GOSPEL MESSAGE & RECORDING
Either if it was at our wedding or a wedding that we attended, we are quite familiar with the words of the Apostle Paul: “husbands love your wives as yourself.” (Eph 5:28) St. Paul’s idea of how a husband should love his wife as himself were not his thoughts alone, but one that he took from his Lord. Christ taught that we should, “love our neighbor as ourselves.” (Mark 12:31) Here, St. Paul takes the teachings of his Lord and applies them to marriage.
A husband loving his wife, or someone being loving toward their neighbor, is something we can all visualize. For example, a husband making sure the house is clean or helping taking care of the children can be understood as an act of love. Assisting our neighbors by bringing them food when they are sick or mowing their lawn, likewise, can be understood as an act of love. However, when we try to think about how we can “love ourselves,” that is very hard to visualize. Meaning, how do we exactly do that? Scripture does not offer a clear answer to that question. In other words, there are no examples. Scripture does, however, indirectly answer the question.
In Eph. 5 and Mark 12, we can see that Scripture ties our “love for yourself” to our “love for our spouse or neighbor.” Though there is no “how-to” in terms of “loving yourself;” that is, we don’t know how it looks, we can determine, however, how much we “love our ourselves,” by how much we “love our spouse or neighbor.” For example, when we show mercy to someone who is not deserving of our mercy, we show how much we love ourselves because Christ showed mercy to us. Then again, when we show compassion to others, we are demonstrating that we love ourselves because Christ showed compassion to our souls. Further, when we forgive others when they have done us wrong, we show that we love ourselves because Christ forgave us of our sins.
Conversely, if to love others determines how much we, then NOT loving others determines how much we DON’T love ourselves. For example, we can determine how much we DON’T love ourselves by the anger, lack of forgiveness, or jealousy that we project toward our neighbors/spouse.
When we get angry with others, do we ask ourselves why we are angry? Is it necessary to be angry with someone, even if it seems justified? Being angry consistently could be a sign of the lack of love that we have inside for ourselves. The happier than we are with ourselves the more tolerant we will be of others.
When we are jealous (envious) of others, we demonstrate that we don’t love who we are as a person, with the talents and gifts that God gave to us. Being jealous of others is a projection of our lack of love for ourselves.
When we are unforgiving of others, we demonstrate the lack of love that we have for ourselves, because we have not been able to experience the forgiveness of God in our lives. This could indicate that we have a sin problem that we feel God has not forgiven; and thus, we project that on to others by being unforgiving toward them.