As You Love Yourself
"Self love" was a concept I once associated with egotistical millennials seeking validation. Surely, anyone who professed self love was in need of major humbling...And then I realized that self love, in the truest sense, is a biblical principle. Growing up in church culture, I heard numerous sermons on this passage of Mark 12:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second [greatest commandment] is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:30-31)
I heard passionate presentations about loving my neighbors, about re-defining who classified as my "neighbor," and about service for the kingdom. I never heard the concept of loving myself spoken in church.
Yet, the last two words of the second greatest commandment are there, overlooked perhaps because with them comes uncharted territory: "as yourself."
Lord, what does it even mean to love myself?
This foreign concept perplexed me, causing me to examine scriptures on pride and humility and identity. I attempted to understand how I could possibly love myself and love others, how I could be humble and confident in my identity as His creation. As I searched, I realized that the message of my identity as His beloved daughter was woven throughout scripture, beginning in the first chapter:
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. (Genesis 1:31a).
This verse is found right after God creates mankind, and though He declares all creation to be "good," he only uses "very good" after he breathes life into humanity. I am part of that "very good," and so are you.In the new testament, He reveals that not only am I a very good creation, but through Christ, I have the right to become His child:
"Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God–" (John 1:12).
In Galatians, He declares that not only am I His child, but I am clothed with Christ:
So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. (Galatians 3:26-27).
When the Lord looks at me, He sees a very good daughter clothed in Christ. He looks at me with love.
And as His daughter who seeks to emulate the heart of her father, how can I not love the things that He loves? How can I look at myself, an "imago dei" creation made in His image and reject the ways I was created to reflect His beauty?
Thus, true self love isn't pride or valuing other people as less. It's recognizing that from the beginning of time, my father had me in mind—a unique creation to reflect Himself and be a light in a broken world.
I cannot truly love God without loving myself. It's that simple. Until I can see myself in the fullness of my Christ-centered identity, I cannot help others see theirs. Until I learn to love myself the way Jesus loves me, I cannot love others well.
And so, I sit with these two simple words and the impact they've had on my view of God and myself, praying they have the same impact for you: "as yourself."