Do I Need to Love Myself More?

00:00:00.000 | Well, self-love is a loud mantra in our culture.

00:00:07.500 | It echoes in our advertising and it's on repeat in our social media feeds.

00:00:13.120 | Self-love is becoming inseparable from our cultural image in America.

00:00:17.760 | Self-love is what we do.

00:00:19.460 | So do we need to learn to love ourselves more?

00:00:21.800 | It's a question from a perceptive teen listener to the podcast.

00:00:25.360 | "Hi, Pastor John.

00:00:26.620 | My name is Danielle.

00:00:27.620 | I'm currently in high school and I've heard lots of variations on the 'love yourself'

00:00:32.400 | mantra, constantly spoken to young men and women like me.

00:00:36.240 | We're told to love our personalities, our own skin, our bodies, and our choices.

00:00:40.720 | This seems like an extremely secular worldview, yet the Bible says to love your neighbor as

00:00:45.880 | yourself.

00:00:46.880 | So here's my question for you.

00:00:48.960 | Should we love ourselves?

00:00:50.660 | Is this something we need to be mindful of or is it an assumed inborn inclination?"

00:00:55.940 | What does the Bible say, Pastor John, about self-love?

00:01:00.160 | So let's start by talking about the command, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself,"

00:01:07.200 | which Jesus said was the second greatest commandment after "Love God with all your heart, soul,

00:01:14.000 | mind, and strength," and which both Jesus and Paul said was the fulfilling of the whole

00:01:22.600 | law.

00:01:23.600 | That's Matthew 22, 40 and Romans 13, 8.

00:01:28.840 | Now first, notice it's not a command to love ourselves.

00:01:35.440 | It's not a command to love ourselves.

00:01:39.100 | It's a command to love others as we love ourselves.

00:01:42.840 | So the love of ourselves in that command is an assumption, not an imperative.

00:01:50.080 | Jesus assumes we all love ourselves, and on the basis of this assumption, he can make

00:01:59.880 | our inborn self-love the criterion, the measure of how we treat other people.

00:02:09.160 | So we should ask, "Well, in what sense do we all love ourselves?"

00:02:14.720 | And of course the answer is not, "We all feel good about ourselves."

00:02:19.200 | Nobody feels good about themselves all the time.

00:02:22.040 | Lots of people dislike their bodies, their hair, their limited intelligence, their limited

00:02:29.040 | athletic ability, me, how slow I read, limited speaking ability, hot temper, moodiness, on

00:02:37.120 | and on and on.

00:02:38.120 | Goodness gracious, there are a lot of good reasons not to like yourself.

00:02:42.160 | There are just many things in this world that Jesus is not referring to.

00:02:48.000 | He's referring to the fact that all of us have an inborn instinct or reflex to seek

00:02:57.440 | our own happiness and to avoid harm.

00:03:02.160 | In other words, self-love, our self-love that Jesus assumes in this commandment is our desire

00:03:10.120 | for happiness or our desire to minimize our unhappiness.

00:03:15.480 | So even people who commit suicide are not a contradiction to this assumption that Jesus

00:03:22.520 | has because suicide is motivated by a desire to be done with misery.

00:03:30.280 | That's why people kill themselves.

00:03:32.220 | They may not have any idea what's coming on the other side.

00:03:35.720 | All they can right now is feel like, "It just can't get any worse, and so I want to minimize

00:03:40.320 | the mess and horror of my life."

00:03:44.760 | So when Jesus commands us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, he's not at all saying

00:03:53.720 | that we should work up some kind of approval of our hair or our complexion or our abilities

00:04:02.800 | or our goodness.

00:04:04.600 | He's saying that we should make the measure of our own desire for happiness or our own

00:04:12.000 | desire to minimize our misery, make that the measure of our desire for other people's happiness.

00:04:21.120 | We should want their happiness the way we want our happiness.

00:04:26.160 | We should want their good and their success the way we want our good and our success.

00:04:33.280 | We should want them to avoid harm and suffering the way we would like to avoid harm and suffering.

00:04:42.760 | And this is, as you can feel, extremely radical.

00:04:48.760 | I mean, devastatingly radical.

00:04:52.340 | It severs the root of all selfishness deeply, profoundly.

00:04:58.320 | You can't be self-exalting while seeking another person's happiness as much as your own.

00:05:06.580 | You can't.

00:05:07.580 | Now, there are two other confirmations of this understanding of Jesus' command.

00:05:14.520 | In Matthew 22, 40, Jesus says that all the law and the prophets depend on this commandment,

00:05:23.600 | and he says the very same thing about the golden rule.

00:05:27.800 | In Matthew 7, 12.

00:05:29.880 | Remember the golden rule?

00:05:30.880 | It goes like this.

00:05:31.880 | "Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law

00:05:39.520 | and the prophets," which probably means that the golden rule is the same as the command

00:05:48.320 | to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

00:05:50.880 | Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is virtually the same as love your neighbor

00:05:57.620 | as you love yourself, if you interpret self-love as your desire for happiness and your avoidance

00:06:04.760 | of harm.

00:06:05.760 | So that's the first confirmation that we're on the right track when we interpret "as

00:06:12.600 | yourself," love your neighbor as yourself that way, because it's parallel to the golden

00:06:18.200 | rule.

00:06:19.200 | Here's the second confirmation that we're on the right track, namely in Luke 10, when

00:06:25.040 | the lawyer asks Jesus, "Well, who is my neighbor?"

00:06:29.720 | Seeking to justify himself after Jesus says, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself."

00:06:34.080 | Who is my neighbor?

00:06:35.720 | Well, Jesus tells him in answer to that question a parable, namely the parable of the Good

00:06:41.920 | Samaritan.

00:06:43.260 | And the point of the Good Samaritan parable is not that he liked the wounded Jew the way

00:06:51.580 | he liked himself, like he had really good feelings about himself, so he could have really

00:06:57.200 | good feelings about this wounded Jew.

00:06:59.160 | That's just not the point at all.

00:07:01.280 | The point is he treated this wounded Jewish man the way he would like to be treated.

00:07:07.640 | He loved him as he loved himself in the sense that he sought his good.

00:07:13.080 | He picked him up, he put oil on his wounds, he put him in a motel, he paid his bill, because

00:07:17.840 | he thought, "Well, if I were lying here like this, that's the way I'd like to be treated."

00:07:24.000 | But let me close by giving a biblical alternative to the mantra that Danielle considers so worldly,

00:07:34.040 | and rightly so.

00:07:35.800 | She says, "We're told to love our personalities, our own skin, our bodies, our choices."

00:07:43.640 | And she says, "That just doesn't sound right to me."

00:07:46.240 | It's not.

00:07:48.080 | Now here's the alternative.

00:07:49.360 | As Christians who believe in the sovereignty and the goodness and the wisdom of God and

00:07:54.920 | everything he does, nobody, none of us, received a body from our parents under God's providence

00:08:04.920 | different than the one God appointed.

00:08:08.640 | We got the body God appointed.

00:08:12.600 | God knit us together in our mother's womb, the psalmist says.

00:08:17.480 | Our attitude toward our bodies, therefore, should be to accept our bodies and our brains

00:08:24.920 | with all their limitations and all their imperfections, and trust God that he is wise and good and

00:08:35.160 | merciful, and then offer our bodies as instruments of righteousness for God's glory with all

00:08:43.200 | their imperfections and all their limitations.

00:08:46.720 | Johnny Erickson Tada has been paralyzed in a wheelchair for over 50 years.

00:08:54.000 | Here is an example of the faith I'm talking about.

00:08:57.360 | She said that she would like to take her wheelchair to heaven temporarily.

00:09:02.000 | She's got an agenda here.

00:09:04.680 | She will stand, she says, on her own two legs in her new body and say this to Jesus, "Thank

00:09:11.920 | you, Jesus, and he will know that I mean it because he knows me.

00:09:19.020 | And I will say, 'Jesus, you see that wheelchair?

00:09:22.400 | You were right when you said that in the world we will have trouble, because that thing has

00:09:28.800 | been a lot of trouble.

00:09:31.040 | But the weaker I was in that thing, the harder I leaned on you, and the harder I leaned on

00:09:38.360 | you, the stronger I discovered you to be.

00:09:42.480 | It never would have happened had you not given me the bruising of the blessing of that wheelchair.'"

00:09:52.560 | God did not ask Johnny to like her wheelchair, but he did ask her to trust him that he knew

00:10:01.640 | what he was doing and to dedicate herself with all her limitations to him, and she did.

00:10:10.040 | And we should too.

00:10:12.960 | That's an incredibly powerful testimony, and I think Johnny actually listens to the podcast

00:10:17.720 | and says, "Sir, if you're listening out there, we love you.

00:10:20.560 | We thank God for you.

00:10:22.360 | You have such a powerful testimony, and we're grateful to God for you."

00:10:26.000 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:10:27.880 | You know, for everything you need to know about this podcast, you can find it at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:10:34.640 | Well speaking of self-love, how can I kill this pride inside me?

00:10:38.280 | Pride is a nefarious enemy, one of our great enemies.

00:10:42.000 | Pride is an ancient enemy of God's, and yet when the Lord gifts someone with natural skills

00:10:46.760 | and abilities beyond the norm, that struggle with pride can become even more intense.

00:10:51.960 | Sunday we will address this fight against our enemy, the fight against our own pride.

00:10:56.600 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.

00:10:58.000 | We'll see you then.

00:10:59.000 | Have a great weekend.

00:10:59.500 | [END]

00:11:00.000 | "Pride and Self-Love" by John Lennon, co-author of "The Power of Self-Love" (1987)

00:11:05.000 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Do I Need to Love Myself More?

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