Recently in our morning service we read a confession of sin that included these words: “I have not loved my neighbor as you have commanded, nor have I rightly loved myself.” Afterwards a young man very respectfully asked me if it was proper to love ourselves. “All of my life I have battled self-loathing . . . I thought the Bible contained a lot of warnings about loving self?” His eyes contained a longing that could have asked the question this way, “Is the gospel really good news for someone who hates himself? Does the gospel really hold out hope that I could love myself in a liberating way that brings glory to God?” I saw myself, and a lot of people I have ministered to over the years, in the eyes of that friend. Since we confessed in that worship service the sin of not loving ourselves, does that imply that the Bible actually commands us to love ourselves in some way?
No one has helped more in understanding the Bible’s “order of love” than David Jones, Emeritus Professor of Systematic Theology, at Covenant Seminary. The following is a summary of his work on this topic in Biblical Christian Ethics (Baker, 1994). Through the centuries, theologians have explained that self-love is either sinful, natural or moral. Those respective opinions can be illustrated by amplifying Jesus’ command, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Those who say self-love is sinful would read that command this way, “Love your neighbor as you sinfully love yourself.” Those who say self-love is natural would read it this way, “Love your neighbor as you naturally love yourself.” However, those who believe self-love is a positive moral command would read the commandment this way, “Love your neighbor as you rightly love yourself.” Putting the question that way makes it rather simple to conclude that the only way to love a neighbor properly is to love him on the paradigm of a healthy love for self. How could self-indulgent love provide the proper pattern for blessing our neighbor? And how could positive moral action toward our neighbor be guided by natural self-love when we are naturally dead in trespasses and sins? Having said that much we are now driven to the end of ourselves to realize that it is impossible to love our neighbors rightly, because it is impossible naturally to love ourselves rightly. And being driven to the end of ourselves drives us to the cross to find ability to love at all.
It was Augustine who articulated best the gospel’s good news for love of self. He explained that only reconciliation to the Father who loves us through Christ can enable proper self-love out of which will follow healthy brotherly and sisterly love:
It is impossible that one should love God and not love himself. In fact, he alone has a proper love of himself who loves God. Since a man can be said to have sufficient love for himself if he seeks earnestly to attain the supreme and perfect good, and this is nothing other than God, as what we have been saying shows, who can doubt that he who loves God loves himself?
Basically Augustine is saying that the secret to proper self-love is obedience to the first commandment, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.” That is, when the gospel enables us to love God as our Father, then we are empowered to love ourselves made in his image, which then compels us to love others made in the same likeness. Other theologians delineating this same order of love included Thomas Aquinas (1227-1274), William Ames (1576-1633) and Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758).
Read in this light, the Bible becomes replete with promises of personal blessing as one lives in the love of God. Life will “go well” with the one who loves God’s commands (Dt. 4:40; cf. Dt. 10:13; Mt. 6:33; 1 Pt. 3:10-12). To attain to God’s wisdom will mean that one “loves his own soul” (Pr. 19:8). Our relationships, especially marriage will be blessed as a result of God-centered self-love (Ep. 5:23, 28-30). And even those passages which command us to “die” to self or “take up the cross” in this light can now be seen as that positive re-direction that only comes when one is being liberated from selfishness to love God and self the way God originally intended (Mt. 16:24; Mk. 8:34; Lk. 9:23). In fact, there is reciprocation to the one who surrenders his life first to the Lord of love—“those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Mt. 10:39; 16:25; Mk. 8:35; Lk. 9:24).
Richard Mouw, President of Fuller Theological Seminary, summarizes the Bible’s teaching and provides another helpful prayer for the believer striving to love everyone well, including himself or herself: “The Christian must be willing to say to God, ‘Make me into the kind of self that you want me to be. Transform, if it pleases you, my understanding of what it is that will bring me happiness.”
