Love Thyself And You WILL Love Thy Neighbor!

Mike Hosey, an Elder

One of the consequences of sin in the world is that truth gets lost in a twisted jungle of briars, thorny vines, and weeds.  In the midst of all of those briars and thorns and weeds, Satan likes to plant fakes and decoys to keep us from seeing the real truth. Take love of self for instance.  Satan, through the wisdom of the world, has taught so many of us to place self-love into one of two extremes.  We are taught either that love of self is completely wrong, selfish, and unpleasing to God, or as is more often the case, that it is higher than any other kind of love, and that it is best manifested by experiencing those things that please us. Neither of these extremes even approach the truth. Jesus tells us that the second great commandment after loving God with everything, is to love our neighbors as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:39). Think about that.  How can we love our neighbors as we love ourselves, unless we first love ourselves?

Realizing that we are all sinners, some of you religious folks at this point might cry heresy.  But there’s nothing heretical about it.  We’ve already learned in recent weeks that we should look to love in all the wrong places.  What’s a more wrong place than one’s own sinful heart.  And besides, Jesus plainly said to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.  But His teaching relies on a proper understanding of love.  If love is being committed to the well being of another person, than loving oneself means being committed to the well being of oneself.  And that means knowing what is best for oneself.  This, of course, means knowing what one’s worth is, and what one’s purpose is, and what one’s true needs are.

So what is our worth? Romans 5:8 tells us that God showed his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. If that’s true, then we must be worth something very great.  The Bible teaches us that we are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).  Again, we must be worth something very great.

If all these things are true, then being committed to our own well being means serving and reconciling ourselves to the one who made us, suffered and died for us, and keeps us alive each day. If we recognize these things, we will love God and shun sin. And when we do that, we won't be able to keep ourselves from being committed to our neighbors.