‘Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”’ Matthew 22:35-40
It has become popular to use this scripture to argue that we need to love ourselves. They say humanity presently has an epidemic of self hate and that God’s people especially must be taught to love themselves for, ‘See…’ they say, ‘we can’t love others if we do not love ourselves.’
Is this really the point Jesus was trying to communicate when He outlined the second of the two great commandments, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’? I always took it for granted that the lesson here was clear for all to see but one cannot take anything for granted nowadays it seems.
Let us strip it apart to see if we can find the true jewel of this lesson?
The Subject of the Sentence
It is important to identify the subject of the sentence. Why? Because, “In its simplest sense, the subject refers to the doer of the action or to what (or whom) the sentence is all about. It can either be a person, a place, a thing, or an idea, and can come in the form of a noun or a pronoun.”
We need to find out what or whom the sentence is all about. The subject of Jesus’ sentence is ‘your neighbour’. Jesus wants to bring our attention to how we should treat our neighbour. We could strip away everything else from this sentence and still get the message with just these three words, ‘love your neighbour’. The others are just qualifying words used to help our understanding.
The Nouns:
Who is Jesus speaking to and who is He speaking about? The nouns in the sentence are, ‘You’ and ‘your neighbour.’ He is speaking to us about our neighbour.
The Verb:
What is the call to action embedded in this statement? The verb in the sentence is, ‘love.’ Jesus is trying to move us to action, to begin to love.
The Adjective:
The adjective is the part of speech that modifies, enumerates, or describes a noun, or which otherwise denotes its qualities. In this case the, ‘as yourself’ is the adjective that is describing how we should love our neighbour. The ‘as yourself’ here is not the subject of the sentence but just the qualifying statement that tells us how to love.
What’s the Point
So what message is Jesus trying to get across? He is telling us that we must love our neighbour. How should we love them? We should love them the same way we love ourselves. Jesus is not telling us that we need to love ourselves because that is a given, humans are inherently selfish.
Further Tests
The consistency test is also very necessary when studying scripture. We need to ask ourselves the question, ‘is my understanding supported by all scripture?’ Does the whole counsel of scripture teach us that we need to love ourselves? The answer is no! Nowhere else can we find a scripture where Jesus or His apostles point us to ourselves and tell us that we are in need of self love. In fact, the opposite is true, they are constantly turning us away from focusing on our self, our own self preservation and gratification.
Jesus said, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.” Luke 14:26 One could easily argue that Jesus is advocating self hate (though He is not) rather, He is teaching self denial not self hate, in lieu of being self centered.
He continues, “And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.” Luke 14:27 The man who is bearing his cross is a dead man walking, he carries the symbol of his death. We crucify self, not love and pamper it.
“He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” John 12:25
The popular teaching that we by default hate ourselves is untrue , it is a great deception. Again the very opposite is true. What we have in these end times is an epidemic of self love just as Paul predicted, “But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves” 2 Timothy 3:1-2
Scripture Assumes Self Love
Loving ourselves is natural, we do it by default, it’s our reflex. No one needs to be taught self love we must instead be taught to love others as that doesn’t come naturally. Jesus in the passage of discussion is telling us that the same way we naturally lookout for, protect and preserve ourselves we should also lookout for, protect and preserve others.
Paul says, “So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it…” Ephesians 5:28-29
Before we came to know Christ we were the centre of our world, we loved those who loved us and did only those things that gratified or benefitted us. Now, as believers, Christ must become the centre of our world. We must learn to deny ourselves and to love God and others.ill also do these things to show that He approves of our message.