By Donna Volmerding
“Learning to love oneself is the greatest love of all.”
That’s what the song tells us, that self-love is the ultimate goal. How often
are we told that we can’t learn to love others until we learn to love
ourselves? Our society is saturated with this kind of specious reasoning, even
in the church body itself. However, this kind of thinking is diametrically
opposed to the teachings of Christ and everything that the Bible tells us.
The First Commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before
me,” is paramount above all the others. God is telling us that we can only
learn to love others by learning to love Him first. Never did He command us to
love ourselves above all else; in fact, He never even commanded us to love
ourselves. He commanded us to love our God, and He commanded us to love others
as we love ourselves, understanding better than we do how much we already do
love ourselves.
As a chosen people, bought for a very high price by a great
and loving God, we have good reason to esteem ourselves, however. We are
special; we are children of the King. But this esteem must come because of what
God has done for us, never because of who we are in this world and what we have
accomplished. So, what is the greatest love of all? The greatest love of all is
God’s love for us. That we could never duplicate.
