Love your neighbor as yourself.
From the beginning of time there has been a deficit of love
in our world. There has been a deficit
of how man loves his God. There has been
a deficit of how man loves one another.
And there has also been a deficit of how man loves himself.
For this reason, these five words hold such powerful insight
into the human psyche. The more I learn
about the discipline of psychology, the more I am amazed with how well God
knows His people. There is proof of that
knowledge within these words.
The beauty of this verse is that with two words God is
relaying a foundational truth that many times goes ignored: “As Yourself”. You cannot love others, until you have
learned to love yourself. I meet so many
Christians who struggle continually with this concept. I meet Christians who have wrestled with the
concept of loving themselves because their lives have been filled with
self-denial, self-hatred and self-loathing.
Christians who have never been taught to love themselves. Christians who mistakenly thought they had
found some solace in the words of the Bible that taught them to deny their
self, to put others before them, and to consider their selves as nothing. There is tragedy in this type of degradation.
This type of “denial” is a dangerous misconception. Masking self-loathing with self-denial is a
dangerous road. Confusing humility with
a lack of self worth causes more harm than good. We are called to love ourselves, to enjoy how
God has made us, to delight in our uniqueness, our value, and our worth. God delights in us, and we also are to
delight in who He has created us to be.
We are to love ourselves.
You see, God is not calling us to deny who he has made us to
be, but rather, who He has not made
us to be. To deny our sinful nature with
its temptations and its downfalls. To
deny our selfishness and our stubbornness.
To deny our lust, our pride, our idolatry. To deny the things that separate us from
God. And only those things.
Christians, we are called to love ourselves- just as God
loves us. We are called to delight in
ourselves as He delights in us. And when
we do, we will find that gates to loving others have never been so easy to walk
through. We will find that loving others
becomes so real, so genuine, and so complete.
We will find that in that beautiful exchange of love between our self
and our God, we find the strength and motivation to exchange that same love
with our neighbors.
Lord, give us the ability to love ourselves as you love us-
in order that we may then learn how to truly love others.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Love to hear your thoughts...