Can You Truly Love Others If You Don't Love Yourself?

[Wrangler]

Talked with a fairly new Christian over the weekend. He lived a meth chemist and dealer for a season before coming to Christ. He struggles to forgive himself. So, it got me thinking Can You Truly Love Others If You Don't Love Yourself? Love to hear your thoughts.

 

[Wrangler]

The Bible says precious little about self love. It is implied when it says to love others as ourselves. What advice can you give to those who struggle to live and forgive themselves?

 

[Question Everything]

I've never understood that one. I love everyone MORE than myself. Yes I know, personal issue, lol.

 

[Gottservant]

This is a misleading question: you are not separate from others, so how can you love yourself and not love others?

 

[Lordsflower]

I don't think we can believe ourselves lovable if we don't first love our self.

If we can't feel love for our self,how would we know what love is so to say we love others?

How can we say we love God if we don't know what love is? How do we learn to love but through learning to love who we learn and know our self to be?

God loves us. How can we not love us too?

 

[Rita]

I've never understood that one. I love everyone MORE than myself. Yes I know, personal issue, lol.

Yes, same here.
Maybe it’s more a case of accepting the love of Christ for ourselves, in that way we can understand and appreciated someone else’s struggle with the past or issues that we battle with in the present.
Like most of us @Wrangler he is on a journey of healing and perhaps it’s a case of asking him to trust in the inner work of the Holy Spirit as a counsellor - to unravel the reasons why he turned to the drugs in the first place. To understand what led him down that path, to see that there were contributing factors and influences. I didn’t truly do that within my life until I went through the divorce , and I had been a Christian for over 20years by that stage. We all lock things away and we have to allow the Lord to open up what we run away from - think it’s harder for men to do because of the social signals that say ‘ men don’t cry ‘ ect ect
I have peace with my past now x ( it’s the present I struggle with at times !!!! lol )

 

[Wrangler]

I've never understood that one. I love everyone MORE than myself. Yes I know, personal issue, lol.

Absolute v Relative.

To love others MORE is not the command. You are not less than others and yes, it is a personal issue. How do you struggle with it? Were you love as a child?

Also, it implies you do love yourself ALSO (just relatively less). To understand it begins by realizing where he came from. He admitted HATING himself and being so angry with the circumstances of his early childhood and young adulthood. Having never known love, recall ever being loved, he bought Satan's lie that he was unlovable. That was his world view. And this he projected onto others.

In addition to not loving himself, he continues to feel guilt for how badly he treated others. Although saved, he realizes he has a long way to go to being sanctified.

 

[Wrangler]

This is a misleading question: you are not separate from others, so how can you love yourself and not love others?

We are not separate from others? Never heard the story of the 99 sheep? One separated from the rest.

Point is, he does not love himself. Turning your question on its head. So, how can he love others?

 

[Wrangler]

Maybe it’s more a case of accepting the love of Christ for ourselves

I think that is it.

In Sunday's sermon, the Pastor talked about the difficulty many Christians have is RECEIVING grace.

perhaps it’s a case of asking him to trust in the inner work of the Holy Spirit

Bingo! Ever hear the expression, "you can't get blood out of a stone?" It is not about the object of trust, the Holy Spirit. It is this man is so wounded, he never developed the capacity to trust, period. People were the cause of pain and he lived a very dark life of suspecting everyone of treachery and duplicity.

Praise God he is on the right path. Another friend told him that talking about it, admitting all this, proves that.

 

[Wrangler]

If we can't feel love for our self,how would we know what love is so to say we love others?

How can we say we love God if we don't know what love is?

Welcome to the forum @Lordsflower.

It's axiomatic that you can only give to someone else what you have.

I cannot give you a dollar or spoon or love if I do not have it to begin with. For most of us, love is natural. Several posters have said they love others more than themselves, even. For my friend, he's come from a horribly dark place that prison was God's blessing and merciful gift.

Funny, many imagine those in church are goodie-too-shoes. When the prison experience is the highlight of your life's experience, we are dealing with an example of God's abundant grace to reach such a lost soul. What a great God we serve!

 

[Rita]

I think that is it.

In Sunday's sermon, the Pastor talked about the difficulty many Christians have is RECEIVING grace.



Bingo! Ever hear the expression, "you can't get blood out of a stone?" It is not about the object of trust, the Holy Spirit. It is this man is so wounded, he never developed the capacity to trust, period. People were the cause of pain and he lived a very dark life of suspecting everyone of treachery and duplicity.

Praise God he is on the right path. Another friend told him that talking about it, admitting all this, proves that.

Hi Wrangler
Dont know whether this will help but it took me years to trust The Holy Spirit , for years I went to man for help. Eventually the Lord laid something on my heart ‘ do you want to be healed ‘ my reply was yes , but even then I was unprepared for what would lay ahead. Within a few days I was watching something and suddenly the past was ignited on an emotional level - all these emotions and triggers started to invade my days. It was months before I realised that The Holy Spirit was helping me - my pastor said it was like lancing inner boils of poison that had impacted internally. Once I started to work with The Holy Spirit it became a fascinating journey of discovery, but it was painful.
I had an image some years later when deeper things started to be dealt with, it was of a house and room by room had been emptied and swept clean, but right in the basement was a chest and it was locked up tight. I knew it was a picture of the healing process, but that chest needed to be opened , emptied. It was as if the Lord was preparing me , but equally asking me permission. The chest represented those things I had locked away inside my heart, buried them.
The Holy Spirit knows everything about us already, so perhaps reminding him that nothing has been hidden and that Christ has come into his life knowing everything about him, he is already accepted and loved. The healing process is to release him from his prison, not to change anything between him and the Lord xxxxxxxxxx

 

[Lambano]

The Bible says precious little about self love. It is implied when it says to love others as ourselves. What advice can you give to those who struggle to live and forgive themselves?

A slight variant: What advice can I give someone not who struggles to forgive themselves for what they've done but who hates themselves for WHO THEY ARE?

 

[Lambano]

God loves us. How can we not love us too?

 

[Bob Estey]

Talked with a fairly new Christian over the weekend. He lived a meth chemist and dealer for a season before coming to Christ. He struggles to forgive himself. So, it got me thinking Can You Truly Love Others If You Don't Love Yourself? Love to hear your thoughts.

What is to stop us from loving anyone we want to love?

 

[marks]

What is to stop us from loving anyone we want to love?

Nothing, it's a choice. But we may need to learn how.

Except a few mentally diseased people, everybody loves themself.

Ephesians 5:28-29 KJV
28) So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
29) For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:

Much love!

 

[Bob Estey]

Nothing, it's a choice. But we may need to learn how.

Except a few mentally diseased people, everybody loves themself.

Ephesians 5:28-29 KJV
28) So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
29) For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:

Much love!

I think there is confusion as to what it means to love people. I believe "love," as the word is used in the Bible, refers to how we treat people. As for how we feel about people, I think that's up to us.

 

[Gottservant]

We are not separate from others? Never heard the story of the 99 sheep? One separated from the rest.

Point is, he does not love himself. Turning your question on its head. So, how can he love others?

Yes but you are saying "you can't find someone who is lost, if you don't love yourself" - that's not true!

I get your point "it would be nice if we could just love ourselves, and if you don't know the difference: what's the point of loving anyone?"

But the answer remains the same "hate yourself, and you can love others more"

 

[Aunty Jane]

Here is a good scriptural point of reference.....
Romans 12:3-5...
“For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith. For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.” (NASB)

We cannot even love God if we cannot love ourselves....it’s a matter of degree.
We are “not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think”......so a measure of self esteem is necessary even to accept God’s forgiveness over past sins. If we understand that Christ died for all in equal measure, then he did not sacrifice himself more for one than another.....to have “sound judgment” and “faith”, we need the balance that God’s word gives us.....not too much and not too little, seeing our obligation to one another as brothers and sisters. Each has something to contribute to the others.