ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHING
October 19, 2021
This past Sunday, I talked about how loving your neighbor not only begins with loving yourself, but knowing yourself. In fact, it is hard to love yourself if you do not know yourself. In Galatians 5:14, the Apostle Paul echoed the teaching of Jesus when he wrote, “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Paul was one who had an epiphany, not only about Jesus, but about himself. On the Road to Damascus, Paul encountered the Living Christ which changed his understanding of God and the expansive nature of love. But Paul also found himself as he discovered divinely given gifts that resided within him, gifts empowered by grace that were provided despite his less than stellar past. When you are hit upside the head with God’s unconditional love, especially in the face of your own failures (or in Paul’s case, the attacks he committed against the earliest followers of Jesus), there is a moment when you realize there must be something within you worthy of love. I think Paul must have thought to himself, “If God can love me, then I ought to be able to love myself.” FYI – God loves you that much, and so it is time to love yourself.
By your grace, O God, I learn of my value and belovedness. It is in that knowledge, that I come to know myself; to love myself; to find the freedom to love my neighbor. May it be so! Amen.
