Should I Love Myself?

[00:00:20] To this episode of Become A Competent Biblical Counselor, I'm Dr. Dave Jones and today's episode is entitled, Should I Love Myself?

[00:00:30] Probably about as often an excuse as we hear frequently in counseling people when we're telling them that God requires us to love our neighbor and to love God,

[00:00:39] and that he requires us to learn how to love, and that he requires us to love whether we feel like it or not.

[00:00:46] Is this very modern and very new excuse valid?

[00:00:51] But you can't expect me to love God, and you can't expect me to love my neighbor unless I first learn how to get it, you know, to love myself.

[00:01:00] Now, there seems to have some plausibility to it upon first blush, and people even appeal to the scriptures when saying such things.

[00:01:09] Let's turn to the passage that is most frequently used to try to substantiate this excuse.

[00:01:16] This excuse for not loving God or not loving one's neighbor.

[00:01:21] In Matthew 22, verse 34, we read these words.

[00:01:26] When the Pharisees heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they gathered themselves together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him.

[00:01:38] Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?

[00:01:40] And he said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

[00:01:50] This is the great and foremost commandment, and a second is like it.

[00:01:55] You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

[00:01:58] On these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets.

[00:02:03] Now, when Jesus says, you shall love your neighbor as yourself time and again, people take that to mean that I cannot learn how to love my neighbor until first I have learned how to love myself.

[00:02:21] Or I cannot love my neighbor until I have first begun actually to love myself.

[00:02:27] And there seems to be some plausibility to that idea.

[00:02:31] But actually, as we examine the passage, we see that this is merely a psychologizing of the scriptures.

[00:02:39] People who have the doctrine of self-love, which is certainly not a biblical doctrine at all, we are never anywhere commanded to our love ourselves.

[00:02:49] Indeed, when Paul in Ephesians 5 says that no man ever hated his own body, he makes it clear that we don't have the problem of loving ourselves.

[00:03:00] All through the scriptures, we are told that we have to learn how to put ourselves in second place and put God's kingdom and his righteousness in first place.

[00:03:11] All through the scriptures, we are told that we have to deny ourselves and that we have to say yes to Jesus Christ and follow him no matter what ourselves might say.

[00:03:22] So immediately, not only do we not find any doctrine, any teaching, any verse, any passage that tells us or commands us to love ourselves,

[00:03:34] but we find many passages that are totally inconsistent with that concept.

[00:03:39] That is the modern psychological error to teach that someone must learn to love himself.

[00:03:46] The person who seeks his own life is the one who loses it according to the scriptures.

[00:03:52] And the one who loses his life for the sake of Jesus Christ and the gospel is the one who finds it.

[00:03:58] Just the opposite is taught in the word of God.

[00:04:01] Well, then if there's no command to love oneself, and if the scriptures teach the opposite,

[00:04:08] what does this passage mean when it says you shall love your neighbor as yourself?

[00:04:15] Well, notice Jesus says that there are two commandments here, not three.

[00:04:20] He speaks of the great and foremost commandment and the second that is like it.

[00:04:26] And then he sums up in verse 40 of Matthew 22 saying,

[00:04:30] On these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets.

[00:04:34] How terrible it is when Jesus says that there are two commandments that sum up everything in law and the prophets,

[00:04:41] and that the whole law and prophets rest upon them.

[00:04:44] How terrible it is to add a third, indeed a third, which is even more basic than at least one of the other two.

[00:04:51] To say that the second commandment cannot be performed properly by a Christian until first,

[00:04:57] he learns how to obey the third commandment to love himself.

[00:05:01] But notice there is no third commandment.

[00:05:05] On these two commandments, a second is like it.

[00:05:09] If Jesus had left it vague and said on these commandments,

[00:05:14] it might possibly have been reasoned that there was a third here,

[00:05:18] even though there is no third commandment mentioned at all.

[00:05:22] It's all by implication, false implication on the part of those who read into this passage.

[00:05:29] But notice on these two commandments, he specifically says two,

[00:05:34] and two are all that it takes for the whole law and all of the law and the prophets to depend upon.

[00:05:41] Only two, not three, not four, but two.

[00:05:45] It is extremely dangerous to change Christ's word about two to three,

[00:05:49] and especially about such a critical matter as that upon which the whole law and prophets depend or hang.

[00:05:57] Well, then what did Jesus mean when he said,

[00:06:00] you shall love your neighbor as yourself?

[00:06:03] He did not mean that you were to love your neighbor by doing the same things that you do for yourself.

[00:06:09] That's exactly what the passage does not mean.

[00:06:12] The content of love is not given.

[00:06:15] Love toward a neighbor is not given in what we do toward ourselves.

[00:06:20] Certainly, God does not want us to do for our neighbors what we do for ourselves.

[00:06:25] So often we do things that we think are for our own good,

[00:06:29] but which really harm ourselves, harm our bodies, harm our lives, harm our lives, and so on.

[00:06:36] The content of how we should love our neighbor is given in the whole of the law of God,

[00:06:41] which these two commandments sum up.

[00:06:44] The content of how we love our neighbor is given in those ten commandments that say we should not lie,

[00:06:52] bear false witness against him,

[00:06:54] that we shouldn't covet the things he has,

[00:06:56] that we shouldn't steal from him, and so on.

[00:06:59] And all of the positive aspects of those commandments,

[00:07:03] which are also involved in those as well.

[00:07:06] Well, then what does it mean when he says,

[00:07:12] Well, notice that the second commandment is like the first.

[00:07:19] Let's go back and look at the first and see then what this means.

[00:07:24] The first commandment is you should love the Lord your God.

[00:07:28] How?

[00:07:29] With all your heart,

[00:07:30] with all your soul,

[00:07:32] with all your mind.

[00:07:33] Now, he's not chopping us up into three hunks there.

[00:07:37] He's simply saying,

[00:07:39] With all that you've got,

[00:07:41] love God with the complete ardor and intensity.

[00:07:45] Give the love that you have toward God everything that you can give to it.

[00:07:50] Love God with everything you are and everything that you've got.

[00:07:55] Now, when it comes along and says,

[00:07:58] The second is like the first.

[00:08:00] It's like it in the respect as well as the respect that the one you should love.

[00:08:04] But notice how it is like it.

[00:08:08] Love your neighbor as yourself.

[00:08:11] That's how we are to love our neighbor with the same intensity,

[00:08:15] with the same fervor,

[00:08:16] with the same all-encompassing desires that we have for ourselves.

[00:08:23] How often we let ourselves off the hook,

[00:08:25] so easily without calling ourselves to task for the wrongs that we do.

[00:08:29] How often we make excuses for ourselves.

[00:08:32] How often we do things in order to make it easier for ourselves.

[00:08:37] How often we care.

[00:08:39] We love ourselves.

[00:08:40] With that same frequency,

[00:08:42] with that same intensity,

[00:08:44] with that same all-consuming desire to do the best things for us.

[00:08:50] That's the kind of love that we need to have for our neighbor,

[00:08:54] is what Jesus is saying.

[00:08:57] Love your neighbor with the same intensity that you love yourself.

[00:09:01] Not that the things that we do for ourselves are to condition what we are to do for our neighbor.

[00:09:07] So let's get rid of this excuse when the Word of God tells us to love our neighbor

[00:09:11] in saying that we can't love him until we first love ourselves.

[00:09:16] You don't have to love yourself.

[00:09:17] You love yourself passionately.

[00:09:20] And that's exactly what Jesus says you must do toward your neighbor.

[00:09:26] Lord, help us to love our neighbor,

[00:09:29] not just in some impassionate, simple, easy way,

[00:09:32] but with the same fervor and passion with which we love ourselves.

[00:09:37] For we pray in Jesus' name.

[00:09:39] Amen.

[00:09:41] I hope that helps.

[00:09:42] I hope you've gotten a blessing out of that.

[00:09:44] And if so, pass it on.

[00:09:47] Love your neighbor.

[00:09:47] Bye-bye.