When I first started reading Lewis' The Weight of Glory the ideas stated in the very first paragraph were, in my opinion, both amazing and really common sense.
If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ...
--C.S.Lewis; The Weight of Glory
This to me was so amazing because the principle of self-denial is something that I encounter every day (Which is not to say that I succeed in denying my selfishness every day). However, it is usually, as is said above, self-denial as an end in itself. I don't ever really think about the fact that self-denial itself is purposeless and that self-denial for the purpose of raising another is the purpose. One definition of love could be: "Making another's highest good my highest goal." The goal and the end is another's good. My self-denial is only a part of the means to attain that end.
