A couple of days back a short email devotional was forwarded to me.
It was about the need to follow Jesus' example and take care of ourselves and love ourselves - using the story of the woman pouring out her Alabaster jar of oil onto Jesus shortly before his crucifixion. (Matthew 2) It was said the story was showing that Jesus accepted others' care for him and thus we should be eager to accept others' care for us as we need others to 'top up' our love jars. It then went on to say that others will treat us the way we treat ourselves and so if we want others to love us we have to love ourselves first. Essentially it was raising the whole issue of 'self-love'.
I was saddened to read it due to various issues, not least the poor exegesis, lack of reading in context, and the permeation of secular psychological thinking purporting to be biblical instruction.
But....
......as I thought more about it, the more I realised the extent to which mis-placed honour has soaked into our Western mind-set and influenced even many Christians.
It reminded me just how important it is to have a right understanding of what it means to honour God and be honoured in Christ. Without that, our lives so easily get into a tangled web of distorted teaching that can lead us off into such confusion and delusion and eventually frustration, exhaustion and disillusionment.
I want to draw out several excerpts and some of the issues that emerge from it related to the idea of self-love, and how they relate to the importance of having a right perspective on honour.
A right biblical perspective of honour will help in understanding God's word, whereas a secular perspective of honour can cheat us of a proper understanding of God's word, and thus cheat us of knowing and experiencing the truth of it joyfully living out through our lives.
I realise again, how vital it is that the 'pillars of honour' spoken about in the recent blog - approval, acceptance and significance, are included in biblical context in the process of discipleship.
1. Jesus did not accept the gift of the poured out oil from a need to take care of himself due to self-love
Jesus did take care of himself, in that He took time to rest for example. He also did allow others to minister to him, but we must not forget that part of that was worship - something we are definitely not called to give others or accept from others. Jesus was not indulging in self-love, and He did not come as an example of the need for self-love. He was the perfect example of how to give love - to His Father and to people around Him in the way the Father wanted Him to. Any love and worship He accepted from people was deflected to the Father. (John 14)
The very act of the woman (Mary - see also Luke 7) pouring out the contents of the Alabaster box was about Jesus allowing her to give Him honour, adoration, love and worship - to show that she valued Him more than anything, even her most valued possessions.
This was about much more than 'caring' - it was about 'honouring'.
If this passage was meant to teach us to self-love, then Jesus should have wanted the woman to love herself first and not pour out her oil but to keep it for her own pleasure and use first so she had done some 'self-loving' first... and then when she felt she had done enough of that to then consider sharing it. But He didn't. He allowed her to give it, not because he was primarily accepting the 'care' of someone else, but because he was pleased with her giving of herself to Him by the giving of a possession that was most precious to her. He then used it to contrast that what might be seen as a shameful waste by the eyes of those around her, was an honourable gift to her Lord.
This is a lesson in understanding that even though the world may ridicule and despise us for giving Jesus our best and putting our own welfare, pleasure and financial security aside, in Jesus' eyes we are approved and honoured for giving Him honour.
2. Taking care of ourselves does not require 'self-love'
The devotion made a statement that some people don't know how to take care of themselves. And as I have found in counselling, this is often because people don't understand what principles God has in His word for directing and motivating that care. Often our reasons - our motives - are misplaced.
The reality of life is that apart from Christ, we naturally don't do anything else except love ourselves. Even those of us who are busy 'helping' others, can be doing it for the wrong reasons, such as:
- We gain a sense of importance and value from the praise and appreciation of others and so we are driven to do what others will praise us for in order to gain a sense of value. But we are actually mis-placed in our thinking -- we are looking to people instead of God for our sense of value and worth.
- We can also be 'busy' because we idolise hard work and have given ourselves to live under a bondage that drives us to overwork in an effort to feel satisfied with ourselves - again we are looking for worth in our achievements and in reaching our own set goals instead of in Christ - we are looking to be 'successful' in our own eyes according our self-appointed expectations, rather than seeking what God wants us to do and to be satisfied and rejoicing in that.
- Or we can be so busy that we are not properly taking care of ourselves because we feel culturally obligated to honour others, especially elders. We are so busy fulfilling the expectations of people all over the place, so that we will remain accepted by them and the group we want to be a part of, that we are not allowing the time that God would want to take care of what He has given us - including our bodies.
- We all, at various times, fall into the trap of the view of: 'What will people think of me if I don't do this or that?'
Each motivation is actually a 'loving self' motivation - it is seeking a sense of emotional well-being, of acceptance, of approval, and of significance....apart from God's approval, God's acceptance and our significance in God's creation and God's family. We overstrain ourselves and increase our stress and thus our health suffers and we haven't actually taken care of ourselves on God's terms and in God's eyes.
3. Neither self-love nor love from others should be the ultimate source of our significance
The devotion said that 'in order for your cup of service to stay full it must continually be refilled' [by people], and it referenced Psalm 23 'you anoint my head with oil, my cup runs over'.
BUT WHO
is the Psalmist saying anoints his head with oil and enables his cup to run over? God. Not people.
This is a Psalm about God being our Shepherd. Yes, He may choose to 'fill our cup' at times through the encouragement of others or through the gifts of others but ultimately it is GOD, not people, who are sustaining us.
It is not people we have to look to for 'filling our cup', but God Himself, however He wants to do it. To say we must have people, is to say that God isn't enough, and is not sufficient and able. We have a great, amazing almighty God, but we often live as if He is not that at all. We often live as if people are our sustainer and saviour - we elevate people into the position that is God's alone. We get pre-occupied with seeking approval, acceptance and significance from people instead of from God.
We must be sure to trust in God Himself as our Creator and King, and not in His creation and creatures, no matter how significant a means they may be. Idolatry is a subtle temptation and we must beware!
4. We can have a mis-placed understanding of what it means to 'deny ourselves' and thus find the idea of 'self-love' to be attractive
Instead of Scripture telling us to love ourselves, it tells us to deny ourselves (Luke 9:23). In fact Jesus said that if we are not prepared to deny ourselves we CANNOT be His disciple. Those are pretty strong words.
But we can think that denying ourselves is ignoring ourselves according to our own wisdom and understanding. In the process we can ignore the responsibilities God has given us.
If I am a father or mother and I neglect taking care of my body as I should as much as I am able, it could cause medical problems or disease and result in an inability to fulfill the role of parent as God calls me to. Of if I don't drink enough water or eat enough to strengthen my body and brain, I cannot give my best at work and are thus cheating my boss from what he is paying me to do...and subsequently not honouring God as an employee.
I can also fail to recognise that God has given us His world to enjoy. We are meant to enjoy what God wants us to enjoy, and praise and glorify Him in it. We are meant to go out for a refreshing walk on a starry night and look up and enjoy what we see and have our hearts lift in praise and thankfulness and adoration for God's greatness, eternal presence, and beauty of His creation. We are meant to enjoy the sounds of the birds and the taste of good food and the hug of a friend and the smell of roses. We are not meant to deny ourselves all access to what is 'good' and think such practices are automataically holy.
So what are we meant to 'deny'?
- Rather we are to deny ourselves self-centredness and selfishness
- We are to deny ourselves self-pity.
- We are to deny ourselves the position of 'No.1', of determiner of our days and decisions, or the right to rule our lives and decide for ourselves what is right and wrong.
- We are to deny anything evil to have influence in our lives no matter how attractive its short term pleasures might be .
- We are to deny our own wisdom, our own agendas, even our own plans as to how to 'achieve God's will'.
- We are to deny even good things that morph from being places of thankfulness and praise to places/objects of rights and demands and highest priority, addiction and obsession.
- Food is good, alcohol is permissible, but the enjoyment of either one, or anything else, must be denied for ourselves when it is no longer our servant but becomes our master, or is affecting our bodies in such a way that we compromise the care of our bodies for God's honour.
- We are to deny anything that gets in the way of God having highest honour - 1st place and priority - in our lives, anything that is elevating ourselves, our wants, our desires into a position that only God should occupy.
That is what it means to 'deny ourselves'.
5. Love according to my own definition of 'love' or the world's definition of 'love' will set me up for bigger problems
One of the biggest problems in our world is our false definition of love. When we fail to define the meaning of love from God who is love, and subconsciously imbibe the world's idea, we walk a path of self-destruction, not anywhere near what true 'love' is all about.
If I insist on 'loving myself' by enjoying the pleasure of eating lots of sweet things, so much that I end up with diabetes which results in blindness and amputation of limbs so that I cannot work or care for my family, then I haven't honoured God by taking care of what God gives me.
Loving myself is not praised, commanded or encouraged in Scripture - it is a reality that is assumed we all naturally do in our old nature. The basis of our sin is that we love ourselves instead of loving God. We usurp the place of God in our affections. Idolatry is inherent in our sinful nature, a nature that according to Romans 7 that we will battle with till we leave this earth.
If there is one thing we know how to do well in our humanness, it is to love ourselves. But we have made two big mistakes if we think God wants us to 'love ourselves' as our world encourages us to do so.
The first is there is no such command - we have actually added/replaced God's command to love Him, with our own first command to love ourselves.The second is that we have also replaced the meaning of love with the world's meaning. The direction and the definition of our love is mis-placed.
Rather, we are called to take care of ourselves not because we are to love ourselves but because we are to give honour to what God gives honour. God created us and thus as His creation, we have inherent value.
We dishonour God when we don't value what He values.
We dishonour God when we don't take care of what He has entrusted us to take care of, and take care of it His way.
The very first commandment God gave humanity (Adam) was to rule over the whole earth and govern it as God wanted according to God's will. (Gen 1:28) When we take care of the world, including our own bodies so that they will function according to God's design, we honour Him. When we don't, we dishonour Him. When we fail to rest or have proper nutrition or practice proper cleanliness or do proper exercise, we are neglecting to give adequate care to the bodies God has given us.
Yes, our increasingly 'modernised' world is being engulfed by the idea that 'busy' is somehow Godly. We think 'busy' is the righteous opposite to 'lazy'. But it is not.
God doesn't require us to be busy, He requires us to be obedient.
And if that obedience involves taking time to rest so that we can serve Him adequately, so we must rest. If it involves us working hard to get a job done to a standard of excellence to God's glory, so we must work hard. If it involves us taking the time to have conversation with people to disciple, encourage and build them up instead of rushing to our own personal agendas so we must do so.
6. Jesus told those who asked, that the greatest commandment was to love God, and then the second was to love others
There are not three commands, with an additional first one to love ourselves.
As we have already said, loving ourselves is our sinful 'given'.
Rather what we need to do is to love God by doing what he asks us to do, and in doing so and always ensuring that we are doing His will, we will by default be the recipients of His care and love.
We are not to strive to develop 'self-love' but strive to be in the place where we can know and experience the abundant care and love of God Himself.
When we strive for self-love we sell ourselves way short, and in the process we are essentially despising God's love toward us. We are saying our love for ourselves and our understanding of what love should be is of higher value and greater importance than God's love for us. We are saying that what we can give to ourselves is greater than what God can give to us! That is the opitome of pride and blasphemy!
To say 'Who'll give back to you, if not you?' (as the devotion says), is saying that God's love toward us in insufficient. It's saying that God is lying when He promises that 'my grace is sufficient for you'. We are saying God is unfaithful, untruthful and not enough - we are saying (intentionally or unintentionally) our wisdom is better than God's and our ideas about life are better than God's. We are saying that our happiness and fulfilment in life is all up to us! We are just like Eve believing the lies of Satan in the Garden of Eden.
Our hope and future is not something that rests on our own efforts of self-love, it rests in the power and provision of our almighty, loving Father.
7. Accepting help, and assistance and kindness from others is not about fulfilling a non-existent command to 'self-love'
Instead its about being humble and accepting that we can't 'do it all' and we need others.
It's about accepting that we are not lone individuals on our own agenda, but we are created to be part of community and need one another.
In the body of Christ, its about allowing others to minister according to their gifts, which are all about benefitting the whole body.
It's about humility.
It's about not thinking we are the ones who are the only ones who can do the job well.
It's about learning to be thankful.
It's about allowing others to allow the Holy Spirit's fruit to 'feed' others and bless others.
It's about accepting our own finiteness, and weakness.
It's about experiencing God's grace that is given to the humble since God says He 'opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble'. (check out the previous blog about grace for more about what that wonderful word means!)
8. 'Lovers of self' is not in scripture as an example of holiness but as an example of sinful behaviour
2 Timothy 3:4-6 says :
This is not a list of traits to aspire to or strive to produce in a community. This is a list of sinful behaviours that destroy people, families and societies and will characterise the rampant sinfulness of the last days before Christ's return. And what is first on the list?.....'loving yourself'. If we are meant to resist temptation to sin, to flee from sin and to put sin to death, then we definitely should not be embracing 'self-love'. We should be doing the exact opposite."For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconsilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God."
9. God's honour code is the opposite to ours
He says to let go of seeking our own worth and proving our value and yearning for approval from those around us, because if we are willing to lose our life for God's sake and the gospel, it is then that we will find it.
If we get busy trying to make our lives 'fulfilling' in loving ourselves, we will actually find ourselves losing our life, because we will have separated ourselves from God's route to true fulfillment, and the fulness of His love in our lives.
We are called to deny ourselves (Luke 9:23,24) - forsake our own desires and ideas for how to gain success, honour and approval - and follow Jesus and take the road of the cross.
It is at the cross where we will find the most supreme honour and love - that from God Himself. Why settle for less?
I would love to encourage you to download and read the free pdf version of an excellent, short, little, and easy to read book by South Africa Pastor Joel James on 'The Bible and Self-love". Click HERE to view and download.
Also if you are able, I'd encourage you to read the following books:
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