2nd February, 2008

NILS VON KALM

When talking about proper love of self and how God loves all of us, many Christians strongly hold the view that you cannot love others until you love yourself. In my view, this is not Biblical and therefore a heresy. I would challenge anyone to find a verse or passage in the Bible that says that you cannot love others until you love yourself.

To respond to this, most Christians who hold to this popular view quote Jesus' saying in Mark 12:28-31 that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself. So, clearly we have to love ourselves so that we can love others. After all, you cannot give something that you haven't got.

The problem with this view is that Jesus still says that we are to love God and love our neighbour. It is about giving. The focus is on others and not on us. This is linked to what is classically called the 'golden rule' - "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". In a particular situation, think about what you would most want that person to do for you if you were in their position, and do it for them.

Jesus' point was that we are to think of others before ourselves. Some people would argue that if you don't love yourself, then you would not want people to love you. If you hate yourself, then you could have such a low view of yourself that you want people to harm you. While this is tragically true for many people, all of us still ultimately want the best for ourselves. People who hate themselves can still feel a warped sense of pleasure from receiving pain. Randy Alcorn, an American evangelical, has made the excellent point that even a suicidal person, in their own thinking, has their best interests at heart - "I'd be better off dead". None of us wants to feel pain. Even the suicidal person wants to take their own life to end deep pain in their life. Randy has written a great piece on how Christians are preaching this self-esteem heresy.

Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love God and love your neighbour. The emphasis is on others. He did not tell us to go and do a self-help course or take up some hobby or do something else to improve our self-image. It's not about making sure we feel good enough about ourselves and then, and only then, being able to love others. Not that having a hobby is a bad thing. Having a hobby is very healthy, but if it or anything else that is designed purely to improve our self-image detracts from our following Jesus, then it is detrimental, both to ourselves and to others. How often have we neglected other people's needs in the process of trying to improve our self-image?

It is only when we ask the Holy Spirit to help us be more Christ-like; when we ask Him to help us to be Jesus to others in our daily lives, and we live this out, that we become closer to God. And it is through this that we slowly find ourselves developing a healthy sense of self-worth. Jesus said, in Mark 8: 34-35, "if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me". It is then that we develop a healthy self-love, a healthy self-esteem, a healthy sense of self-worth. It is in doing what is right that we come to love ourselves in the way that Jesus properly wants us to because it is then, as we seek to follow Him, that we become truly close to God.

The fact is that, in the presence of God, we are shown for what we really are - unworthy sinners in need of salvation. This seems to be the pattern throughout the Bible. Isaiah 6:1-7 has that great prophet declaring, after he has seen God, “I am a man of unclean lips”. In Luke 3:15-16, when John the Baptist came to prepare the way of the Lord, he made it clear to the people that he was not the Messiah and added that “I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals”, referring of course to Jesus. The great apostle Peter, in Luke 5:1-10, was so overcome with the mercy and grace of God in Jesus that, after Jesus had just helped Peter and his friends catch an overwhelming amount of fish, “he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, 'Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!'". Peter saw how unworthy he was to be a recipient of God’s outrageous generosity and struggled to come to grips with a God who lavishes gifts on unworthy people like him. And then we have the greatest apostle of all, Paul, refer to himself as ‘chief of sinners’ in 1 Timothy 1:15. Here are three of the most significant people in the New Testament all saying they are unworthy in the presence of Jesus. If they said that publicly in many of today’s churches, they would be strongly encouraged to seek counseling to deal with their low self-esteem.

However all of these great Biblical people, from Isaiah to Paul, recognised that it is God’s grace and God’s grace alone that makes us worthy. One of the most common verses I heard when I first became a Christian was that great quote of Paul’s from Ephesians 2:8-9 which talks about the fact that it is by grace we have been saved through faith, and not of works. What we often did not hear, though, was the next verse which says that we are created for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. It is when we do these good works out of our relationship with God that we develop a healthy self-love.

As I have researched for this article, I am well aware that there are many Christians who believe that self-love or self-esteem of any kind is dangerous and unBiblical and just the stuff of secular psychology. I am not in this camp. I strongly believe that the Bible teaches, or at least implies, a healthy self-love. After all, God so loved us that He sent his Son to die for us. The people who would tell us that any type of self-esteem is unBiblical would say that self-condemnation is the Biblical attitude to have. After all, we are unworthy sinners. This position is also unBiblical. Romans 8:1 clearly states that there is no condemnation now for those who are in Christ Jesus. If you struggle with how you are viewed by God, repeat that to yourself - there is no condemnation. This verse hit me full in the face when I was 16 and just starting to learn about my new relationship with God. It was one of those ‘wow’ moments for me when I realised that I didn’t have to try to look cool on the outside when in fact I was dead scared on the inside. The kind of self-loathing that some people preach is just as unBiblical as the message that you cannot love others until you love yourself.

Perhaps the best description of the Biblical view of a proper self-love is expressed by Gary Collins in his book Christian Counselling. In it he says the following:

"(S)elf-worth must not be considered the same as self-worship, self-love is not the same as selfishness, self-affirmation is different from self-conceit, we can be aware of ourselves without being absorbed in ourselves, self-denial is not the same as self-denigration, putting off the sinful nature is not the same as putting yourself down, humility is not the same as humiliation, and being unworthy is not the same as being worthless. The Christian can have positive self-esteem, not because of human works and human nature but because of God’s grace."

Our self-worth comes from the unconditional love of God, who gave His only Son for us that we might live for Him by living for others. Any other view cheapens God’s grace. We don’t need to spend years trying to build our self-image to find ourselves. If we want to find our life we will lose it, but the one who loses their life for Jesus will save it. Living for Jesus is about giving, being imitators of Christ, the One who gave Himself for others and did not spend His time getting his self-image right first before He did so. It is by doing acts of love, looking out for others and doing what is right that we gain a Biblical view of self-love, the love that God wants us to have for ourselves.

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