Love Circle

In the beginning man was to love God. It soon became apparent that man loved God, but God had competition. After sin entered into the world, man's focus was on the "self":

Genesis 2:5 "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."

With sin came self-worship. Man's "other gods" were each person's existence. It wasn't the idols of stone of whom God was jealous. It was man's desire for self-satisfaction. Rather than magnifying God, men and women prioritized the pleasure of the "self". After all, that's what the forbidden fruit was all about; pleasure!

In the New Testament the god of "Self" is called the flesh.

1 Peter 4:2 "That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God."

There are two "gods" indicated here: the flesh and God. We either live a life of lusting after the flesh or doing the will of God! That's God and the other "god": JHWH and Self, since the self consists of the flesh and those things which pleasure it. What are the things men do the appease their god of Self?

Galatians 5:19 "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, 20 Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies..."

Anything contrary to God's will is seeking to elevate the Self over God. We may still seek to do God's will, but the lusts of the flesh to appease the Self are so strong that we worship another god besides God. We don't abandon our bride, the Self merely fornicates against God!

 Matthew 26:41 "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."

There exists in our make-up a struggle constantly going on. Even if we worship God, we are pulled toward satisfying the other god; the Self, by appeasing it with things of the flesh. Because of original sin, everyone has many times chose to appease their god over God by being in the flesh. Even Christians are tempted by Satan to bow down to their own desires. We all have weaknesses, a crack in the armor, which Satan seems to find out readily.

To defeat the God of Self requires love. It's a given that everyone loves themselves. We were created by God to be so:

Ephesians 5:29a "For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it..."

Because we love ourself, the Self is the one of three in the "circle of love" which is shown in Figure #1:

Figure #1-Love Circle

I showed a king as "the Self" because we treat ourselves as if we're king! (This particular picture is of King Nebuchadnazzer).  Rather than God being our king, we desire to be like him and establish our own kingdom. It's the kingdom of The Flesh rather than the kingdom of God.  As a subject of The Flesh we are all pulled to satisfy The Flesh. Hence, we worship our Self!

Why do we worship our Self other than to satisfy The Flesh? It's because Satan goes to and fro encouraging each one of us to do what's right in our own eyes. Satan even tempted Jesus! Jesus defeated Satan. However, out god is not omnipotent nor omniscient. We can be defeated! Satan bears down on Christians even harder because that undermines God the most! What we do when we live a life in The Flesh is trade our soul for the "goods" Satan has to offer: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,  Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, etc. All men sin and fall short of God's standards. The Self fails and so do the billions of other gods of Self. Many times our own Self worships someone else's "Self" in lieu of God. Satan wants all of us to worship anything else other than the One True God and when we do, Satan has met his own criteria and is happy just because God is sad!

Let's look again at the "Love Circle". This is what Jesus said about love:

Matthew 22:36 "Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."

You see there are three "loves" mentioned: ourselves, others and God! Since, the love of Self is driven by lust, the love of Self is Eros type of love, being sexual in nature. The foreskin of the Jew was cut off in patriarchal times as a sacrifice of "the flesh". With the advent of Christ, with being born again a new creature, "the flesh" which we sacrifice to God is our all!  We become a new creature in Christ. Hence, Christians present their god as a living sacrifice and cleanse their bodies and minds from their Self-god, The Flesh.

The love circle shows "others". God commands us to love others. By doing so we show him love because since God is supernatural we must show him love in a natural way. We care for the souls of others! That's philio, or brotherly love! That's the "works" which is a result of our sacrificing our own flesh. We then care more for others, and not their flesh, but their souls! This love is called "the one like unto it", referring to the Greatest Commandment.  Those twain are really one command, because "love of others" is how we love God!

Finally, in the Love Circle we see God, represented by his incarnate personality, Jesus. When Jesus said "love God" he's referring to himself! That type of love is called in the Greek agape. It's divine love!  It's demonstrated to God whom we can't see by loving others who we can see. Of course Christians have purportedly sacrificed the Self, but they do so to hang on to their own soul. Face it! The very fact that we want to live eternally is because we love our self! That's the one satisfaction which God wants us to pleasure our "self" with, not the flesh, but the Spirit! (Note than "s" refers to us, but "S" refers to our god when used in the word (S/s)elf).

These are the three types of love! Satan goes to and fro and endeavors to disrupt any aspect of the love shown in Figure #1! He wants us to sin against God by committing sins against God, against others and even against the self!

1 Corinthians 6:18 "Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body."

Now you have it! Fornication is against one's own self, the last seven commandments are sins against others and the first three commandments are sins against God, which effectually are all sins are! By doing acts forbidden by God Satan entices us to break that Love Circle which is pure and holy.

This sin of "fornication"! It's so important because when we flirt with "other gods" we are fornicating with our own "god of Self". Fornication is pleasuring the Self and is the worship of "other gods". How we struggle against our Self even when Satan is busy elsewhere!