In the culture of this age, the meaning of love itself is turned upside down and loving oneself is taken as doing what pleases you, without caring for anything else. Should a believer love himself and will it be correct as per Scripture? But if we do not love ourselves, the only one being really one with us, can we really love someone else? Then, how will we react to the suffering and pain of others around us, in love? In that state we shall not be able to really love our Creator, our Savior also.
The correctness of loving oneself – The Shema prayer that a Jew recites from childhood all through his life, two times a day, is about the oneness of God and about love for Him (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). One is to ‘love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength’. This makes loving God the centre-point of life for a person, dominating his desires, deep longings within and controlling all possessions, material and spiritual. Lord Jesus added, ‘with all your mind’, also to the other three, thus implying that love for God must dominate our thoughts also, above everything else.
Apostle John experienced the love of Lord Jesus very closely to call himself, ‘the disciple Jesus loved’. He could teach about love in almost the last years of his life, ‘love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love’ (1 John 4:7-8). Knowing God is to be filled with love for He is love. ‘God created man in His own image; in the image of God, He created Him’ (Genesis 1:27). Mankind is created in God’s image and likeness and must have a major element of his being as love.
The Risen Saviour met the disciples at the sea-shore of Galilee and invited them over, ‘come and eat breakfast’, for they had been out fishing the whole night (John 21:12; 15-17). After looking after their physical needs, the Lord turned to their spiritual aspect by asking Apostle Peter, calling him by his real name, ‘Simon, son of Jonah’. Each time the question asked was ‘do you love Me?’ The first two times the word used by the Lord was ‘agape’ for He expects the same love from His followers. ‘Agape’ is love that God shows us and that He expects us to show to others. It is unconditional, selfless and sacrificial love and is about faithfulness, commitment and a wilful act. Lord Jesus commanded all believers, ‘you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another’ (John 13:34). This can only happen if we are filled with this love from above by the Holy Spirit. Apostle Peter responded with ‘phileo’, a type of love of affection, friendship and fondness of feelings and emotions. Agape is deliberate commitment of the whole being, while phileo is of feelings or from the heart and is for mutual respect. Finally, the third time, Lord Jesus asked him to commit to phileo love only, the one we are capable of.
Created in God’s image, why can we not love in ‘agape’ measure? God is perfect and so content in Himself that He needs nothing to be added to Him. Being love, He loves Himself, and this love overflows in abundance to others. In the Garden of Eden, the serpent offered Eve to ‘be like God’, trying to bring up and create an image of a non-existent lack. On the other hand, his efforts during the temptation of Lord Jesus in the wilderness failed, for the Son of God was sure of His relationship with the Father and also with Himself. Self-love in God is not about exalting Himself, for that would cause insecurity. We can only have sufficiency in God, for we do not have any inherent glory of our own and reflect God’s glory, breathed into us.
The Second Great Commandment from the Lord is, ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself’ (Mark 12:31). The command from Him is to love as you love yourself, the way you care for your own family and things. If you do not love yourself then you are unable to fulfil this command. As per normal human nature, you can share only that, what you have more than your need. Through the parable of the Good Samaritan, our Lord explained the need of sacrificial love (Luke 10:30-35). Despite the risk to his own life, the Samaritan cared for the one, who hated him. He even went beyond the normal care to cover the expenses of continued care till the man would be well.
Agape love as revealed by the Saviour Lord, is not about feelings but determined action of the will. It is joyfully seeking the good of others, even those who revile and hurt, their welfare over our own. This love could only come from the One who is love, who ‘made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bond-servant, and coming in the likeness of men’ (Philippians 2:7). King David could boldly declare his love for himself, while praising God. ‘I will praise You (God), for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvellous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well’ (Psalm 139:14). We look at ourselves every morning and like David, must be filled with joy and praise for our Maker. We love ourselves to love God and the others whom He has created.
Relationship between loving self and others – This is proved beyond doubt that any of our actions performed with joy bring better results. The food cooked by a mother leaves a permanent taste in her children and is remembered throughout life. It is not the taste of the food but the love that is poured out into preparing that, which keeps on coming up all the life. Love is, therefore, a deliberate decision, a commitment that gets demonstrated in the overall behaviour. The parents are grieved when they have to discipline their child to lead him the right way. God’s overflowing love is also evident in our lives, ‘for whom the LORD loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives’ (Hebrews 12:6-10). We are further told about our earthly fathers, ‘who corrected us, and we paid them respect’. Anyone who loves himself will accept such pain with joy for ‘if we ensure chastening, God deals with us as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten?’
Even accepting the pain of correction with humble submission becomes an act of love, of loving oneself. Who would want to be an illegitimate child of God or even of the earthly father? The action of accepting the love of God, including His chastening, must be accepted as a just reward, for He will then lift us up to an unimaginable level.
We are taught by the wise king, Solomon, ‘He who gets wisdom loves his own soul; he who keeps understanding will find good’ (Proverbs 19:8). One cannot love himself without wisdom which also is a gift from God. To love oneself, we have to learn to love God, the overflowing fountain of love and be filled with wisdom. Solomon became king and was visited by God in a dream with the command, ‘Ask! What shall I give you?’ (1 Kings 3:5-11). Solomon invoked the blessings given to his father David by God and then made his plea, ‘give Your servant an understanding heart to judge Your people, that I may discern between good and evil. For who is able to judge this great people of Yours?’ He sought an ‘understanding heart’, for human wisdom alone is never sufficient and Divine guidance is needed for those in higher authority. He humbly expressed his desire to live in a God honouring way and serve the people. It applies to all in authority over others to discern right from wrong and thus serve others. Solomon had learnt to love God from his father David, who was known as ‘a man of God’s heart’. David loved God and loved himself to serve his people in the same love.
Everyone is equally valuable to God and our self-worth evolves from our relationship with God. God provided for every need of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, yet they fell to the temptation. The serpent succeeded in creating a doubt in Eve’s mind about the love and provisions of God and she fell to the lure of ‘becoming like God’. God sacrificed His Beloved Son, making Him suffer the most torturous death imaginable, to free us from sin and turn us back to Him. To ensure proper guidance for us, He filled every believer with the indwelling Holy Spirit. He ‘teaches us all things and reminds us of the words of the Lord’ (John 14:26). Loving yourself is to see ourselves as He sees us, for otherwise, we will feel unworthy of His love and will not benefit from the unique talents and spiritual gifts given to each one of us. God has a plan for everyone (Jeremiah 28:11) and that can never work till we recognise our worth and learn to love what He has created.
Moses was commanded by God to, ‘speak to the children of Israel, and day to them, ‘When any one of you brings an offering to the LORD, you shall bring your offering of the livestock – of the herd and of the flock’ (Leviticus 1:2). As per Jewish saints, the reading is supposed to be, ‘when one offers a sacrifice of you’. The essence of the command is to offer ourselves to God, our faculties, our energies, our thoughts and all of ourselves to God. The physical form of the animal offered was an external image of our inner being. We have an earthly part and a heavenly part in us. We know that ‘what happens to the sons of men also happens to animals; one thing befalls them; as one dies, so does the other, Surely, they all have one breath’ (Ecclesiastes 3:19). The difference is that we can think and communicate and reach out to the heavenly and the earthly.
The three categories of sacrifices reveal what we are supposed to offer. The first are the domestic animals who struggle to survive and are tame. We look beyond mere survival by searching for a meaning, purpose and a goal for life. The second is the cattle that breakthrough barriers and must be bound by restrictive fences. We submit to accept and follow boundaries set up by God in His Word. But we are also supposed to overcome the self-imposed or devil-imposed barriers to hinder our closeness to God. Finally, the flock represents the herd instinct, to walk in a way, for everybody is doing that and we try to confirm that. We are to move as per the Word of God and not follow blindly. We are to love the Lord with all our mind, with full understanding that God does not require blind followers. We are to make disciples, the ones who learn, understand and follow the Word (Matthew 28:19).
The most essential requirement of the offering was that, ‘it must be perfect to be acceptable; there shall be no defect in it’ (Leviticus 22:21). No one is perfect and only the shed blood of the Saviour makes us acceptable to God the Father. Those who love themselves turn to the Saviour Lord to be made acceptable to God and be blessed.
Qualities of those who love themselves – Apostle John defined the criteria for the blessed, ‘this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent’ (John 17:3). Only the absolutely spiritually blind person would decline to go to heaven and be in the presence of God and such people neither love themselves, nor God nor anyone else, for they are completely self-focused. Apostle Paul clearly identified the two categories. He has taught, ‘the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh’ (Galatians 5:17-23). Those who accept Lord Jesus as their Saviour are blessed with the Holy Spirit and continually try to control and overcome their evil sinful desires.
All those who follow their sinful desires like, ‘adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries and the like’, hate themselves and all else. People who follow all these waste their physical, financial, social and spiritual resources to do evil and eventually suffer disease, weakness, early death and their final destination is eternal damnation in hell.
All those who brought a sacrificial offering to the Altar in the Temple brought it close to God. The aim was to have the animal element in us, that led to all these evil deeds, close to God. Then, the Divine fire of the Altar or the fire of the Holy Spirit in a believer would transform the one who made the offering. This fire acts in a believer through his prayers and supplications daily. Filled with self-love we reach out to love the Lord and also others. Then we do unto others, what we want them to do to us and the instinct of the Good Samaritan becomes fully active in us (Matthew 7:12). The offering of our self, our whole being becomes acceptable to God for He looks at us through His Beloved Son. Then His love overflows and the fullness of the Holy Spirit helps us bear fruit, transforming us. We get filled with ‘joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control’ (Galatians 5:22-23). By bringing our animal self before God, we show our love for ourselves and God to be filled with self-control and power from above to love Him, ourselves and His creation!
The love of one for himself is clearly visible in the body of the individual. One who does not care for the well being of his body acts contrary to his self-interest to be healthy. Such a person neither knows love, nor loves anyone. Loving others is an act of overflowing love from within and it becomes easier for such people to forgive others and forget the past. In the true sense, only such people can claim to be the true followers and in-turn be joint heirs with Lord Jesus!
