Loving me is a given. Even working out our own salvation is for the pursuit of saving our most loved one - the god of Self. Scripture says, "no man hateth his own flesh" (Ephes 5:29). That same passage goes on to say, "but nourish it and cherisheth it" and compares that to how much God loves us! Mankind's problem, then, is perceiving ourselves as gods and idolizing our flesh. Things and pleasure appease our flesh which, again, is our idol. That's how much we love ourselves!
Because we love ourselves so much, it takes away from how much we love others and God. There seems to be only a given amount of love for each individual. That degree is with all our hearts, minds, souls, and strengths (Mark 12:30). God gets that amount of love. How much is it? We are to love God with our all - everything we have to offer! "Nourishing and cherishing ourselves" takes away from loving God. However, since God commanded it, we are to love others just as much as we do ourselves. Loving others is how we demonstrate to God how much we love Him. Just as God died vicariously for mankind, mankind is to love God vicariously by loving others!
Loving others does not require additional capacity to love. We love others, not only as we are to love God, but to manifest love for God. In other words, loving others is the metric for loving God! That follows because it is the corollary to the Greatest Commandment.
Loving ourselves is mankind's number one problem. When we focus on ourselves, we use up the love which God is due. We become the "other god besides God" (Exod 20:3). The literal problem is that "we are gods in God's face". God sees who we love and has sorrow. He could get angry but He is deeply hurt because we place ourselves before Him! With my premise that loving others is a reflection on how much we love God, then when we don't love others, it sorrows God!
We all love ourselves. God reveals that. Then our shortcoming is not loving others the way we love ourselves. The test for love is loving even our enemies! Why so? We are God's enemies by nature, and he still "so loves us" that he desires that "none shall perish" (John 3:16). You and I are God's enemies until we change our nature by being born-again. Unfortunately, most people are only half Christians if that could be: they believe but are not transformed. Their Self-god still exists incognito. They still love themselves but fail to love others. The new creation should be one that loves God and others. If that love is missing, there was no transformation, and the believer must still be a child of Satan..
God is not a respecter of persons (Acts 10:34). Those who are not transformed are! We tend to love those who are closest. It's easy to love our parents (the Fifth Commandment), our children, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and close friends, but not the others even within the church. Within the Church is where the most evil lurks. As Christians, we are to love others. How is that done? Commandments 5-10. We still do all those things!
Many proudly respond, "Well, I have never murdered anyone!" Yes, you have! You have vicariously murdered God and others. How so?
1 John 3:15 Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.We must understand hatred! It is not profoundly despising another person: it is failure to love them. Love is like a full glass of water - living water, it seems! The full "glass of love" has metrics on the side like a measuring cup. The top mark is "love as myself". If that glass is not full, the shortage is not merely "dislike" or "love mildly"; it is hatred. Hatred is not as profound as one thinks! Adam loved God. By disobeying him, he rebelled. That was his hatred showing, or lack of love. When we fail to love others as ourselves, we show some degree of hatred. Because we love ourselves so much we come up short in loving others. Thus, we are irreverent to God's will, and fail to show God the love which He is due. That failure is mild hatred. Profound hatred is blasphemy - rejecting God completely. If we hate others tremendously, we vicariously hate God the same amount. Loving others is imperative. If we don't love others and demonstrate it, we lack love for God!
The problem in the Church is not so much God-focused but us and them focused. We love ourselves too greatly and others not enough! If a stranger walks into a church, he or she can immediately detect love or not. They don't come back most often when they don't detect love. My own problem is sensing that I am not loved. My greater problem is placing too much importance on me! Church is not about me; it's about God. If others love God as they say they do, then they will love me!
I am difficult to love. That is a test for other Christians. Can the Christian have love for the ones who are hard to love? If they can't, the love of God is not there. That's the cross we are to bear - to love others. Our own crucifixion is when we quit loving ourselves so much and start loving others. That puts our cross right up there with Jesus's (Rom 12:1).
I know those within churches which I have attended who hated me! My responsibility was reconciliation. I adore that feeling when I reconcile with others to whom I am estranged! I have had occasions where I worked hard to reconcile but failed because the other person(s) were unwilling! Reconciliation, even when not in the wrong, is paramount to loving others (Mat 5:24). That is the test for loving others. That same verse implies that if we can't reconcile with others, it's futile to claim that we love God! When I can't reconcile with someone in the Church, my joy is dampened for I am not doing what I should be doing - loving others!
Some say, "But he or she wronged me, and I can't let it go!" Here's what Jesus said about that:
Mat 18:21 Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? 22 Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.We are to forgive an endless number of times as God does us! Like Him, forgiveness must be more than lip-service. It must be the continuation of love, and even forgetting the wrong. We can't forget! We must. That is to quit holding things against another person.
Since Satan works hardest within the Church to destroy it, the church building is where discordance is seen the most. However, there is a separation therein: some will fail God and others will remain loving. The Church is the "threshing floor" where the bad seed will be separated from the good and fall down the bottomless pit beneath the Rock in which the threshing is done. To put it mildly, loving others is a Christian's "reasonable service". Many Christians fail God with that but he never fails us. Yes, God is Good - and all the time! We, however, are not.
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