While the first sin of Adam and Eve has been cast in many different ways as a rejection of God, it was also an act of rejection or hatred toward self.
To grasp this it is important to keep in mind that hatred is always understood as an emotional response toward self - but also as an ACT OF REJECTION.
In their sin, Adam and Eve hated/rejected not just God and His will, but they also hated/rejected themselves and their purpose as God had made them, in favor of an illusion of a "better" them, a better "self", a better “me”.
As a consequence of this Original Sin, each person is born pre-disposed to hate/reject not just God, but themselves and their purpose as God has created them, knit them together in their mother's womb. (Ps 139).
Each person is born hating/rejecting themselves in favor of some other self that is perceived to be better.
Each person is born hating/rejecting their God given purpose in favor of some other purpose that is believed to better reflect and express who they really are.
Inasmuch as each person is born spiritually dead under the power of sin -
- They cannot stop this hatred/rejection of self.
- While they may desperately search for a more favorable self and purpose, their search and discovery can never reach beyond the bounds of themselves and others like them.
- This limitation enhances and escalates their hatred/rejection of everyone else.
Our sinful nature drives us 24/7 to try and deal with this hatred of self in order to save ourselves from it in primarily three ways:
First - we seek to overcome this hatred of self by appealing to others in the hopes that they will somehow pass favorable and affirming judgment on us, so that we might like, let alone love ourselves. The evidence offered in our appeals is made via looks, abilities, and possessions, all of which are used in the hopes of influencing the jury of our peers to affirm us.
Second - we seek to save ourselves from this hatred by projecting it on others. This method of coping with our predisposition is perhaps the most often used, especially when the first method fails. When we cannot overcome the hatred of self by appeals to others, we ascend quickly to the judge’s seat. Nothing new needs to be learned here; it is the same hatred. Now it is turned away from us and toward others. Such outward hatred turned toward others is easily sanctified by pointing out all the ways they have rejected us and others by their failing and less than perfect words or behaviors toward us or others. In this means of saving ourselves from the hatred of self, we not only sanctify ourselves, we also comfort ourselves as victims of these hateful people from whom we must isolate ourselves in our private self-made sanctuary where we nurture our victimhood into near saintliness made of hatred.
Third - we seek to save ourselves from this hatred by using others and all things in this world to so intoxicate ourselves with sensual pleasure. The level of sensual pleasure will determine the level to which one is no longer conscious or aware of his or her hatred/rejection of self. Yet like any narcotic, the level of sensual pleasure will have to escalate so that the heart and mind are turned off by the ever increasing feelings/emotional gratification which are pitted against the hatred of self. "Let us eat and drink and be merry for tomorrow we die." (Is 22:13; 1Co 15:32).
While we are born with Original Sin's pre-disposition to hate/reject self, it is a weakness that our Lord uses in us toward His goal of our salvation.
Without this hate/rejection of self, there can never be a hunger, a thirst for another self, a new and better self.
Here is where the stewardship of the Law serves to turn us from self. Hence the call to “repent”, turn back to God. Sin pre-disposes us to turn from God and ourselves. God’s calling us to repentance, gives us direction and His power to turn to Him. The key in this call to repent is that without the Gospel, without the Word of Christ descending into our personal pits of hatred, so magnificently on display in passion and death of Christ, we can have neither a new or better self. For apart from Christ, all the other selves out there are neither new, nor better;- they are just like us - bound in sin and its self-hatred.
Baptism is our Lord’s personal entry into each of us where He unites this self-hatred to Himself as He received it on the Cross and unites His death in this hatred to us – putting us to death and resurrected us in Himself as a new person.
United to Christ - the self that is bound in sin and hatred is put to death by the power of His death.
United to Christ – we are created as a new self in Christ with the same purpose that Adam and Eve were created with – doing good to all as they had opportunity and ability according to the relationships God has created for them.
United to Christ – our new self in Christ with a predisposition to love/choose Christ and His will for us by believing in Christ and receiving Him through His Word and the sacrament of His Body and Blood.
United to Christ – our new self in Christ resides along side of our old self, in sin with his predispositions to hate self and others. Yet the new self/life we are given in Christ does not live by our ability to overcome the old self – but by faith in Christ whose love/choice of us in forgiveness is greater and will never be separated from us.
- By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; 1 John 3:19-21 (ESV)
- Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword … For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:35, 38-39 (ESV)
- Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Heb 13:7-8 (ESV)
The quest to love self can only end in defeat. Yet it is a quest that many believers, like unbelievers, set out upon over and over.
How often we are told that before you can truly love someone,- you must first love yourself. Sounds reasonable, but it is a sanctified way of keeping ourselves the issue, not others. Notice that such a quest justifies devoting ourselves to saving ourselves from our own self-hatred.
The reality each of us suffers under is that we cannot turn back, let alone cope with original sin's predisposition to hate ourselves. Any and every attempt to love ourselves will crash and burn when we run into our own faults, failures and sin.
Many Christians are seduced into undertaking this same quest. They believe that because Christ has saved them and they are born again, they can somehow finally achieve the love of self. Such beliefs and arguments that arise in them are all based on the same god talk that Job's friends offered him. It all sounds “godly”, yet none of the talk is God's but rather our talk of what we imagine is godly. Those who pursue this quest will end up as Job ended with his friends – not comforted. For all their words to Job and all their tears and time with him, Job was never comforted by them. Job was not comforted until God spoke and what God spoke never answered any Job’s questions. God’s Word to Job simply reminded him that God was God, his God, and Job was not God, but God’s child. Note that God sternly rebuked Job's friends because in all their god talk - they never spoke of God what was right (Job 42:7-9).
Nowhere in Scripture does the Lord ever give us a command to love ourselves. He does give us a command according to the purpose we were first created with: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:37-40). How is the love of self defined for the purpose of loving neighbor? Again, the Lord does not leave us to subjectively determine this. He simply says "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." (Mt 7:12).
The only way to rightly love self is to rightly love/believe in Jesus Christ, whose own kind of love sought and redeemed us when there was no reason to in us.
To rightly love self is to love/to believe in Christ for to believe in Him is to reach by the Holy Spirit beyond yourself that you might receive Him and His redeeming mercies to yourself.
The goal of your life is not to love yourself; Jesus does that for you and for God the Father. Your goal is to believe in Him and from Him, through Him and in Him, be the you He redeemed you to be for sake of those around you.
God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Eph 2:4-10 (ESV)
Grasping the truth that we cannot rightly love ourselves because we are bound in hatred/rejection of ourselves is very freeing for the believer. We may not "feel" good about ourselves, but we can be "glad" that we are loved by someone (Jesus Christ) who is greater than our hearts. “By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.” 1 Jn 3:19-20.
In Christ we constantly the love of God that sets us free in forgiveness, from living to deal with our hatred and rejection of self, so that we might love/chose the good we are able to do for whoever has need of us.
- pmwl
Updated 2-22-2012
