…‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’…
(Mark 12:31, NKJV)
The reference of the words ‘self’ and ‘love’ together is not common within some communities and societies. We hear more of loving others especially as a way of showing our faith in God, but there is little mention of loving oneself. I confess that from a church perspective, I have grown up hearing that the love of God is to be shown to others. Any mention of loving myself, sounded selfish, valuing myself at the expense of loving other people and this would not be what a follower of Jesus is expected to do. We now hear of self-love more frequently and on checking the meaning, I learn it is about being kind and compassionate to oneself, less of self-criticism. It is about acceptance of my strengths and areas of less strength, accepting that I am complete as I am by the grace of God. The issue of kindness to one self draws me in, the environment makes us our very worst critiques so that we are always looking at what we have failed in and less of what we are doing well. This to me is an area of growth, getting to acknowledge that there are some good things about my life and there are also areas for development.
Beloved, I do not know about you, but I realize that there is need for me to love myself as the Lord loves me, with my flaws and all. Our reference verse are words spoken by our Lord Jesus as one of the two great commandments, the first being loving God and the second loving our neighbour. We have rightly focused on loving others as commanded by our Lord Jesus, and yes, He also told us that it is by our love for each other that the world will know we are His followers (John 13:34-35)’ Loving others is central to our walk of faith and it must also be unconditional. A small word remains “as” - we love others as we have loved ourselves and this is where the question of loving self comes in. We cannot fail to love the person we are and expect to love others, we learn to love others as Jesus loves us and as we get to love ourselves. We are living in a world where many are self-loathing, there is body shaming and hate in our environment and some of us are likely to fall for this. When we fail to accept ourselves, we are rejecting the person that God created us to be, the person that His word refers to as fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14). Loving ourselves is loving what God has called good, it is acknowledging the wonder of His creation manifested in our bodies and souls. Beloved, you and I are God’s master pieces. Our self-acceptance, starts with our identity in God, our embracing who God has called us. He created us in His own image, no matter how we feel or think about ourselves, let us appreciate that we are great for we are the image of the almighty God, the great I am (Genesis 1:27). If for no other reason, being the likeness of God is enough to make us love ourselves. There could be areas we think are not good, but to God, we are His perfect creation. He is so caring about us that He even knows the hairs on our heads, counting even those that fall down and then He tells us that we are of great value in His eyes (Luke 12:7).
Beloved, our ability to give love to others is all based on God’s love for us. He has loved us first, we can then love ourselves and love others too. We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:9). We cannot give what we do not have, loving who God made us to be gives us a realistic premise for our love for others. When we love ourselves as God loves us, we shall take care of our bodies so that we can serve the Lord in better health. After all, we are the temple of the Holy Spirit and have been bought with a prize, the blood of Jesus (1 Corinthians 6:19-20; 1 Corinthians 3:16; 2 Corinthians 6:16). The emphasis of our bodies as God’s temple as given in these verses cannot be overstated, we cannot fail to love ourselves when God has loved us so much that He has chosen to live in us. We love all what God has chosen to love, ourselves included.
Thoughts:
What is your reflection of this blog?
How have you loved the temple of God that you are?
When have you failed to honour God with the person you are?