Loving ourselves...part III

When God calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves, he's not telling us to love ourselves, he's calling us to care for our neighbors in the way we are already naturally inclined care for ourselves. 

What this passage is doing is giving us a standard. Self-care is the standard by which we measure and base our care of others. He is telling us to simply do for others what we desire they do for us in the way we automatically and naturally do it for ourselves.

However, we have a problem. This is totally impossible to do by ourselves. Our commitment to self-care is too great--so is our need for infinite love. We can not love others sacrificially until we know we are loved in the same way. 

Which is exactly why he appeals to this as our standard. He wants our care of others to be equally as great as our care for ourselves. 

The solution?

It is only when we know - are fully convinced - we are ¹perfectly cared for and loved by God, that we are freed and enabled to love others, but not until then. In ourselves alone, we do not have the love necessary to love in this way - i.e. sacrificially - or the assurance it will be worth the sacrifice.

But how can we know whether God loves us that much? Through Christ and his work on our behalf we have absolute proof of God's love. In and through Christ, God completely took care of both our alienation and our need for infinite love. He did all of this for us because of his care and love for us.

Do we believe this is true? Do we believe that God loves us ²this much? Unless and until we do we can never love others as God designed us to.

God says he loves us and did everything necessary to prove it. Is he lying? The actions God took prove he is not. It is for us to believe or reject His promised love demonstrated by His sacrificial actions. This is his call and also our greatest struggle, to believe. Do you?

For more comments on loving ourselves click here and here. 

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¹When we know that no sacrifice we make in loving others will go unrewarded, we are able to love sacrificially. And how do we know this? Because God proved it by sending His Son to restore us to himself and then raised him back to life after he sacrificed himself for us. Resurrection life after His sacrifice is ours because it was Christ's first. Christ's resurrection is the firstfruits of all other resurrections for those who love Him.  

²do we believe in his love enough that it transforms and frees us to love others in the same way he loves us i.e. sacrificially? Not unless or until we do can we ever love sacrificially.