But What If You Don’t Love Yourself?

Love Your Neighbor as Yourself—But What If You Don’t Love Yourself?

"You shall love your neighbor as yourself." That’s what Jesus said. And it’s powerful.

But here’s the issue—not with what Jesus said, but with how we live it. The problem isn’t in the scripture. The problem is us.

We often struggle to love ourselves.

And if you don’t love yourself, how can you love your neighbor? If you wrestle with self-hatred, self-doubt, and shame, you’ll naturally project that onto others. You wonder why you have a hard time with people? It might be because you're still struggling with yourself.

Let’s be honest—we need healing. We need to fix ourselves. And no, I don’t mean striving or religious self-repair. I mean, looking in the mirror and appreciating what God made. Look in that mirror and say, “God, I see You in me.” Let His love flow through you.

Because when you truly receive His love, you can begin to love yourself rightly. And when you love yourself, it becomes possible to love people you once thought unlovable.

Has that ever happened to you?

I’ve loved people I thought I could never love. Not in my strength—but by His love at work in me. That’s the power of divine love. Like the scripture says, “If you forgive, I forgive”—it's the same pattern. If God loves me, then I must release that love to others. He called me to love. He called us to love.

And yes, it's hard sometimes.

There are days I pray, "Lord, help me to love with all my strength. Pour Your love into me until it overflows." And He does. He builds up a love in me I didn’t know I had.

Real love starts with Him.

1 John 4:19 says, “We love because He first loved us.” He pursued me. Not because I deserved it, but because He is love. When you realize how fiercely God loves you, it changes everything. You stop trying to earn love and start living from it.

And let’s be clear—love is not a feeling. It’s not goosebumps. It’s not a Hallmark moment. It’s an action.

Love is what you do when no one claps. Love is a sacrifice. Love is choosing peace when you could choose revenge. Love is correction, confrontation, compassion, patience—all of it.

As Scripture says: “Love the Lord your God and walk in all His ways, keep His commandments, cleave to Him, and serve Him with all your heart and soul.” That’s action. That’s real love. To love God is to act like He matters more than anything else.

But before I could really love others, I had to learn how to love myself. And that meant honoring the image of God in me. It meant saying, “God didn’t make a mistake with me.” It meant learning to see myself through the lens of grace, not shame.

So here’s the truth:

I love myself enough to love you. Can you love yourself enough to love me?

Jesus said all the Law and the Prophets hang on just two commandments:

1. Love God.

2. Love your neighbor as yourself. (Matthew 22:37–40)

That’s not a small thing—it’s the foundation of the Kingdom.

If I can’t love my neighbor, I can’t represent Jesus to them. If I can’t love my neighbor, I’m missing the very heart of God’s commands. And if we, as the Body of Christ, would choose love, we’d see so much negativity fall away.

But let’s be real—we’ve seen competition in the church where there should be unity. We’ve seen silence when there should’ve been conversation. We’ve seen performance instead of presence.

But God is doing something new. He’s calling us back to love. To real love. To love that starts with Him, heals us, and overflows to others.

Let Him do that in you today. Love yourself enough to let God in—so that through you, someone else can experience His love too.