How Our Self-love is Getting Progressively Worse

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From the time this letter to Timothy was written until now (nearly 2,000 years later), our self-love has gotten progressively worse; with, I suppose, dips and rises along the way. In evil times self-love increased, and in times of revival it decreased. But overall, I think in our near 2,000-year time span, it has gotten much worse. Here are seven areas where we can see the progressive worsening of self-love—particularly in the last fifty or sixty years.

1. Social Media. When computers came out, then cell phones, and then all the different social media companies (like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, X, and Pinterest), people (mostly young people) sort of vanished from normal person to person communication, even from telephone conversations. They instead buried their heads and minds into social media technology. We will have to admit that many social media platforms are quite helpful in making yourself known and selling a product; but it doesn’t do much for your character. In fact, social media is all about building up your self-image. And in a strange way it tends to make people self-centered and will build up for them a pedestal for their own idolatry.  

2. Pornography. Pornography, in one form or another, has been around for a long time; and in the last fifty years or so it has exploded. It can be seen in books, magazines, and videos, anywhere on the internet and even in social media.

I think this is one of the most deceptive evils there is, because the devil tells us, and our flesh tells us that porn is such a loving act; and when we view it, and also act on it, we feel the love—we feel that we are loving ourselves. But when it is over we feel betrayed and guilty. And it is highly addictive (read 1 Corinthians 7:18-20).

3. Gluttony. Gluttony is overeating; but it is also eating only what tastes good to us, with no regard to what is good for the body. I heard one person, in all honesty, say, I eat only what tastes good to me, not what I think is healthy. Sometimes when I go grocery shopping, I notice what other people buy. I see some carts loaded down with mostly chips, cookies, soda pop, ice cream, and cakes. They have no vegetables (fresh or frozen) at all! I also have noticed that these people are quite obese. Now, I don’t mean to be judgmental. I’m just telling you what I see. 

Gluttony has always been a problem for most people, especially in rich countries. It was a big problem with the Roman Emperors—who were rich. But I think it is especially a problem with the rich countries of today—like America, that have grocery stores everywhere, and where people can buy whatever they desire. Many of us see no problem with buying and eating all that we desire—all that tastes good to us. But when we do, we are guilty of the evil of self-love.

Interestingly, when the bible talks about gluttony it puts it next to drunkenness. And its result is poverty (Prov. 23:20-21; Deut. 21:20). I suppose that is because those who are guilty of it eat and drink all their profit away. Also, in Philippians 3:19 and Galatians 5:16 we may notice that those who do not walk by the Spirit and are enemies of the cross, their god is their appetite. This gluttony is the evil of self-love.

4. The Decline of the Family. God created the family to be a blessing to each other and for love. But when sin came the family began to slowly break down, and the good and healthy love of self was corrupted into a selfish and self-centered love. I heard the other day that the average child rate in a family is now 1.5 children per family—an all-time low. In 1950 it was about 4.5, and a few centuries before that it was much higher. In fact, in the family of John Wesley, he had seven sisters and three brothers. Likewise, the family of Jonathan Edwards was also large. Then he and his wife also brought ten children into the world. Those days are pretty much gone. And what is the reason? I would say that part of it is selfishness. Certainly, the women do not want to go through the pain of childbirth, and for the damage of her figure. As a couple, they may think a large family is just too hard.

But there are other points of selfishness that cause the decline of the family. From 1950 to the present, divorce has increase drastically. Abortion is also on the incline. Bringing a life into the world is just too hard. All in all, because of self-love the family suffers.

5. Self-image. In these wicked days, because of self-love there is more emphasis on self-image. Never before has there been so many beauty creams, treatments and surgeries to make ourselves look beautiful and handsome. And there are countless weight-loss pills. And when those don’t work, we can always spend hundreds of dollars going to the gym. But most people will not stick to that.

Loving ourselves through trying to improve your image is a deadly trap. Sometimes, especially with the youth, it ends up in suicide—because it is very hard to keep up with all the beautiful people we see (in the glamor magazines). It is better, for the sake of your health to just maintain a good diet and a regular, short exercise program in your home. In the end, maintaining your spiritual health and your relationship with God is far better than worrying about your figure.

6. Entertainment. I think most of us these days work hard at trying to love ourselves through our favorite TV shows, the movies we watch and rewatch on DVD, and our favorite sports. This is an area of self-love that has really accelerated in the last seventy years—since we didn’t have television before then. What did people do with their time? This era of entertainment, for the most part, is plain and simple…idolatry!

7. What Professionals are saying. Most doctors and psychologists have been saying for years that self-love, no matter what kind, is good. In fact, they are saying that it is the first step to conquering most mental ills. Now, in some ways it is good—if it is from God’s Spirit. But when they start saying that you need to accept yourself with all your lustful practices, that is when you need to go elsewhere. Sin should never be accepted or practiced in the name of loving yourself.

When our Love of Self becomes Evil

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As we already said, we naturally love ourselves in a good way because we are created in the image of God. But when we begin to love our old, sinful self so that we gratify our own lusts, and we make provision for them, then our self-love turns evil (turns into selfishness). And even a Christian can fall into this evil. And what is even more confusing is that we may go back and forth, sometimes having a natural, good self-love, and at other times falling into an evil self-love. Here are three examples of how we fall into this evil.

1. Narcissism is to have excessive love or admiration of oneself. In younger people this is especially true as they see their bodies develop; and they spend way too much time looking in the mirror. And these days, with social media, we just love to get plenty of “likes” and comments to validate ourselves. This is plain self-worship.

2. Having a “me first” mentality, or thinking that I am more important than anyone else. Being a loner would definitely tend to foster this attitude, since you aren’t around other people very much and you end up thinking mainly of just yourself. It is always good to try to be around people as much as possible. Leaders may also have a problem in this area if they let themselves think that they are greater and more important than others. Paul, in Philippians 2:3-8, tells us how to act with humility as Jesus did—taking the form of a bond-servant.

3. Having an entitlement mentality. These people are always thinking of their personal rights, and they get upset when they think their rights have been violated. They tend to be self-centered in their thinking and they will cling to political groups or gangs to give them what they think they are entitled to.

Lovers of Self – Part 2

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From 2 Timothy 3:2 “…For men will be lovers of self.”

Is A Love of Self Ever Good?  The answer to that question is yes. If our love for self is not a selfish kind of love, and if we use it to help us love others, then it is good. Here are eight scriptures that indicate that in some cases it is good.

Philippians 2:4. Paul teaches here, “Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” This verse definitely indicates that we naturally care for ourselves. But the teaching here, with verse three, is that we must also, at the same time, care for others. In fact, we must regard others as more important than ourselves. I think Paul is saying to the Philippians, love of self will always be there, but we must push it down so that we have room to love and

care for others. We must not let our self-love be selfish or to end there. We must move on with our love to include others.

Leviticus 19:18, 34. These are the very first verses in the bible that directly tell us that we ought to love others as ourselves. And the following six scriptures that we will look at say the same thing—that we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves—assuming that we do naturally (in a good way) love ourselves. Verse 34 includes the teaching that they were to see and treat other strangers among them just as they wished to be treated when they were strangers in Egypt; hence, they were to love all people just as they love themselves.

Matthew 22:39. Here is what we may call the second to the greatest commandment. Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, and He said,

” ‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’  38 “This is the great and foremost commandment.  39 “The second is like it, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’

The thought that comes to my mind here is that these are commands from God. We are commanded to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and then also to love our neighbor. But how? Well, if God commands us to do it, I would think He would show us how, and give us the ability to do it. And really, I don’t think one is any harder than the other. He will give us the ability to love. And the love for our neighbor will come when we love ourselves.

Mark 12:31. This verse is of the same teaching as Matthew 22:39. Mark says nothing different. I will, however, add something more here. The reason why Jesus gave the scribe more than he asked for—that is, more than what the greatest commandment was—was because the second greatest commandment is tied to the first one. We can’t genuinely

love God without loving people. If we don’t love our neighbor, we won’t be loving God, because to love Him requires that we love our neighbor.

Luke 10:27-37. Here Jesus gives us the same two commandments, but with a teaching to a lawyer. The lawyer asked Jesus what he should do to inherit eternal life. When they agreed that he should follow the two greatest commandments, Jesus next asked him who his neighbor was. If he was to love his neighbor as himself, he needed to know who he was.

Well, I think you know the parable of the Good Samaritan. In the story, which of the three men proved to be a neighbor to the man who was robbed and left for dead?  It was the Samaritan who showed the man mercy. Here it is interesting that Jesus reversed the lawyer’s original question of “who is my neighbor,” to bring the idea that we are all neighbors to each other. We all have a responsibility to be a good neighbor—to care for others as we would want to be cared for, or as we would care for ourselves. And here also, we can see the idea of regarding everyone the same, with equal values, and treating everyone the same.

Romans 13:8-10. Here Paul explains that love to our neighbor (to anyone) is a fulfillment of the law. In other words, if we love others, we are fulfilling the law—we will not commit adultery with them, we will not murder them, we will not steal from them, and we will not covet anything that they have. Hence, love does no wrong to a neighbor. And the way we love them (treat them) is to think how we would want to be treated, and then we would love them just as we love ourselves.

Galatians 5:14. Here the idea is to show our love for others by showing them Chrisitan freedom in Christ; that is, we should not only love them if they keep our rules (read chapter 5); we should love them just as we love ourselves.

James 2:8. Here, much like the previous verse, we must love others without showing partiality. We are to love and care for others just as we do for ourselves.

Okay, we have pretty much outlined from scripture that we naturally do love and care for ourselves. The next thing we need to do is to discuss how we do that. Where does this good self-love come from?

We know, or we should know that all of us were born sinners. However, despite our sin nature, we all were created in God’s image. And since God always loves Himself, we discover that we do too. It is a natural God-quality that we have.

Now since God is perfect, with no flaws, His love is vastly different. In 1 John 4:8 it says that “God is love.” Love is central to His character. We could never have this kind of love, but we do have several qualities of love. For instance, we care for ourselves. We find that we are always watching out for our own danger. We instinctively want to be healthy, so we try to eat healthy foods (but we often fail in this). We set for ourselves firm boundaries when we discover things or people that are bad for us.

After we are saved, when we are made “a new creature,” (2 Cor. 5:17), our self-love will be better; that is, since we are in Christ (living for Him) we will care more for ourselves. But since we still sin, we often let ourselves go.

My next post will be on when our love of self becomes evil—or selfish.

Lovers of Self – 2 Timothy 3:2

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Well, I think it is about time for me to start blogging again. I have taken a little break. Normally I like to blog on what I am writing about in a self-published book. For the last couple months, I have been writing a book which I will entitle, Difficult Times in these Last Days: 19 Attributes that Depict these Days. It is taken from 2 Timothy 3:1-5. I have written about 50 pages in the book so far, and so I will try to keep ahead.No problem, since I will only blog once or twice a week and no more than about 600 words. I will also include an unrelated photo—just something nice to look at. So here it is. The first chapter is on “lovers of self,” and you will probably get about five posts on that topic.

Lovers of Self – 2 Timothy 3:2

The Apostle Paul writes to his good friend Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:1-5 saying,

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, 4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.

Generally speaking, the last days is that period from the first coming of Christ until His return—in which it reaches a climax shortly before He comes.[1]  Hence there is no doubt that we are in the last days; and so, the list of nineteen evil attributes in this text are before us now in this present time; and they will get worse before the very end. In Paul’s day, he was looking at these evils as being in the future; but I think, for the most part, we may see them as being now correct to the text in intensity and maybe getting a little worse before He comes. Things were very different a thousand years ago, and a hundred years ago, and in some cases, even twenty years ago. I mean, the same evils were there many years ago, but not as bad as they are now. In these next upcoming blogs, I will attempt to show how they have gotten progressively worse. As Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 3:13, “But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse.” My purpose in these blogs (this book) is not only to show how evil these days are, but more importantly, to indicate by the progression of evil, how close Jesus’ coming is.

In these blogs, we will go through each point of evil and devote three or four blog posts to each one. I think this first point, that men (people) will be lovers of self, is particularly important as it sets a negative tone for all of them. As Matthew Henry states in his commentary, “Self-love brings in a long train of sins and mischiefs. When men are lovers of themselves, no good can be expected from them…”2 Therefore, in this first point on self-love, eighteen more evils will follow after it.

Is A Love of Self Ever Good?  The answer to that question is yes. If our love for self is not a selfish kind of love, and if we use it to help us love others, then it is good. Here are eight scriptures that indicate that in some cases it is good.

Philippians 2:4. Paul teaches here, “Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” This verse definitely indicates that we naturally care for ourselves. But the teaching here, with verse three, is that we must also, at the same time, care for others. In fact, we must regard others as more important than ourselves. I think Paul is saying to the Philippians, love of self will always be there, but we must push it down so that we have room to love and care for others. We must not let our self-love be selfish or to end there. We must move on with our love to include others.

Stay tuned to more verses in the next blog post.

[1] John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible: (Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2006), John MacArthur’s notes on 1 Timothy 4:1.

2 Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible, PC Study Bible Formatted Electronic Database Copyright © 2006 by Biblesoft, Inc. All Rights reserved.

Be on Guard

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2 Peter 3:17-18

17 You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness, 18 but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

Peter’s words, “knowing this,” means knowing that the false prophets are distorting Scripture. And he indicates that they are to be aware of it and be on guard (to be prayerful and to anticipate any trouble) beforehand, or before they are “carried away, or deceived. And if they are deceived, they would fall from their own steadfastness. In 1 Corinthians 15:58, Paul tells us that we are to be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. Hence, the purpose of steadfastness is to do the work of the Lord, not to do our own works, in order to look good in front of others.

In verse 18, the last verse of this letter, Peter stresses very importantly, that we are to “grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” And, in my opinion, if we follow this advice, He will keep us close to His side and out of the way of false teachers and all evil influences.

Be at Peace with God

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2 Peter 3:14-16

14 Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, 15 and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, 16 as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.

Here Peter goes on to say that since we are eager for His coming, we ought also to be at peace with God and to live blamelessly (without grumbling about things, Phil. 2:14-15). And remember that our Lord is patiently waiting for people to repent and be saved; and that is why His coming may seem to take long.

Peter here mentions the Apostle Paul, who wrote on this same subject of His coming; that he was given wisdom from the Lord to understand these hard topics. But Peter wanted them to know that false prophets (particularly those who are “untaught” or have been instructed wrongly) have distorted Paul’s teaching on this subject, and also on all Scriptures. (Today there are many seminaries that are quite liberal and distort the truth of Scripture, so that those who attend graduate without knowing the truth.) 

Expecting His Coming

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2 Peter 3:12-13

12 looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! 13 But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.

Along with the effort of trying to live in holiness and godliness (v. 11), we ought to live in expectation of His coming with eager desire for it; because on the other side of the great destruction is all that is new—a new heaven and earth which is totally righteous.