Valuing and Respecting Your Neighbor As Yourself
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Loving our neighbor includes recognizing and honoring the dignity of others, as we should for ourselves, since we are all God’s image-bearers. Yet, we can easily find ourselves in a state of self-loathing or feeling like we don’t matter. Why is it important for us to value and respect ourselves?
What does it mean to “love your neighbor as yourself”?
When a scribe asked Jesus which commandment was the most important of all, Jesus answered,
“The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31)
If we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, we must first know what it means to love ourselves. There is much talk in the world today about self-love, but the reality is that we cannot love ourselves rightly until we know God’s love for us in Christ. Because we are acutely aware of our faults and shortcomings, we can develop an extremely low opinion of ourselves. Furthermore, shifting cultural values can create additional turmoil within us when it comes to our perception of self-worth. According to theologian Carl R. Trueman,
Human nature may not change in the sense that we are always made in the image of God, but our desires and our deep sense of self are, in fact, shaped in profound ways by the specific conditions of the society in which we actually live. (The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, p. 392)
Basing our self-value on worldly standards is a sure recipe for being in a constant state of doubt and anxiety in which we feel like we always need to do more or be more to be accepted and truly loved. This is not how God designed us to be.
God made us to love him and to find all our happiness in him.
God created the world and everything in it, and humans alone were made in his image, being the pinnacle of all creation (Gen. 1:26-30). We are so valuable in the sight of God that he knows the number of hairs on our heads (Luke 12:7) and all our thoughts (Ps. 139:1-4). He knew us when we were in the womb, and he knows the number of days we will live on this earth (Ps. 139:13-16). God made us to love him and to find all our happiness in him. If we don’t understand the meaning of our existence and don’t know God as he truly exists, we can’t fully understand what it means to love and be loved:
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. (1 John 4:7-12)
If we haven’t known God’s love for us, if we don’t believe that we have dignity as image-bearers of God, that we are worthy of respect, then we may even allow others to disrespect us or even mistreat ourselves via our thoughts and actions. Such behavior does not honor God.
Turning the other cheek does not mean we should allow people to mistreat us.
Respecting ourselves also means never allowing someone to abuse us. To submit to abuse is not the godly submission to which God calls his children (Eph. 5:22-24; 1 Tim. 2:11-12). If someone is disrespectful to us to the point where we feel threatened physically, emotionally, or spiritually, we need to get help. We shouldn’t hide it or think it will go away. When Jesus told his followers to turn the other cheek, he was teaching people not to return evil for evil (Matt. 5:38-42). If we love people, we will do all that we can to help them honor God and their neighbor, and that includes protecting ourselves from harm.
It is important to remember that we shouldn’t necessarily get upset over every slight or rude comment or disappointing incident. Sometimes a family member or friend is tired and worn out from the cares of the day. Sometimes we are the ones who are short with our words because of daily stresses.
Respect for others and oneself is a powerful testimony to God’s glorious love in Christ.
Turning the other cheek as Christ’s followers means not to retaliate. We are called to have patience with and grace for each other. This requires wisdom to discern when to let things go and when to take a stand against certain behavior as being inappropriate.
Always communicating value and respect for every human being—including oneself—in our words and deeds is a practical and powerful way to love our neighbor as God commands, and it is also a testimony to the glorious love God has for us in Jesus Christ:
For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God (1 John 3:20-21).
Dear Christian, God loves you so much that he sent his only begotten Son to live the perfect life on your behalf and give himself as the perfect sacrifice for all your guilt and sin. Rest in God’s enduring love for you in Christ. Strive to value and respect your neighbor and yourself in the light of God’s saving grace, and rejoice that you are his precious child now and forevermore.