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.”

While there are many themes and images in the movie that could be discussed from a biblical perspective, I want to highlight only one: guilt. The basic plot involves Dom Cobb’s (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) desire to get back to the U.S. and his children whom he had to be flee because he was accused of killing their mother. While he did not murder her, he felt responsible for her suicide because of an idea he planted in her mind which he thought we be for her good (I will leave the rest of that for you to discover if you have not yet seen the movie). Basically Cobb’s guilt controls him consciously and subconsciously. Since all human beings are imprinted with God’s law, every moviegoer will identify with Cobb at some level feeling a deep sense of regret or shame or guilt. Sadly, however, Inception offers no other solution to this guilt than one should not feel it.

Notre Dame Sociologist Christian Smith has recently published a study of those he calls “emerging adults” (ages 18-29) called Souls in Transition in which he notes this nebulous feeling of shame. He insists that there was a deep sense of shame among those he interviewed which belies their insistence that they have “no regrets.” The gospel provides the only good news there is for guilty souls, but one has to come clean about that guilt before he or she can taste the sweetness of the good news.

 PCA pastor Jim Tonkowich, now scholar at the Institute for Religion and Democracy, has this to say about the church’s role in reaching out with the gospel to those who have the inception of their guilt (a true idea implanted by God):

Ministry to emerging adults should create opportunities founded on strong, honest relationships to explore the truths that will not be ignored, truths that explain the guilt and shame that will not go away. Apologetics begins not with correction of bad thinking, but with listening and helping to dig up the uncomfortable facts of life that, by the grace of God, will not go away.[1]

If only someone could tell Dom Cobb that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all our sin, he could have discovered the relief that even an actual murderer like King David experienced—grace that blots out transgression and puts even the conscience to rest.

After numerous consultations with high level executives and much reading, Joe asked his sexton (a church custodian) to speak into his life.  The wise man volunteered that everyone should learn to ask himself four questions.  As a preface to those four questions, the sexton reminded Joe of the central lesson from the parable of the talents—return to the Master what you have received better than when you received it from him.

“So you need to learn to ask yourself about four gifts the Creator has given you, ‘Am I returning them to him better than I received them?’” Then the sexton asked Joe, “What is the first thing you have received?” 

Joe answered, “My ministry?” 

“No,” said the instructor, “Think about Adam’s first gift.” 

Joe got it, “Life.” 

“Right!” that is the first talent that you must return to the Master better than you received it, so take care of yourself,” said the sexton.  “So what was the second gift Adam received?” 

Now Joe was tracking with him so he answered, “My wife.” 

“Right.  So you need to return your wife to him better than you received her.” 

“And the third gift is my children, like Adam?” 

“Right,” answered the custodian.  “And,” he added, “it is when your children are adults that you need to ask them what you can do for them, because it is only as mature people that they know how to answer.” 

Finally, the instructed student said, “My ministry must be the fourth gift since the final thing God gave Adam was his work?” 

“Yes,” said the sexton.  “After you have figured out a plan for answering the first three questions, you can give attention to your work.” 

So there is that theme again that I noted yesterday:  you cannot be of long term and healthy service to your wife, your children, or your ministry if you are not first stewarding the gift of body-soul life that Christ gave you when he mediated the work of God’s creation.

Recently at General Assembly a good friend and more experienced pastor than I pulled me aside and said, “George, I am at a place emotionally where I have never been before, and I am scared to death.”  Though my conversations have mostly been with pastors, I suspect that this may be a common experience for many men and women.  So I wanted to broach the subject and pass along insights as I get them.  Today I will just share one aid I found yesterday as I was going back through John Newton’s letters to John Ryland, Jr.  By the way, I go back through books in order to record in my Bible new light they bring on certain Scriptures—a practice I would commend—but don’t leave such a Bible on top of your car (I’ll tell you that one later!).  Newton had this to say to Ryland early in his ministry:

I have occasionally heard sad tales of you that the loudness, length and frequency of your public discourses you are lighting your candle at both ends.  I cannot blame your zeal, you serve a good master, who is well worthy you should spend and be spent for his sake.  You have likewise a sense of the worth and danger of souls, and this makes you earnest and importunate.  Perhaps you think you are immortal till your work is done (which I shall not dispute) and therefore think it is less needful to be careful yourself.  However as the Lord usually works by means, if it is his pleasure to prolong your life for the good of many, he will perhaps dispose you to listen to a world of advice on this head. 

I should account him more generous than prudent, who to show his heartiness in entertaining his friends should in the course of one year, exhaust an estate which if properly managed might have supplied him and them for 40 years to come.  Your case is something similar.  You are young, hardly attained yet your constitutional strength, and perhaps if you over exert yourself at this period of life you never may.  I fear unless you can restrain yourself you are laying a foundation for an early old age, and distressing bodily complaints, and that for every sermon you preach or have preached before you are 21, especially if you speak loud and long, you will hinder yourself preaching ten hereafter.  I say your desire is good but you need a bridle, or you will soon unfit yourself for public usefulness.

 Stewarding your personal life well is ultimately a selfless act for Christ and the people he has given you to serve.

Though I intended my blog posting before GA for the First Pres family, it was picked up by several other blogs.  Several writers rightly criticized me for my comment that those who opposed the Strategic Plan are generally against everything new.  Though my primary interest was to communicate with you before leaving town and therefore before my first cup of coffee, I offer no excuse for such an uncharitable and broad-sweeping condemnation of anyone who would disagree with my opinion that the Plan is a good idea.  Primarily my conviction for speaking thusly (as well as for the cynical tone of some of my comments at GA) came from the humble and brotherly interactions among men like Harry Reeder, Bryan Chapell, Joseph Pipa, David Coffin, Tim Keller, Lig Duncan and Andy Webb.  Though they did not all agree and sometimes debated rigorously there was a consistent expression of personal respect and deep concern for the peace, purity and unity of the Church.  Thank you, men, for correcting my junior highishness by your example!

Our dear friend, Harry Reeder (an Augusta boy!), did a remarkable job as our moderator.  Eminently respected throughout the PCA, he displayed good humor, humility and a firm grasp of the proceedings in order to navigate us through what many predicted to be a catastrophic Assembly (some do so every year by the way).  My gratitude for the PCA and our GA was put in perspective recently by a PCUSA minister friend.  He asked how ours went and I offered the above perspective.  Then he asked if I enjoyed the experience and I said I did.  (Though I am exhausted I really do enjoy it.  When I am not on the floor of GA I am meeting non-stop with other pastors for encouragement and advice.  I love the fellowship and sharpening).  My friend’s response was, “How different from ours!  Nothing but crazy and embarrassing extremism comes of it and I dread it more each year.”  Praise the Lord, for an excitingly boring Assembly!