The Bible tells us that we are to “love our neighbors as ourselves.” The truth is, we do. I’ve often heard it said in light of that admonition from the Lord to love our neighbors as ourselves, that if you don’t love yourself, you will not be able to love your neighbor. I passionately affirm that that is the truth. Our ability to love others can be measured by the love we have for ourselves. One of the highest expressions of love, if not the highest, is forgiveness, and in this fallen world surrounded by fallen people the opportunity to forgive is presented to us again and again. I have discovered that those who withhold forgiveness do so because they’d not understood their own forgiveness.
Of course, that commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves is preceded by the first and great commandment, which is to love our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Follow me for a minute as I go down a relevant rabbit trail. 1 John 4:19 says, “We love because He first loved us.” Our ability to love God with all of our heart is a response to an increasing revelation of how much He loves us. The more you know about how much God loves you, the more your heart will be provoked to love him in return. Insight into God’s wholeheartedness towards you will always result in a greater wholeheartedness toward Him. God’s wholehearted love toward us is so massive that we should never assume that God feels about us the way we feel about ourselves unless we love ourselves fiercely, relentlessly, joyfully, and unconditionally. Ephesians 3 even tells us that if we are going to be filled with the fullness of God, then there must be an ever-increasing personal revelation of the height, depth, width, and length of the love of God for us. There is a great description of God’s love for us, which includes the extraordinary nature of His forgiveness in Micah 7:18 – 19, “Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession? He does not retain His anger forever because HE DELIGHTS IN UNCHANGING LOVE. He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities underfoot. Yes, You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” God doesn’t just love us; He delights in loving us, and His delight in loving us never changes. One of the ways His extraordinary love is expressed is His casting ALL of our sins to the depths of the sea.
After being in the ministry for 42 years, I am more convinced than ever that the people who have a hard time loving and forgiving their neighbors are those who don’t love themselves, and their self rejection is because they’ve never had a clear revelation of how much God loves them. If you don’t know how much God loves you, and has forgiven you then you will never love Him as much as you want to, or as much as He longs for you too. Of course, the natural consequence is that inner self-hatred, and self-rejection, will result in loving your neighbor the same way you love yourself. If you find yourself as a person who struggles with loving others and forgiving others. If you find that you keep score a lot when people hurt or offend you, and it is hard for them to get off of your list, and you need to look deep within and find that the problem isn’t with them but with the you that is never fully embraced the love and forgiveness of God for your own life.