And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you? For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.”

We can easily fall into the trap of thinking that all of the things we are told to do are because we have to keep God on our side like the pagans of old. We have to please God -- or else. So we pray, fast, and give alms as obligations. But these things are not given to us for that reason, but rather so that we can become more like God Himself. Jesus prayed. His prayers to the Father show us the communion they share with one another, and the prayers He offered for the people He encountered show His love and care for us. Jesus fasted. He fasted, not to fulfill some rules, but to show us how to fight against evil and temptation. He ate when he hungered, not when he wanted to indulge Himself. He did works of mercy out of love for us, not to gain praise or respect. And so he commands us to do these things in the same way.

The reason that Saint Paul mentions that Christ did not please Himself and that the reproaches of those who reproached God the Father fell on Him is so that we understand that anything we do, no matter how difficult, no matter how selfless, no matter how thankless it is, shows us to be sons of God, and heirs of eternal good things. And with this in mind, Saint Paul tells the Romans that they need to go out of their way to love their neighbor. “We then who are strong ought to bear with the scruples of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, leading to edification.” We look out for those who are weaker than us because God Who is all-powerful looks out for us. Again Saint Paul says, “Therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God.”

We are constantly faced with concerns about what others are doing in their spiritual lives. Saint Paul is telling us that the way we discern how little or how much we are supposed to do is not found in ourselves or in how we feel, but rather in the edification, the building up of our neighbor. Every spiritual discipline is meant to help us draw nearer to God and nearer to our neighbor. The ultimate example of this is God Himself coming to us in the flesh, reconciling us to Himself, healing us, and giving us His inheritance. 

We don’t tend to think of the pagan gods as being real, or still being at work, but the truth is that for the most part we’ve just renamed them. The demons of greed, lust, gluttony, and anger are still there tempting us. They want to pull us away from the true God, and make us serve the evil one. They want us to turn against each other. The way that we are truly healed of this is to look at how Christ lived, what He did for us, and to emulate Him in our love for God and for our neighbor. Saint Paul told us this morning, “Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This idea is repeated to us at each liturgy, “let us love one another that with one mind we may confess: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Trinity one in essence, and undivided.” It is in our love for each other, and our selfless consideration of others, that we can truly approach God and confess Him together.