When Betty came into my office, she was distraught, confused and disturbed. She blurted out, “ I hate myself and I know that isn’t right. I know I should love myself, but I can’t. Pastor, please help me!”
Betty is typical of many people who struggle with life and who think they are supposed to love themselves. We are repeatedly told things like “Love yourself, for if you don’t, how can you expect anybody else to love you?”
I told Betty many things that day. The last thing I said was, “Betty, I’m afraid if you go down the road of trying to love yourself, you won’t find either peace of mind or happiness. I know the words ‘love yourself’ sound right, but it isn’t God’s way.” I then offered her what I believe is God’s way of dealing with personal issues.
Smooth-talking speakers continually promote self-love as the cure all to our problems. We are constantly bombarded with the message, “You just need to love yourself the way you are.” One speaker said, “I just need to accept myself the way I am. I am worth it. I am a loveable, valuable and forgivable person.”
Some Christian preachers, masquerading as pop-psychologists, teach a religion of self-love rather than the New Testament gospel of salvation through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. To listen to them, if I can love myself, I can handle anything that life throws my way. These teachers don’t tell me how a gospel of self-love will get me into heaven.
Self-love is an appealing teaching. It sounds so mature and even smacks of being biblical. And, aren’t we to love our neighbors as ourselves? However, the unmistakable teaching of the Bible is that an inordinate preoccupation with ourselves will only increase unhappiness and complicate life.
THE ISSUE
There is a recognized need for feelings of self-worth. We need a positive self-image. In a world where people are beaten down, receive little positive affirmation and are often dehumanized, the need for a positive self-image is well documented. We live at a time when many people feel that they have been reduced to a digit in someone else’s computer.
But a positive self-image or a deep sense of personal worth, are not the same as self-love.
The teaching of Jesus is often twisted to fit together with the teaching of modern psychology, which says that self-love is necessary to face our personal issues successfully and deal with the pressures of life. We’ve all heard preachers misinterpret and misapply the words of Jesus, that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves.
“Thou shalt love thyself” has become the mantra of many popular teachers. The great sin of today, according to some, is no longer a failure to honor and submit to a holy God, but rather a failure to esteem one’s self.
Popular thinking says, love for God and love for those around us flows from a healthy love for ourselves. Yet a careful examination of Scripture reveals the exact opposite. Love starts with God. God loves us first. Receiving that love enables us to love others. The result of God’s love for us and our love for others is that we then experience a healthy sense of personal worth.
THE BIBLE’S TEACHING
The Bible says that self-love already exists in us. There is something innate in us making us want to focus love on ourselves. Loving ourselves is part of our sinful nature. No one really needs to learn how to love himself.
The Bible says that “self-love” is a sign of the days prior to the return of Jesus. This is what Paul wrote: But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves … Have nothing to do with them. (2 Timothy 3:1, 5).
Paul was teaching that love of self, rather than leading us to a greater love for God and others around us, is sin. Self-love is at the heart of sin. It is the very definition of sin.
There is no instruction in the Bible telling us to love ourselves. You shall love your neighbor as yourself, is not a command to love yourself. John Stott explains it this way. “Grammatically, Jesus did not say that the second and third commandments are to love our neighbor and ourselves. He said the second commandment is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Self-love here is a fact we should recognize … but it is not a virtue to be commended.”
Further, think about the built-in ambiguity of the term, “self-love.” It is a contradiction, an oxymoron. The biblical meaning of agape love is the self-sacrificial giving of ourselves to others as an act of service. Agape love is to serve others. Love cannot be directed at self. As Stott says, “The concept of sacrificing ourselves to save ourselves is nonsense.”
SELF-DENIAL AND SELF-AFFIRMATION
It is Jesus’ cross that provides the solution to how we should look at ourselves. Too often, the tidal wave of humanistic psychology touting its slogans and clichés forgets all about the cross and its implications on our lives. Teachers would do well to remember this. The cross teaches us both self-denial and self-affirmation.
First, there is self-denial. Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. (Mark 8:34).
Dietrich Bonhoffer said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him to come and die.”
Paul put it this way, Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. (Galatians 5:24). Self-denial is the exact opposite to self-love.
Second, there is self-affirmation. At the same time Jesus was teaching us to practice self-denial, he was also teaching us to affirm ourselves. Jesus continually spoke of the worth and value of each individual. Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? (Matthew 6:26).
Jesus also said, If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! (Matthew 12:11-12).
Jesus never despised anyone. He recognized the worth of each person. The culture of Jesus’ world had no time for children; Jesus valued them. His world rejected notorious sinners such as the prostitutes and tax collectors; Jesus welcomed them and affirmed their worth. Nationality, ethnicity, disease and past behavior were never reasons to write off anyone; he saw possibility and worth in everyone.
Nothing demonstrates the worth of a man as much as being willing to die for one. This is part of the meaning of Jesus’ willingness to die on the cross to pay the price for our sins. Jesus saw my life as worthy of his death. Nothing affirms my value and worth as much as the voluntary death of Jesus on the cross for me. Jesus didn’t die for a worthless piece of junk.
TWO “SELFS”
What modern psychology forgets is that in believers, the intrinsic “self” has two parts. First, I was created in the image of God. That “self” is good. Second, my “self” has been contaminated and spoiled by the entrance of sin into the world. This “self” is distorted, devious and devoid of any love for God.
My fallen “self” is to be denied. I am not to love what has separated itself from God. I am not to affirm my sinful nature.
However, after encountering Christ and experiencing his regeneration, I am a new creation; I have a new “self.” This “self” deserves affirmation. I value the new “self” he has created in me.
THE CHALLENGE
The old “self,” which has been marred and distorted by the entrance of sin into the world, does not need to be loved; it needs to be confronted. Jesus came to destroy my old sinful nature, not affirm it. My old “self” needs to be crucified, not loved.
I celebrate my new “self,” the “self” that is the new creation of Jesus. I love that new “self.” It is what Jesus has made me.
The trouble is that while I have a new “self,” my old “self” keeps reappearing.
Jesus did not teach self-love, but rather love for God and love for those around us. Jesus taught us to be self-giving and self-denying in our love, not self-absorbed and self-serving in our love.
Jesus calls us to a love relationship with himself and with those around us. Joy, fulfillment and satisfaction flow out of the love relationship with Jesus, not out of the process of loving ourselves. The focus of the Bible is for our loving to have an upward and outward orientation, not an inward orientation.
Every believer has a right to love his new, God-created self. What Jesus has done for me is the basis of my self-worth, self-esteem and self-image. As I reflect on the miracle Jesus has performed inside me, my self-image is bolstered. My self-esteem swells.
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