Today’s American culture promotes “self-love” as something we need to embrace in our everyday life. However, this way of thinking ignores what Jesus did for us on the cross and his purpose for our lives. We are not meant to focus on self-love. We are meant to focus on Christ’s love for us through his death and resurrection on the cross.
Nowhere in the Bible does God command us to love ourselves. The problem is, we already love ourselves, but we struggle to love others as much as we love ourselves. Another way to define “self-love” is “pride.” What we need to realize is that Jesus loves us more than we could ever love ourselves and, just as important, God is love. So what do we do with that love?
We already have self-love
God knows that we are prideful people and love ourselves. He knows that our nature is to preserve our own lives and inwardly desire to be treated well. If we didn’t, God would not have commanded us to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Mark 12:28-31 (ESV)
In this passage, we see Jesus calling us to look beyond our self-love and extend that love to our neighbor, too. He’s not saying that loving ourselves is necessarily bad, but the truth of the matter is that we struggle to look outside ourselves to the needs of others–that’s pride.
While there are no scriptures that command us to love yourself, there are fifty-one verses on pride. Here are a few:
When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom.
Proverbs 11:2 (ESV)
One’s pride will bring him low, but he who is lowly in spirit will obtain honor.
Proverbs 29:23 (ESV)
For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.
1 John 2:16 (ESV)
Jesus loves us more than we could ever love our self
Self-love is different from self-esteem. As I mentioned, we already love ourselves, but we don’t always have confidence in ourselves. The problem is, we often try to find this self-esteem, or confidence, in our own strength. The truth is, that we can only be confident if we accept the love Jesus has for us.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:6-8 (ESV)
We don’t deserve God’s love because we are far from righteous. But we can have confidence in God’s love because of the sacrifice he made for us when we didn’t deserve it. When we accept this love and repent from our unrighteousness, we can have confidence in the person Jesus made us to be. In that sense, we are to deny ourselves–the love of ourselves–in order to accept the love Jesus poured out for us on the cross.
God is love
The only way we can experience love is if we receive God’s love because God is love.
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
1 John 4:8 (ESV)
When Jesus tells us that we must love our neighbor as ourselves, he’s not asking us to manufacture that love out of our own strength. He’s asking us to extend the love God gives us to those around us.
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
1 John 4:9-12 (ESV)
If we think we can love anyone apart from God, including ourselves, pride lives in our hearts. We can have confidence in who we are in Christ, accepting his love and seeing ourselves as Christ sees us.
But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
1 Corinthians 6:11 (ESV)
Love of self is only unselfish if it comes from the acceptance of Christ’s love for us. It is through that love that we love our neighbors as ourselves. It is human nature that we have selfish love for ourselves, but it is God’s divine nature that allows us to love as an outpouring of Christ’s love for us, which makes us clean and acceptable to him, allowing us to love others the way Christ loves us.
Bethany Marinelli is an author and speaker out of Orlando, Florida. She also supports her husband, Andrew, in his auto repair business and homeschools her son, Arthur.
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