Ephesians 5:28-29 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:

First let me say I am not a doctor and I cannot speak to clinical depression. That is a medical condition. What I can speak to is a spiritual condition. In this I will attempt to answer what it means to love oneself.

It is the responsibility of parents to model love for their children. We grow up understanding what love looks like by watching our parents. If they follow God’s model of love then our first glimpse of love in action come from our parents. If they do not, then our view of God’s love is missing in early development.

Parents also develop self-help. Bath, brush your teeth, comb your hair, exercise, be fit, take pride in your appearance. What they do not say in that exercise is that if you feel good about yourself you will feel worthy of good things. People who do not take care of themselves are a clear reflection of personal values. Think of an image in this statement; “Show some respect.” That image you see is your view of someone who does not respect themselves. They have no self-love.

Now comes the spiritual part.

Isaiah 64:6 But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.

Note the phrase filthy rags. Here is the essence of taking care of ourselves. Every effort of caring for ourselves comes up short of righteousness, a right standing before God. It is like never being good enough for your parents’ approval. We are not talking about parents, we are talking God. There is nothing a parent can do to change what we have done or how we feel about ourselves. God can.

Philippians 3:9 And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:

We know what we were, unclean, unworthy. What we have to do to love ourselves now is to see our position with God, to feel worthy of God’s love, by seeing and believing ourselves in Christ. We have forgiveness of sin. All the bad we did has been forgiven by God through the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.

Have you forgiven yourself? If not you have not loved yourself.

Trade your filthy rags for His righteous robes!

Leviticus 25:14 And if thou sell ought unto thy neighbour, or buyest ought of thy neighbour’s hand, ye shall not oppress one another:

Wall Street will tell you that you will never get rich with that attitude. That is the ruler of the air speaking. Satan wants you to believe that this passage is meant to keep you poor. Not at all, this passage is directly linked to love thy neighbor. It isn’t about finance. It is about relationship.

The world does not operate in fairness. Someone has to take advantage of someone else in order to gain riches. That is the capitalist market. Let the buyer beware. Buy, sell or trade it does not matter, the market will only invest if they see the potential for gain. We all know that and we have been told our whole life, nobody gets nothing for nothing. There is no such thing as free in the world.

That is true of the world but what about God’s Kingdom? That realm is not of this world. We do not get to enter into that Kingdom without accepting a Free Will Offering. The only thing that will transition you from this world into that glorious kingdom is by accepting that everything you have been told and believe is not true. You can receive something of enormous value absolutely free. For those of us that have done that, we believe it to be true. For those who have not, letting go of that worldly truth is a hard thing to shake.

I have friends who absolutely believe that there is a God, not a little g god but the One God. They have seen evidence that is in their view indisputable proof of God’s existence, yet cannot shake the issue of that Free Will Offering. So ingrained into his personal experience is the issue of buy and sell and that everyone has a motive that he will not accept that free gift without understanding the bottom line, what does God gain.

Then I have to say God is in the penny market and taking worthless stock and investing in it. He invests Himself in the product and turns it into something of great value. And that is true.