Loving Yourself as Jesus Loves You: Where Does the Strength Come From? (Part 3)

The ability to love myself comes not from my own internal reservoir of self-worth but from having first received and accepted God's love for me. I understand how righteous shame and guilt bring about healing and restoration in Christ. It’s a scary feeling in some regards to let go of the pain and negativity I feel for myself because it is all I have ever known; it’s safe and feels right. So how do I actually love myself as Jesus does when compared to Him, I am so inadequate?

Jesus doesn’t focus on self-love in His teaching, but He does command sacrificial, unconditional love, like Christ’s love for me in John 13:34, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." To love myself when I don’t feel like it, the reliance is not on my own feelings but on God's love poured into my heart through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enables me to see myself as God sees me and to choose to act in love even when I feel unlovable. Finding self-love through the Holy Spirit is rooted in the humility of acknowledging my need for God's love, not my own merits.

Humility is complete dependence on God for all things; this includes salvation, grace, and even loving myself. I have to embrace humility and understand my capabilities and weaknesses in a realistic, God-honoring way. 2 Corinthians 12:9 reminds me what God says about weakness, "But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me." My weakness in loving myself will reveal God's power. My own self-loathing has gone on so long that it’s only through God that I will begin to love myself as He loves me.

John 15:5 uses the metaphor of the vine and branches to illustrate a believer's complete dependence on Jesus for spiritual life and "fruitfulness," which includes the capacity for love. The passage says, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." This love is then reflected in how I see myself and ultimately others. The culture of the world teaches me that self-love comes from within myself, internally, but that contradicts John 15:5, which shows that I can only find the source of love by staying connected to Christ.

This shift from focusing on myself to focusing on God is key to true confidence, self-love, and peace. Ephesians 4:24, "to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness," offers a profound alternative to worldly self-love by redirecting my focus away from a flawed "old self" toward a "new self," created in the image of God. The pursuit of godliness described in Ephesians 4:24 provides a powerful alternative to worldly notions of self-love, which often risk becoming self-centered and prideful.

Self-love that is accomplished through God is not pride but a humble acceptance of my inherent worth through God's eyes. Godly humility enables me to love myself with grace based on my identity as God's creation. True humility and focusing on my relationship with and connection to God replaces self-loathing and its opposite, pride. True humility involves thinking of yourself less, NOT thinking less of yourself. Loving myself is an act of humility and dependence on God, not a feat of my self-will.

The journey to love myself as Jesus loves me ends not in a destination of perfected self-regard, but at the starting line of a lifelong reliance. It begins by accepting who God says I am, His masterpiece (Part 1). It continues by rejecting the accuser's shame and clinging to the liberating truth of His grace (Part 2). And now I see it is only sustained by abiding in Him. My weakness in loving myself is not a failure; it is the very place where His power is made perfect. It is in thinking of myself less, and of Him more, that I finally find the freedom to see myself with the grace, worth, and love with which He has always seen me.