What does it mean that love is not self-seeking (1 Corinthians 13:5)?

(6) Love “does not behave in an unseemly manner”. The flesh, even when high in the social scale, can be rude and unmannerly. Love will lead the highest by birth, as well as the lowest, to be courteous.

(7) Love “does not seek what is its own”. The flesh is ever selfish and seeks its own interest. Love is unselfish and disinterested, seeking the good of others.

Love does not seek what is its own (love is not egoistic)

They might speak with all tongues; they might have prophecy, the knowledge of mysteries, the faith which can remove mountains; they might give all their possessions to feed the poor, and their bodies to be tortured: if they had not love, it was nothing. Love was conformity to the nature of God, the living expression of what He was, the manifestation of having been made partakers of His nature: it was the acting and feeling according to His likeness. This love is developed in reference to others; but others are not the motive, although they are the object. It has its source within; its strength is independent of the objects with which it is occupied. Thus it can act where circumstances might produce irritation or jealousy in the human heart. It acts according to its own nature in the circumstances; and by judging them according to that nature, they do not act upon the man who is full of love, except so far as they supply occasion for its activity, and direct its form. Love is its own motive. In us participation in the divine nature is its only source. Communion with God Himself alone sustains it through all the difficulties it has to surmount in its path. This love is the opposite of selfishness and of self-seeking, and shuts it out, seeking the good of others, even (as to its principle) as God has sought us in grace (see Eph. 4:32; Eph. 5:1-2). What a power to avoid evil in oneself, to forget all in order to do good!

We learn here that the essential characteristic of love in God and in the Christian is identical; viz., that both are characterized by giving. It is the mode or manner in which divine love invariably manifests itself. God so loved that He gave. He, the Son of God, loved me and gave, etc. Christ loved the church and gave, etc. (See 1 John 3:16; 4:9-10 - 14 and other passages.) But the Christian manifests and expresses the love in him, too, by giving; viz., by giving to God obedience, and he finds his pleasure therein - to his brother love, practically expressed, which according to the high standard of divine expectation may be called to go as far as laying down his life for the brethren, after the model of love towards himself. (1 John16.) Thus heavenward and earthward, love in the believer finds its object and its outlet, its measure and expression. It tolerates and entertains no thought of gain or advantage, spiritual or temporal. And though love answers to love, owing to its very nature in some practical way, yet the expectation of resulting advantages does not constitute one of its elements. "Charity … seeketh not her own."

The motive and reason for continuing thus to serve the ungrateful is found in the love itself, and not in its objects. This is exactly the character of love, the divine nature; there is nothing self-seeking in it, and if the eye be single, the most gifted servant will be quite content to be misunderstood and ill-requited in carrying out the service towards the Church of God.

"Does not behave itself unseemly," or it would not be true love, to which modesty and unobtrusiveness attach as natural ornaments. Sincerity is never ostentatious, and truth has its own proprieties, which love knows well, and never violates. Its boldness is not shamelessness. How little of this comeliness of love was found among these weak Corinthians has already been made evident. Let us remember only, that when criticising their deficiencies we are learning to know and to correct ourselves.

"Seeks not her own." But nature does. This single attribute declares sufficiently the origin of love. By this also may be clearly seen the inseparable connection between faith and love. If the heart has not a satisfying portion for itself in Christ, this self-neglecting love is an impossibility. Self-seeking may often betray itself in acts which, ostensibly, are works of love; nor is it ever wanting but when faith is in active exercise. It is by looking continually to Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, that we must seek to counteract this all-besetting tendency. He sought neither His own will nor His own glory; but, as the self-sacrificing Shepherd, He both seeks and finds His sheep. The apostle was like the Master

Its acts, therefore, are of a kind suitable to this. "It doth not behave itself unseemly." Love is the bond of perfectness, and puts every detail, even of common behavior, right. The world imitates it, as far as may be, because it sees its comeliness. It will give the highest manners to one who may be otherwise the lowest clown. Wherever it is, it reigns. It is the governing spirit. It brings other things into subjection to itself; but then, again, it seeketh not its own. This is its grand characteristic, although expressed in the negative, as so much of this is; for, as with regard to heaven itself; we learn it so much by its contradiction to what we find around, — what we find, alas, so much in ourselves too. Love "seeketh not its own." Its activities must of necessity go forth to others. It is not, therefore, quickly provoked. It is not sensitive of that which touches oneself; yet assuredly, it may be provoked into anger. It was love in Christ when He looked around upon them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts. It was the desire of His heart for them which made their condition so serious in His eyes; but this anger is not nursed into malice. It subsides under the check of pity, the realization of what evil of necessity produces in the soul. This evil it does not impute; it does not reckon it to be there when there is not positive evidence. It has no pleasure in finding it. What it finds there is no question about imputing, in the sense in which this is said. If it be found, then, as far as may be, love covereth sin. It does not bring it out except there be positive requirement of divine righteousness or holiness that it should be brought out. It does not, therefore, rejoice in unrighteousness. How much, alas, of that which seems to be but the display of righteousness (as in Satan's accusation even of the saints) is a mere joy in unrighteousness, the very opposite, therefore, of righteousness itself! On the contrary, love "rejoiceth with the truth." Truth is the basis of all holiness, nay, of all good. There can be nothing apart from it. Love is not, therefore, blind. It has not the character which we may impute, perhaps, to human love. On the contrary, nothing is, quicker or more penetrating in its view of things; but then, again, it "beareth all things." That is, as we saw at the beginning, it can patiently endure, it can suffer long. It "believeth all things" too; that is, it gives ready and unsuspicious credence. It does not suspect. As a consequence of all this, it hopeth all things." It looks upon the good side rather than upon the evil, and, above all, God, in whom love is, who is always present to it, therefore always a cause of hope. After all, good reigns and not evil. Everything is in the hands of perfect goodness, little as at times this may appear outwardly, but thus there is no pessimism in love; it is optimistic in the highest way; but its ground of confidence is not in man, but in God. Hope, then, gives it energy or endurance. It "endureth all things." If we have not hope, there will soon be no strength to endure. Let discouragement be utter and complete, there is the end of all activity, there is the end of all service. There will be no power to serve where there is no hope in service.

Now, love, as we remembered before, is the very opposite of self. It forgets itself, to think only of its object. And just as light cannot be hidden, but manifests itself towards others, so is love. It wants and seeks an object, to make it as happy as it is itself. It cannot be shut up within itself, but goes out towards its object, and spends itself upon it, yea, gives itself for it.

Secondly, love visits its object. It could not be content with merely thinking: the same principle that leads love to think with pleasure, induces it to visit its object; and, moreover, we can trace the same purity, elevation, and disinterestedness, in the visit as in the thought. It does not think upon its object in order to please or attract the attention of any one, neither does it visit in order to effect such ends; it has its own real, substantial enjoyment, both in thinking of and visiting its object.

Thirdly, love suffers for its object. It rests not satisfied with merely thinking of, or visiting its object — it must suffer. In order to exhibit itself in all its reality and intensity, love must put itself to cost for its object; it must spend and be spent, not because it expects a return, but simply because it will express itself in a way not to be mistaken. Love never thinks of what it may reap for itself in thus suffering. No: it simply contemplates its object, in thinking of, visiting, and suffering for it.

282 In our chapter we have love in the character of the Spirit of Christ working us. I must have a power that is above all the evil that is around me, and yet walk in graciousness through it all; and this is the reason the love of the law would not do for this world. If I love my neighbour as myself, it is not enough for a world of evil; there I must have a love that can go on, and be superior to all the evil, and this is what Christ was. It can feel all the evil too. Having no self in it, it has no self roused by all the evil that is around, and therefore it can feel for the people that are there. It "suffereth long," that is downward; it "seeketh not her own" - downward too. It is not merely that it delights in God, and in what is blessed here, but it is looking around in the midst of evil and selfishness .