How Can I Love Myself in Christ?

“Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord” (Leviticus 19:18)

“The second is this:  ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Mark 12:31)

In the Bible, there are some commands that are easier to follow, and there are some that are much harder to obey.  For me, one of the easiest commands to obey is to not get drunk on wine.  I can’t stand the smell nor the taste of alcohol beverages of any kind, so I’m very good at obeying that commandment.

But there are other commandments I have a harder time with.  And that’s true with each of us.  Some people are better at doing some things, while others are better at doing other things.  Because each of us is different, each of us sees the will of God differently.  Each of us has an easier and a harder time with different spiritual disciplines.

I think there is one command, though, that we all find difficult, and that is the command listed at the beginning of this paper.

Why is It Hard to Love Ourselves?

For most of us, there is no one who knows us better than we know ourselves. We see ourselves warts and all, and too many of us focus on the warts.  We may be able to put up a great façade for the world around us, but when it’s just one person by himself or herself, the façade crumbles, and we are left with the real person.

We don’t like the way we look—we’re too fat; we’re too thin; we’re too tall, or too short.  Our hair isn’t the color we want, or it’s too straight or too curly or . . .  We don’t like the way we talk, or the way we laugh.  We wish we could play a musical instrument, or to play a sport, or to be better academically.  We wish we were better at making friends, or making people comfortable around us.

I was told of a conversation between two women who had grown up together and were very close.  One said to the other, “I always envied you.  You seemed to have your life together, and I was falling apart.  I always wanted to be as together as you were.”  The other woman responded, “I thought it was the other way around.  You seemed to have your act together, while I couldn’t seem to get anything right.”

To be sure, not everyone has these issues.  There are some who are well-adjusted, comfortable in their skin and content with who and what they are.  But it has been my experience that everyone want to be better.  We see our flaws. And we hold them against ourselves.

For the Christian, there is the added burden of remembering our sins.  We know we are forgiven, we know our sins are not held against us.  Nevertheless, for many of us, we are unable to escape our past and we find ourselves thinking we are unworthy and incapable of being used by God.

Add to that the very true Christian virtue of putting others above ourselves, and that only adds to our feeling less than good about ourselves.  “. . . [B]ut in humility, consider others better than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3b) seems too often to be our refrain and we take to heart the idea of considering everyone better than ourselves.

But that’s not what God meant when He inspired that passage.  He isn’t saying we should look down on ourselves while looking up to everyone else.  There is no need to consider ourselves in a lowly manner.  The idea present in this passage is to not exert my rights over everyone else, but that I should have a willingness to forgo my desire if my desire would bring harm to a weaker brother or sister.  Rather than insisting on my way, I should be willing to listen to others and consider their views and ways as valuable as my own.

Why I Should Love Myself

The Psalmist asked this question in Psalm 8.  “What is man that You are mindful of him, the son of man that You care for Him?” (Psalm 8:4).  Notice two things in David’s question.  First, God is mindful of us.  That is, God takes the time to think about us and not just as a passing thought.  Second, God cares for us.  That’s what John 3:16 is all about—“For God so loved the world”—that is, God’s commitment to all the people of the world—that He gave His One and Only Son.”  We would do well to remember that God’s caring for us extends to the sending of His Son to die for our sins in order that we might have fellowship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  That speaks to the fact that, if God cares that much, maybe I should see myself in a different, better light.

Psalm 139 is a great declaration of how much God values us and cares for us.  It speaks to the fact that God knows us intimately (vs. 1-4), that He is always with us (5-12).  The psalmist reminds us that God creates us individually (13-16).  The totality of the psalm is to remind us that God is so involved with us that He is paying close attention to us while still in the womb.  He stays with us until the ends of our days (v. 16).

Then there is the reminder of all that Christ did for us out of His deep love for us.  Jesus gave up His rightful place in heaven (Philippians 2:5-11), that He willingly lay down His life for us (John 10:11, 15, 17-18).  Jesus calls us His friends (John 15:14).  He assures us of His continual presence with us (Matthew 28:20).

There are more verses we could address, but the point is made.  If God cares enough about us to think we are worthy of His attention, if Christ loves us enough to give up everything for us and to call us His friends, it seems peculiarly selfish of us to claim that we are unworthy and unlovable.

The fact that we are now washed in the blood of the Lamb tells me that we are made worthy through Christ and that we are worth loving.

If the Father and the Son can love us enough to do these things for us, then that tells us we can and must love ourselves.

How Can I Love Myself?

It takes a determined effort to allow ourselves to be changed, to rethink the way we relate to the world and, in this case particularly, to ourselves.

The first step is to walk in faith.  Walking in faith is to take what God says in the Bible and live according to it.  Since the Bible teaches that we are worthy of God’s love and relationship, then we need to start believing it ourselves.  And the way we do that is to dismiss the negative thoughts we have and consciously claim the declarations of the Word of God.  James tells us that we are to “Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you” (James 4:7).  When the negative thoughts come, tell yourself that you are worthy of love, and God proves it.  He sent Christ to die for us.  Christ proves it. He willingly went to Calvary for you.  And we are worthy of love because God Himself has made you a member of His family (John 1:13; Titus 3:5-7).

Second, remember that part of the Greatest Command is that we love each other as we love ourselves.  Learn to love yourself because God expects you to love yourself.  He’s not saying become massively egotistical, but accept that you are a person who can be and is loveable.

Finally, notice that other people like you.  You do have friends, and they are your friends because they see something good in you.  You even have friends that love you.  They love you because you have something about you that is loveable.  Accept their judgment.  They have no reason to lie to you. Embrace this truth.

When we learn to walk by faith in what the Bible tells us, and when we look at ourselves objectively, then we begin to see that we really are worthy of love.  We can begin to love ourselves.

Third, make a list of everything you have accomplished, and keep that list handy.  The list can include the biggest to the smallest accomplishment, in any order.  If you’re good at making macaroni and cheese from a box, then you’ve accomplished something.  If you’re reading this, you’ve accomplished something in that you have learned to read.  If you’ve failed innumerable times, yet you’re still going, you have accomplished the ability to not let failure keep you down.

Every one of us has done something we are good at, something we can look back on with pride and a sense of accomplishment. Maybe it’s been a while (or at least we think it’s been a while), but it’s still something that you did, something you can celebrate about yourself.

If you can’t think of anything, go to a trusted friend, and ask them to name somethings for you.  Listen to what they have to say, and DO NOT DISMISS what they tell you. Take it at face value.  They’re not lying to you, making things up to make you feel better.  If you’ve been a good friend, you are someone of value.

Make the list.  Read it as often as you need to, adding to it as you recall new things.

Fourth, accept compliments at their face value. Oftentimes, we tend to dismiss the compliment, trying to explain why there was fault with what we did. It’s not uncommon for us to say, “Thanks, but . . .” This is a way we try to show our humility, but it’s also the way we approach ourselves with a super critical eye. When I was a child in grade school, we would have writing assignments and, quite often, someone would tell me that I was a good writer. I would deflect the compliment—“I could do better” or “I wasn’t that happy with it.” Then one day, it dawned on me that these people approached me wanting to tell me they enjoyed what I had done. I hadn’t gone to them fishing for the compliment. It was freely given, and I decided right then that I would begin to trust the compliment and take it for what it was meant to be—a sincere recognition and appreciation for something that I had done. From that day forward, I learned to simply say, “Thank you.”

Finally, commit yourself to loving yourself.  Start each day asking God to show you reasons to love yourself, to feel good about yourself, to see yourself in a more positive light. And make a mental note of everything positive you did.  You drove to work without getting a ticket or running over anything.  You’ve managed to type almost every word on the page without having to correct them.  And recognize that you will make mistakes. No one is perfect; we all fall short.  That’s just part of life.  An old song said to “accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.”  That’s a good way to live and to see yourself.

Conclusion

It is easy in our world to look down on ourselves, to wish we were something else, something better.  And there is always room for growth and improvement.  But just because we can and should grow and improve doesn’t mean that we are currently in an unlovely and unlovable state.  The God of the universes love us; His Son calls us His friends.  We can love ourselves.

© 2018 Glynn Beaty