 Hey, what's up guys? It's Isaac and today we're going to be talking about self-love. This is a big topic that I wanted to talk about because it seems to be, you know, all throughout our culture, this idea of love yourself, this idea that, you know what, you need to love yourself before you can love other people. And I don't know if you're anything like me, but when you hear any of these kind of statements, it puts my mind into overdrive. I begin to just kind of like, okay, there's some truth to it, but yet it doesn't seem right. So this is kind of my way of thinking through this topic as Christians. Let's talk about it. First, I want to begin by digging into what the Bible says, because I think that's a good place to start. When we talk about being disciples of Christ, it's really easy to just get in our own heads about it and just try to make up answers on our own and what our opinion is. But let's look at what the Bible says. There's one verse here from 1st John 4-7. Dear friends, let us love one another for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Another verse here from Mark 12-31. The second is this, love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. And then we have another verse here from 1st John 4-19. We love because he first loved us. Okay, I have to be honest in my research and as you probably could tell from those verses, those verses weren't really about loving yourself. They were about loving other people and God. And in my research and in looking and digging into this topic, it became apparent to me that there wasn't a lot of Bible verses on loving yourself. I once heard it put that, you know what, God, Jesus didn't speak a lot on loving yourself because he knew we were good at it. What we're not good at and what we struggle with is loving other people and loving him, which is more important than loving ourselves anyway. And that's why he focused on it because we're really good at loving ourselves. Now, although I think there is some truth and a bunch of truth to that statement that, yeah, we're good at loving ourselves. We have no problem with that. I do think there's some issues that are pushed to the side if we only just like end the conversation there. Things like self-hate, shame, guilt. These are big issues that people deal with. They're in and amidst this conversation of self-love. So I figure, okay, let's talk about this because it would be easy for me to say, okay, you know what, you're plenty good at loving yourself. You know what, you need to focus more about loving others. And there's nothing wrong with loving other people, but in the midst of this conversation, let's talk about when we actually have a hard time understanding ourselves, putting ourselves in proper context to how God sees us. So let's talk a little bit about self-hate. I have to believe that because Jesus said whoever hates his brother is a murderer, you know, he doesn't want us hating other image-bearers. And when we think of ourselves, and if that language is a little bit foreign to you, an image-bearer, we bear God's image. He created us in his image, and we show the world what God is like through our actions, and we image him on this earth. So that's the terminology there. But when we think about, okay, yeah, God doesn't want us hating other image-bearers. That's like murder. Does he want us hating ourselves? No, we're image-bearers too. We shouldn't be hating ourselves. So I have to believe that, look, God is no more for self-hate than he is no more for, you know, hating other people. It's not this idea that God wants you to just, you know, hate yourself and just, you know, you're a terrible and you suck in your garbage and your trash, because that's not what he says at all. I do want to make a little bit of a distinction here and clarification here. Yes, God does not want us hating ourselves, but oftentimes our terminology can get a little bit confused, especially in regard to a verse like this. So let's talk about it. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourself to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. I fully believe that God wants us to hate our flesh, our sinful flesh. Now, we need to make a little bit of a distinction there, because our sinful flesh, what we once were, that spiritual side to us, that we were just against God and we were following our own passions. You know, the Bible says don't listen to that. Put that away. You know, in Christ, you're a new creation, so we can hate that. We can hate that, but we're not actually hating ourselves, a new creation. It's an important distinction there to make. God does not advocate self-hate. He wants you to hate the flesh, hate the sin that was once in you, but he doesn't say, oh, you know what, you're trash or garbage. No, he says you're a new creation. You were made in my image. Don't hate image-bearers. You are bearing God's image. So when we talk about self-love, I think what I want to say is, yes, it's important to love what God created, but it shouldn't be a man focus or a self-centered focus like, oh man, I'm so awesome. I'm so cool. I love this. And I think the proper framing of this conversation is that of thankfulness to God, is identifying stuff that you love about your character or your just your personality and just being thankful to God. Hey, God, thank you for making me this way. Thank you for that. Because when we begin to cast our gaze onto the Creator, it's a lot harder to become prideful or self-centered. Self-love on its own is going to be toxic for us. If we're just like, hey, you know what? I love me. I'm awesome. I'm so cool. I'm the best. You know what? That's not healthy biblical thinking. But when we can say, God, thank you for giving me this personality trait or thank you for giving me the skills that I'm able to use. When we're casting our gaze upon Jesus in thankfulness, that's when we can really be truly healthy disciples. And we're not going to be able to be caught up in this pride and self-centeredness that often self-love on its own. It produces. So that's kind of my perspective on it. And just to reiterate, it's not about hating yourself or tearing yourself down and telling yourself, oh, I'm such a bad person. No, it's about looking at what God has created and being thankful to him. There's nothing wrong with that. And that's actually important. 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Thanks so much for watching, guys. And I'll see you next time. See ya. Bye soda.