Jesus tells us to love our neighbours as ourselves. I finished that post with some thoughts on how if we are to love our neighbours well, we have to learn to love ourselves well too.
I've been thinking about that idea in the days since. It's an interesting concept to think about.
Some people may argue with me that we live in a world where we're told to place too much evidence on ourselves and loving ourselves. And others would argue that we live in a world where self-esteem is destroyed in many people and they don't know to love themselves at all.
I think part of the problem is the language being used. Loving yourself can seem to be a conceited way of living. Maybe a better way of looking at it would be to see it as seeing yourself the way God sees you.
We need to learn to see ourselves as God sees us, because if we don't we'll have a hard time loving others well. There's nothing conceited about learning to see ourselves the way God sees us. That is the way God wants us to live. And out of that flows love for our neighbour, like Jesus talked about in Matthew 22:27-29.
The problem is that we often have a difficult time believing what God says about us, so we don't see ourselves as God sees us. We've allowed other people's opinions of us and our own thoughts about ourselves, to get in the way of us seeing ourselves as God sees us.
Scripture is full of references to how God sees us. Full of references that tell us what God sees when He looks at us.
- You are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17)
- You are not condemned (Romans 8:1)
- You are God's workmanship - His masterpiece (Ephesians 2:10)
- You are chosen (1 Peter 2:9)
- You are a child of God (John 1:12, 1 John 3:1)
- You are an overcomer (1 John 4:4)
- You are a friend of God (John 15:15)
- You are forgiven (1 John 1:9)
Those are just a few of the many verses in Scripture that tell us how God sees us.
How are you doing at seeing yourself as God sees you?
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