AROUND THE WORLD and all throughout history, basic human rights have been violated. The powerful have oppressed the weak and have taken what was not theirs to take, or have withheld what could easily and decently have been given. Wars have been fought on the slimmest of pretexts. People have been unjustly killed in the name of justice.

And all of it grieves God, who created the world in shalom, in the richest kind of peace. Those who believe in and worship that God should be people of peace. But — news flash! — we are often anything but.

The battlefields may be in our homes, in our congregations, in our communities. In a way that often trivializes the word, we use the language of “rights” to insist on having things our way. Even when someone speaks the truth to us and tries to tell us what’s right, for example, we may respond angrily with, “You have no right to tell me what to do.” We insist on our freedom to do whatever the heck we want as long as it’s not illegal or hurting someone else. And who gets to decide whether it’s hurtful, whether the other person has a legitimate complaint? Why, we do of course.

We’re used to looking out for number one; it’s human nature to protect ourselves and our interests. But Paul teaches that it’s more loving and godlier to look out for number two.

WHY DOES PAUL have to teach the Corinthians about love? Because their self-centered attitude and behavior shows between the lines of Paul’s letter from start to finish. It’s one thing, for example, to desire spiritual gifts that would serve the good of the whole community. But it’s another to seek gifts that would give a person more prestige. It’s one thing to prefer a particular leader in the church for a particular reason; it’s another to make it a competition over whose reasons are right.

In different places in the letter, Paul is explicitly or implicitly concerned with the way the Corinthians are insisting on their rights to the detriment of the community. As an example of the implicit, consider how he addresses the issue of believers suing one another in court. At the beginning of chapter 6, he scolds the Corinthians for airing their dirty laundry in public before unbelievers. “Why not rather be wronged?” he asks. “Why not rather be cheated?” (vs. 7, NIV). Those questions assume that the case might have merit — but that the higher principle is their unity and public witness. Are they willing to give up their right to sue one another for the sake of those principles?

Immediately after that, he addresses the issue of sexual immorality, beginning with these words:

“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything. (1 Cor 6:12)

Here, the question of rights is explicit. Translated literally, Paul says, “All things are lawful for me.” The New International Version puts quotation marks around the phrase and adds the words “you say” to suggest that Paul is quoting the Corinthians and not speaking for himself. It’s as if the Corinthians had turned their beliefs into a slogan: “I have the right to do anything” — including, apparently, engaging in sexually immoral acts.

But even if Paul is not actually quoting a Corinthian slogan, the point is the same. As Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message, “Just because something is technically legal doesn’t mean that it’s spiritually appropriate. If I went around doing whatever I thought I could get by with, I’d be a slave to my whims.”

Then, in chapter 8, as we’ve seen, Paul addresses the question of eating food that had previously been part of a ritual sacrifice to a pagan god. Do the Corinthians have a right to eat such food? Yes. Does Paul agree that this is theologically permissible? Yes. But again, there’s a higher principle of love and concern at play here. Paul cautions the Corinthians not to selfishly put their rights first in a way that might cause someone with a weaker conscience to stumble in their faith. That, he says, is not only a sin against the other person, it’s a sin against Christ himself (see 1 Cor 8:8-12).

ALL OF THIS, I think, is part of what Paul means when he says that love “is not self-seeking” or as the Common English Bible puts it, doesn’t “seek its own advantage” (1 Cor 13:5). To put love first means not putting our rights ahead of someone else’s well-being, to not automatically put our needs ahead of someone else’s needs.

To do this requires humility — as Paul teaches elsewhere, the humility of Christ. Who, after all, had more rights to anything and everything than Jesus himself? He was equal to God, Paul teaches the Philippians, and yet he humbled himself to become a human being who died an unjust death on the cross for our sake. He wants the Philippians to bring that same mindset to their relationships with each other:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. (Phil 2:3-4)

Again, to quote Peterson’s way of paraphrasing Paul: “Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.”

None of this is to say that we don’t have our own needs, our own rights. In calling people to humility, Paul is not telling them to be doormats; the humility of Jesus is not powerlessness but power in the service of love. And remember, he’s writing to a church, not a lone individual; he’s trying to shape the culture of an entire community.

After all, you don’t have to worry about being taken advantage of when you live in the company of those whose spiritual DNA is to look out for number two.