Love of self
The Puritan John Milward posed the question, In what sense is it lawful to love oneself? In answering the question, he points out that Scripture teaches the sinfulness of self-love, 2 Tim 3:1-4. The worship of self is idolatry of the most common and destructive kind. But, although love of the sinful self is hateful, love of the natural self is good, as all divinely created things are good.
We love our bodies, and are bound to care for them, Eph 5:29; cf. Lev 19:28; 1 Kings 18:28; Mk 5:5. The instinct of self-preservation is deeply-rooted. We may, however, sin against our bodies by overwork, neglect of food or medicine, intemperance, cf. 1 Cor 6:18.
How much more should we love our souls, by embracing Christ in his gospel, and by abiding in him, Acts 20:28; Rom 14:12; 2 Jn 8. It is only on the supposition of self-love that the promises and threatenings of God are effective, leading us on the one hand to seek what is good for us, and on the other hand to flee from what is harmful, Deut 30:19. (See John Milward, Puritan Sermons, Vol I, 624-627)
Nevertheless, it has long been recognised that love of self has clear limitations. Francis of Sales wrote that ‘self-love pushes and insinuates itself into everything, while making us believe it is not there at all.’
The saintly Puritan Richard Baxter recognised the danger of legitimate love of self turning into idolatry of self:-
‘When God should guide us, we guide ourselves; when he should be our Sovereign, we rule ourselves; the laws which he gives us we find fault with and would correct, and if we had the making of them, we would have made them otherwise; when he should take care of us (and must, or we perish), we will care for ourselves. . . . We are naturally our own idols.’
Richard Lovelace writes:-
‘Self-knowledge and self-fulfilment are considered to be the core of human achievement by the nonreligious world. The classical Greek counsel was ‘know thyself’. Humanistic psychology and the human potential movement, forces which helped create what Tom Wolfe called ‘The Me Decade’, have stressed the creative force in each individual which must be set free from society’s repressive grip. Yet the search for these goals has produced a lot of people who are at best self-preoccupied and at worst obnoxiously self-assertive.’
(Renewal as a way of life, 18f.)
In his final book, the 88-year-old John Stott identified narcissism (excessive love of oneself) as one of the ‘contemporary trends which threaten to swallow us up’:-
‘Unfortunately, some of this teaching has permeated the church, with some Christians urging that we must not only love God and our neighbour, but we must also love ourselves. But no, this is surely a mistake for three reasons. First, Jesus spoke of ‘the first and great commandment’ and of ‘the second’, but did not mention a third. Secondly, self-love is one of the signs of the last days (2 Timothy 3:2). Thirdly, the meaning of agape love is the sacrifice of oneself in the service of others. Sacrificing oneself in the service of oneself is clearly nonsense! What then should our attitude be to ourselves? It is a combination of self-affirmation and self-denial—affirming everything in us which comes to us from our creation and redemption, and denying everything which can be traced to the fall.’
(The Radical Disciple: Wholehearted Christian Living, p26f).’
Elsewhere, Stott writes:-
‘It is sometimes claimed that the command to love our neighbours as ourselves [Mt 19:19] is implicitly a requirement to love ourselves as well as our neighbours. But this is not so. One can say this with assurance, partly because Jesus spoke of the first and second commandment, without mentioning a third; partly because “agape” is selfless love which cannot be turned in on the self; and partly because according to Scripture self-love is the essence of sin. Instead, we are to affirm all of ourselves which stems from creation, while denying all of ourselves which stems from the fall. What the second commandment requires is that we love our neighbours as much as we do in fact (sinners as we are) love ourselves.’
(The Message of Romans)
And again:-
‘That unfortunately, some of this teaching has permeated the church, with some Christians urging that we must not only love God and our neighbour, but we must also love ourselves. But no, this is surely a mistake for three reasons. First, Jesus spoke of ‘the first and great commandment’ and of ‘the second’, but did not mention a third. Secondly, self-love is one of the signs of the last days (2 Timothy 3:2). Thirdly, the meaning of agape love is the sacrifice of oneself in the service of others. Sacrificing oneself in the service of oneself is clearly nonsense! What then should our attitude be to ourselves? It is a combination of self-affirmation and self-denial—affirming everything in us which comes to us from our creation and redemption, and denying everything which can be traced to the fall. from the rich variety of words in our language which are compounded with “self”. There are more than fifty which have a perjorative meaning – words like self-applause, self-absorption, self-assertion, self-advertisement, self-indulgence, self-gratification, self-pity, self-importance, and self-will.’
(Authentic Christianity, 156)