Unselfed love is a rule in Christian Science. Without it, spiritual growth and demonstration are unattainable. Unselfed love brings to light man's true identity as God's image. It graces and hallows human consciousness with spiritual qualities, and leads it to a full renunciation of all that is unspiritual. Our great Master, portraying the sublime order of unselfed love, said (John 15:13), "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
What is this life which must be laid down that the greater love may be understood and expressed? Christian Science explains that it is the material sense of existence, the mortal selfhood, which claims to counterfeit man's God-derived, real individuality and to becloud the human consciousness with earth-born limitations. Unselfed love appears proportionately as mortal selfhood is seen as altogether false.
Christian Science refutes the dual nature of the human concept of man, wherein good and evil, spiritual consciousness and material mentality, seem to commingle. It reveals the fact that man has but one selfhood and that one immortal and spiritual. In many of his parables and precepts Christ Jesus pointed to the fact that the spiritual and the material cannot unite. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh," said he, "and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6). On another occasion he declared (John 6:63). "The flesh profiteth nothing." The fleshly element in human consciousness must be seen as worthless and unreal before one can consciously manifest the scientific, unselfed love which reflects divine Love. It is the false sense of existence, not the real, which must be laid down for our friends.
