The words “I love myself” are less likely to come from your mouth than the words “I hate myself,” but they likely come out more in our actions instead. You probably know the person who has a group of friends around them who bolster their self-love and tell them all the right things. They are proud and have the world at their fingertips; it seems nothing can stop them. They think the world of themselves and they conclude, “I love myself.” Are you perhaps one of them? On the other hand, we often frown at the counselor or friend who tells us, “You just have to love yourself more.” We often brush this statement aside as unbiblical, but is there not an element of truth to it? Is there no room for a balanced and biblical self-love?

There is a biblical self-hatred. So there is also a biblical self-love. In order to get to the root of this biblical self-love, consider the summary of the law that Jesus gave in Matthew 22:37-39:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

A biblical self-love begins with loving God. As long as we are on the throne of our lives, loving ourselves excessively, we will have an unbiblical self-love. An unbiblical self-love puts ourselves in God’s rightful position over our lives and we think that we are in control of our own destiny. However, when we assume the right place as sinners before God, He begins to work in us at the same time a love for Him, a healthy love for ourselves, and love for our neighbor.

Jesus continues the summary of the law by saying that we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. There is a biblical view of self by which we must measure and show our love to others. The person who loves himself in a biblical way loves God above all; God is ruling over his life. There is a biblical self-hatred because of sin, but there is a biblical self-love because of the image of Christ being remade in him by the Holy Spirit. The point that Jesus is making is that we love ourselves to some extent, not irrationally promoting ourselves, but seeking to promote the image of Christ in ourselves for the glory of God. That measure of love for ourselves must be the measure of love that we show to others.

When the young lawyer came to Jesus to ask how he might inherit eternal life, Jesus reminded him of these commandments. But the lawyer challenged Jesus with the question, “Who is my neighbor?”

The young lawyer was blinded with self-love and superior­ity. Jesus addressed this with the story of the Good Samaritan, who had a biblical self-love and showed compassion to the man in need regardless of his ethnicity, race, or nation.

Those who live out of the love and compassion that Jesus has shown to them will demonstrate both a biblical self-love and a biblical love for others. As humans, we seek to promote our own physical and spiritual welfare, don’t we? There is an element of self-love, but this is tempered with a healthy dose of self-abhorrence before God on account of our sin. And when we are born again and the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives, we love ourselves because of Christ’s image being remade in us.

That is why it is so important that the image of Christ is remade in us through a relationship of faith and dependence upon Him. Without the establishment of a saving relationship with Christ, we will not value ourselves with biblical value as Psalter 250:2 shows: “A foolish man knows not their worth, nor he whose mind is of the earth.” Without Christ, we will either hate ourselves excessively or we will love ourselves excessively. Even in Christ, Christians struggle with falling into either extreme, but we need to be brought daily to a bal­ance of both self-hatred and self-love. Are you keeping these two things in balance? Are you loathing yourself as a sinner before God, yet also loving yourself, not because of who you are as a sinner but because God is remaking you into the image of Christ for His glory? (Phil. 2:12).