EDITORIAL: “...as thyself”

To love our neighbour ‘as ourselves’ is a frequently repeated commandment throughout the Bible (Lev. 19:18; Mt. 19:19; 22:39; Mk. 12:31; Lk. 10:27; Rom. 13:9; Gal. 5:14). James 2:8 even calls this “the law of the Kingdom” (GNB). This is the very principle by which we will eternally exist. It’s been pointed out often enough that to love others, we must in some sense love ourselves. And perhaps this is why there’s so little real love achieved and made in this world; because people have such a low view of themselves. Of course I am not talking about egoism or narcissism.

But as we start to think this matter through, we become aware of two groups of Scriptures. On the one hand, we are to not seek our own, but our neighbour’s good (1 Cor. 10:24); for love isn’t self-seeking (1 Cor. 13:4). And often enough, the Lord teaches us that self is to be crucified, indeed the whole call of the cross is a call to radical self-denial. Lk. 14:26 contains the ultimate challenge in this area- that if we don’t hate our own life, we cannot be His disciple. On the other hand, we are urged to love ourselves- “He who gets wisdom loves his own soul... He who is a partner with a thief hates his own life” (Prov. 19:8; 29:24). Husbands are to love their wives because “he that loves his own wife loves himself” and for Paul it was apparently inconceivable that anyone should hate themselves (Eph. 5:28)- even though he surely knew the phenomena of suicide and self mutilation.

So we are to deny self, to put self to death on the cross of Christ. And yet we are to love our own soul, love our neighbours as we love ourselves. I suggest the reconciliation of this paradox is to understand that (as Paul explains in Rom. 7:15-25) we are effectively two people; the natural person and the spiritual person. We are to deny the natural self; but to love the spiritual self.

God’s Positive View

The new person that was born in us at baptism is “Christ”, in that this new person whom God now looks at is covered with Christ, is “in Christ”, is counted by God as if they are Christ, with His righteousness counted to us. We were baptized into the Name- and the Name of God is essentially His characteristics, His personality, of grace, justice, kindness, judgment, saving love etc. (Ex. 34:5-7). That Name is called upon us and we call it upon ourselves at baptism, and throughout a life lived in Christ (James 2:7; Acts 22:16). God looks upon us as if we are as perfect as His spotless Son. This is one of the simplest and yet most difficult to believe of all spiritual realities. That as you sit and read these words, you are enthused over by God Almighty, as if you are Jesus. For this is really what love is about - looking at someone as if they are perfect, or at least, far better than they actually are. It’s not that the woman who plans to marry an alcoholic doesn’t know that he’s alcoholic. She simply perceives it differently - at that time. She sees him in another light, with the love that not only hopes, but sees present failure within the context of love for the essential person beneath it all. These are the things that love is partly about; and the love of God for us is no different.

Because we are clothed with Christ, we are seen by God as Him. Because He lives, we shall live also. Just as surely as we rose with Christ in baptism, so we shall in the last day. It’s almost too good news to believe. But what about... her sin, my failure, our weakness? Through the blood of Christ not even my sins can be a barrier to His plan of salvation, because, quite simply, He loves me, far more than I shall ever love Him, far deeper than I shall ever understand. But the reality is as is, and we therein should rejoice. We are covered in Christ, and this fact, so hard to believe, elicits some of the most breathtaking statements of all time:

“To present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy” (Jude 24)

“We should be holy and without blame before him in love... That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing (Eph. 1:4; 5:27)

“In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight” (Col. 1:22)

“In their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the throne of God” (Rev. 14:5).

Notice the words in italics. Our perfection is “in His sight”; in His presence, before His face, in His opinion, He finds no guile in us who have spoken guile; He presents us to Himself as spotless, just as a husband who is truly in love with his wife sees her, presents her to himself, in the same way. It just so happens that the opinion, the view, of God and His Son is the only opinion that ultimately matters. The most crucial question of our whole existence is, “Will I be in God’s Kingdom?” The simple answer is: Yes, if you are in Christ, you will be.

Self-perception

Insofar as we identify ourselves with that spiritual man created in us, the one whom God so loves, we will be able to ‘love ourselves’; and on this basis find strength to love our neighbour as we thus love ourselves. We will reckon our old self to be dead: “For you died, and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). We can only think positively of ourselves if someone else, something outside of us, provides us with validation and reason to be positive about ourselves. For otherwise, we would simply be proud and conceited. That ‘other’, that source of external love, acceptance and validation, is none other than the Father and His Son. But we still sin. The old self isn’t totally dead. As we know. Paul therefore teaches that we should “reckon ourselves” to be dead to sin (Rom. 6:11). The Greek word for “reckon” is that normally translated “impute”, in the context of imputing righteousness (Rom. 4:3,4,5,6,8,9). Strictly the Greek word means “to take an inventory” (Strong). We are to search through our lives and perceive ourselves as in Christ, as men and women who don’t sin because we are in Christ. We are to impute [AV “conclude”] that we are justified by faith (Rom. 3:28).

Having said this, Paul goes on in Romans 7 to lament that when all is said and done, he still sins. Yet he says that “with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin” (Rom. 7:25). He identifies himself with his spiritual man. This was the person he really felt to be “him”; he disowned his failures, whilst admitting them and feeling awful about them. And he goes on in Romans 8 to exalt that salvation is so very, very certain for him. This raises the question: “Who am I?” I submit that this question is about as crucial as “Will I be in the Kingdom?” Am I a guy with glasses born in a London hospital, living in a flat off Dzierciema Prospekt in Riga, Latvia which you can see on Google earth has a red roof, a husband, father, a religious guy who sins and fails... or do I rather perceive myself as the beloved of God, rejoiced over by a Father who can’t wait to immortalize me and a Lord and Master who can’t wait to claim me as His very own?

Attitude to others

Our negative attitude to ourselves leads to a cynical attitude towards our brethren; for we can perceive them, too, after the flesh, noticing all their failures. And yet both the Lord Jesus Himself and also Paul, spiritually mature as they were, could speak in such positive terms about their far weaker brethren. Paul often speaks of how we can “boast” in a good sense - he boasted of the promised generosity of the Corinthians, and also boasted about the Thessalonians: “We ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that you endure” (2 Thess. 1:4). He even says that others can boast about him - he the “wretched man” who couldn’t quit sin- e.g. “your boasting may abound in Christ Jesus in me” (Phil. 1:26). Thus being positive about ourselves leads to our being positive about others - just as we shall love others as we love ourselves.

False Guilt

What stops all this for so many is false guilt. It seems that we often feel we’ve sinned when we haven’t; and think we’ve not sinned when actually we have. Following are some of the reasons why believers fail to be able to accept the positive message that God loves those who are in Christ as much as He loves His own begotten Son:

There is a sense that it’s somehow a sin to be alive because human nature is sinful. Yet all that we say about human nature we say about the Lord Jesus; for He fully shared our nature. It’s no sin to be human; God isn’t angry with us just because we’re human.

We take false guilt from treating unwisdoms as sins. Naivety, inexperience, immaturity, genuine misreading of life and situations and people... all lead to poor decision making, but this isn’t sin of itself. Just as it’s no sin for a child to get a maths puzzle ‘wrong’ through taking wrong turnings in the process of solving it. As a manual worker, possibly a carpenter, the Lord Jesus surely would have made mistakes; forgotten or overlooked something, had to do a job again, misjudged a length. Anyone who’s done DIY work knows that this is inevitable. But it was no sin for Jesus, and such things are likewise no sin for us.

False guilt is played upon by the ever greater fear of the spirit of judgment which progressively fills our world. In one form or another, earth’s population is living in fear of judgment. In the end, it leads to an empty conformism to what is perceived to be the ‘safe’ position. But there truly is only one Judge, hence Paul could say to his critics within the brotherhood that it mattered so little to him how he was judged by them, for he had only One who would judge him (1 Cor. 4:3), and the spiritual man “himself is judged of no man”.

We are often plagued by a desire to separate out the things for which we are justly suffering, and things in which we are innocent victims. This struggle to understand the balance between personal guilt and being a victim of circumstance or other people makes it hard for some people to free themselves from guilt. My determined conclusion is that it is impossible, at least by any intellectual process, to separate out that suffering for which we are personally guilty, and that suffering of which we are merely victims. The cross of Jesus was not only to remove personal guilt through forgiveness; all our human sufferings and sicknesses were laid upon Him there. He was our guilt offering, upon whom we have laid our hands in identification. Our burdens, both of our own guilt and those which are laid upon us by life or other people, are and were carried away by Him who is our total Saviour.

Duncan Heaster