In a Nutshell - Part 3: The Hard Part of Loving Self

Which do you find to be more difficult—loving your neighbor or loving yourself?

“You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22:37, 39).

In this teaching about which was the greatest commandment, Jesus linked love of God with love of neighbor, love of neighbor with love of self. These three expressions of love are interrelated and interdependent. Loving God with all of one’s being is foundational. It is what gives birth to the other two.

The way we love God is by loving our neighbor. The key to loving our neighbor is loving ourselves. We cannot really love our neighbor until the Spirit cultivates within us a healthy self-love. A captivating love for who God is and for God’s ways of grace is what frees us to love ourselves with a healthy self-love.

In linking love of neighbor with love of self, Jesus touched on a deep, often unrecognized, psychological reality: what is on the inside—in the heart—is reflected on the outside—in how we treat others, i.e., in our relationships. We project onto others—actually, we dump on them—the unrecognized, unresolved pain we carry deep within. This reality explains our natural propensity to criticize, judge, blame, attack, and ostracize others.

Think about when you are irritated, frustrated, or angry. How often does that anger get dumped onto those nearby? On those you love?

Hurting people hurt people. Hurting people—that’s us, all of us, every one of us.

Which brings us to our struggle to love ourselves. All of us, without exception, carry outside of our conscious awareness old, emotional issues that are laced with pain—old emotional wounds. These old issues—rooted in the experiences of our early, formative years when our sense of who we are was first being formed—are fueled by old messages. These old messages are all shame-based messages—messages that say we are inadequate and flawed, unlovable and unwanted, no good and less than, powerless and vulnerable to being hurt. (The messages are different for each of us but most of us can resonate with all of them.) These messages keep the emotional wounds unhealed and the pain alive.

These old messages and the shame they stir lie at the heart of our struggle to love ourselves. How can we love ourselves when we are so inadequate and flawed, when we are so unlovable and unwanted, when we are no good and less than everyone else? The shame we carry blocks our ability to love ourselves. It’s little wonder, then, that we struggle to love our neighbor. Our issues and pain cause us to view them as a competitor and as a threat. (That’s the story of Cain and Abel.)

Another factor contributing to our struggle to love ourselves is the merit-based, deserving-oriented thinking and functioning that we learned growing up. We have to measure up, we have to do it right, we have to be good enough before we deserve to be loved—by God or anyone else, much less ourselves.

In order to have a healthy self-love, these old emotional wounds have to be healed—recognized, addressed, and resolved. The power of these old shame-based messages has to be broken, replaced by spiritual truth taught by the Spirit. The pain they generate has to be soothed. The old, addictive patterns we use to run from the pain and drown out the old shame-inducing voices have to be set aside for healthier ways of living and relating. The inner turmoil and anxiety have to be displaced by peace—deep inner peace, the peace of Christ.

That’s where the love of God comes in. To love God with all of one’s being is to be captivated by a love for who God is—God’s character of steadfast, faithful love (Exodus 34:6-7), God’s nature of self-giving, servant love (1 John 4:8-10). It is to be possessed by an all-consuming love for the ways of God that flow out of God’s character—the ways of God (the ways of the Kingdom) that Jesus taught—the ways of grace and forgiveness.

As the Spirit reveals to us the character of God, giving us glimpses of the heart of God, and teaches us the ways of God that Jesus taught—the ways of the kingdom, God’s ways of grace begin to confront and displace the merit-based, deserving-oriented ways of thinking and functioning we were taught. The Spirit leads us to embrace God’s gift of grace, moving us beyond our merit-based, deserving-oriented way of thinking and functioning. The Spirit leads us to claim our identity as God’s beloved children—created in the divine image; called to be the followers of Jesus, learning and living his ways, growing in his likeness; indwelt by the Spirit who empowers us to do what we cannot do in our own strength and who gives us gifts to use in living God’s ways of grace. The Spirit guides our growth into Christlike maturity, freeing us to be who God created us to be (as opposed to who the world told us we were). Our experience of God’s forgiveness cleanses us of guilt and shame, breaking the power of our old shame-based messages. The Spirit leads us into the peace of Christ, displacing our inner turmoil and anxiety.

As we learn to love God with more and more of who we are—heart, mind, soul, strength—we begin to fall in love with who God created us to be—this one who is created in God’s image, who is called to be a follower of Jesus, growing in his likeness, who is indwelt and empowered by the Spirit who guides us in using our gifts in an area of passion as God’s partner in bringing the kingdom to reality on earth, here and now. We learn to love ourselves with a healthy self-love which, in turns, frees us to love our neighbor.

Loving God with a captivating love frees us to love ourselves with a healthy self-love. Loving ourselves with a healthy self-love frees us to love our neighbor as ourselves. We no longer dump our inner pain and turmoil on our neighbor because we have learned—through the Spirit—to access the peace of Christ when our old issues and their pain are triggered.

Love is indeed the greatest commandment—love of God, love of neighbor, love of self. Love is how we—through the power of the Spirit—live a life that is pleasing to God.

In a Nutshell—Part 2: Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

 When asked which was the greatest commandment among all the commandments in the Hebrew scriptures, Jesus responded by quoting the Shema—Deuteronomy 6:5—and adding an easily overlooked commandment found in Leviticus 19:18. “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22:37, 39).

With laser-like precision, Jesus’s response zeroed in on the essence of the Law. The essence of the Law—how to live a life that is pleasing to God—is boiled down to a single concept: love. Love God, love neighbor, love self.

In linking these two texts from the Hebrew scriptures, Jesus linked love of God with love of neighbor, love of neighbor with love of self. These three expressions of love are interrelated and interdependent. Loving God with all of one’s being is foundational. It is what gives birth to the other two.

To love God with all of one’s being is to be captivated by a love for who God is—God’s character of steadfast, faithful love (Exodus 34:6-7), God’s nature of self-giving, servant love (1 John 4:8-10). It is to be possessed by an all-consuming love for the ways of God that flow out of God’s character—the ways of God that Jesus taught (the ways of the Kingdom)—the ways of grace and forgiveness. Such love is greater than the love of our own egocentric selves. It breaks the power of Self-life (the me-centered, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit that Paul identified as the Sin that enslaves us) in our lives.

The Spirit is at work to transform our hearts, creating such a love within us—breaking the grip of Self-life (Sin) in our hearts; infusing this all-consuming love of God; displacing our me-centered, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit with the servant spirit of Jesus. In other words, this captivating love of God is not something we conjure up through self-effort. It is God’s gift to us through the work of the Spirit. Our part is to desire such a love—or, as my professor would say, want to want such a love—and to do those things that nurture it—prayer, study, worship, living in the interdependence of authentic spiritual community, using our gifts on behalf of others, practicing generosity (just to name a few).

This love of God is expressed in loving our neighbor (Matthew 25:31-46). It is expressed in relating to our neighbor the way God relates to us—out of grace and forgiveness. Such a love trains us to view and value, accept and embrace every person—without exception—as a beloved child of God, one created in the image of God. It trains us to respond to our neighbor’s failures and struggles—normal parts of our human condition—with understanding and compassion and patience rather than judgment and condemnation and rejection (Colossians 3:12-17). When our neighbor “wrongs” us, this love of God leads us to forgive them as God forgives us (Matthew 18:21-35; Romans 12:14-21). This love of God leads us to use our gifts and resources on behalf of our neighbor’s good, seeking their growth, maturity, wholeness, and wellbeing. It trains us to be generous in sharing what we have been given by God (Romans 12:3-8, 1 Peter 4:8-11). It cultivates in us a particular sensitivity to, compassion for, and response to those who are the most powerless and vulnerable—the widow, the orphan, the resident alien or immigrant (Isaiah 1:17), “the least of these” in Jesus’s parable in Matthew 25:31-46, the poor (Luke 16:14-15, 19-31).

The Spirit is the one who empowers us to love our neighbor in this way. The Spirit teaches us the ways of God that Jesus taught, guides us in how to live those ways in specific situations, and empowers us to do so. We do not live this way—loving God by loving our neighbor—in our own strength. 

We love God by loving our neighbor. We love our neighbor by loving ourselves. This next dimension is the focus of my next blog.

In a Nutshell: the Great Commandment

We humans like to simplify things—translate the complex into simple, understandable terms—reduce what is too big to grasp into small, more manageable bites—boil things down “into a nutshell” so it is more easily managed. That’s what an unnamed Pharisee was doing when he asked Jesus, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” (Matthew 22:36). Of all the laws in the Hebrew scriptures, which one takes priority. Boil the 613 laws down to one. What is the essence of the Law in a nutshell?

Jesus responded by quoting the Shema—Deuteronomy 6:5—and Leviticus 19:18. “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22:37, 39).

Therein is the essence of the Law—what it means to live a life that is pleasing to God—in a nutshell: love. Love in three-part harmony: love God; love neighbor; love self.

Of course, we humans are seldom content with nutshell answers. We have questions about the answer.

What does it mean to love the LORD our God with heart, mind, soul, and strength (Luke 10:27)—that is, with all that we are, with the totality of our being?

To love God with heart, mind, soul, and strength is to be captivated by the beauty of God’s character and the wisdom of God’s ways. It is to love God with an all-consuming love—a love that governs our thinking, that directs what we do, that shapes who we are and how we live. That’s what Jesus meant when he taught us to pray, “hallowed be your name” (Luke 11:2). We pray that we might love God with a love that is greater than any other love, including the love of our own selves.

Jesus’s identification of love as the essence of the Law comes with built-in challenges that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to do—at least in our own strength.

The first challenge is most of us do not know the God Jesus revealed. Our understanding of God is limited, at best—patterned after the ways we humans naturally think. We can never truly love the God we have created in our own image.

To love God with an all-consuming, captivating love requires us to know who Jesus revealed God to be: a God of steadfast, faithful love (Exodus 34:6)—a love that never waivers, a love that never gives up on us or abandons us; a God of self-giving, servant love who seeks our good (1 John 4:8); a God whose love is unconditional because it is rooted in God’s character rather in response to who we are or what we do. It requires us to grasp on a deep level that God relates to us out of grace, dealing with our failures, rebellion, and sins with forgiveness. As the psalmist said, “[The LORD] does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities” (Psalm 103:10). As long as we remain stuck in our merit-based, deserving-oriented thinking, we will never be able to truly love God.

The second challenge lies in the condition of our hearts. We live out of a self-serving, me-centered, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit. This me-centered spirit is the essence of Sin—Sin with a capital S as opposed to sins (plural). Sin with a capital S is the disease that ravages our spirit; sins (plural) are the symptoms that reflect the presence of the disease. This self-life, expressed in our ego-centric selves and our comparing and competing orientation, blocks our ability to authentically love God. By the way, this comparing and competing orientation is why we focus on sins (plural), judging and condemning the sins of others.

The good news is God—living out of God’s steadfast, faithful love—does not give up on us in spite of our deeply rooted self-life (our Sin and sins). God—living out of grace—freely forgives us our Sin and our sins, accepting us as we are, claiming us as beloved children. God—living out of God’s self-giving, servant love—acts on our behalf, giving the Son to break the power of Sin and death on our lives, giving the Spirit to set us free from the power of Sin in our lives.

The good news is that God—through the Spirit—is at work to create within us the ability to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. The Spirit is nurturing within us a love for God that is greater than the love of our own ego-centric selves—a captivating love for God that frees us from our me-centered, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit—an all-consuming love that governs how we think, directs what we do, and shapes who we are and how we live.

The ability to love God in such a way begins by acknowledging that we don’t love God with such a love—but we want to.

Which brings us to the next question—what will it look like when we love the LORD our God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength? Jesus gave us the answer to this question. The way we love God is by loving our neighbor as ourself. Loving our neighbor will be the topic of the next blog.