Self-Love

By Pastor Vam Foung Vang

Self-Love, that sounds beautiful but isn’t that selfishness and sinful. Christians will quickly run to such verses as 2 Timothy 3:2 (ESV)

2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy…

Are Christians too judgmental and having some superiority complex, that their God is an Awesome God. But Google and Psychology Today claim that self-love is needed and very popular with self-help gurus and spas. A simple Google of “Self-Love” brings up many key points: accepting yourself wholeheartedly,  learning to say no to demands that can drain your energy or compromise your morals etc…

The list of key points keeps going on and sounds very reasonable. The author and psychologist seem to be responsible professionals and do warn that it is not the same as narcissism or selfishness, but more about accepting our flaws and taking care of ourselves. These online sources on Self Love sound so commonly sensical. So why would the Word of God rain on such sensible understanding?

Let’s look and see if God has anything to share with us concerning such a topic. I did a quick word search, and I think these 2 verses are representative of God’s intention about loving ourselves.

Romans 13:9
You shall love your neighbor as yourself

Ephesians 5:28-29
28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church,

Some will say these verses are about loving others and not focus on self-love. Sadly, a simple search reveals that there is no positive Biblical term “self-love” or “love yourself” that is similar to the popular meaning. To be fair, there is no Biblical term to abuse or neglect care for one’s own self.

So, we are left to grapple with the Biblical view on this issue, which are presented by both Romans 13 and Ephesians 5. These two verses do infer that we love ourselves, however in the context of ALSO loving our neighbor and our wife.

Compared to “self-love”, which is focus on one person, while the Biblical text includes two people; God understands His own creation and He knows how deceitful our hearts are (Jeremiah 17:9), so love is always in the context of another person.

I can say many plans of men always sounds great in theory and on paper but fail due to the forgetfulness of time and temptation that creeps up on us, our natural human sin, which Matthew 26: 41 express perfectly, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”. Because of that, God in his eternal wisdom and goodness tells us what love is in 1 John 4:7-10; that God is Love and love was to sacrifice His son for our eternal salvation.

As believers we are born of God and we do what our Father does, love. Not because we returned God’s love but simply because God is Love, so we naturally love others. God knows our deceptive hearts, so God set the example for us to balance the love of ourselves with loving another person. That is why the love shared by God is a sacrificial serving love, which combats the sin of selfishness.

Valentine may have passed but love is eternal because God is eternal. Let us reflect on the nature of God and how we, the image of God, can love our neighbor and our family better this season. Maybe share God’s love, Jesus, with our neighbors and family?

A prayer of love:
Lord, I pray that your Love will continue to govern our hearts and that we are brave to share Your love Your son to those who are lonely and broken. Amen.