God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
We are to love our neighbors as ourselves – and that standard of comparison, as ourselves , is often taken as an implicit command to love ourselves. On this view, the wording not only permits self-love but commands it; it not only sanctions self-esteem but reinforces its importance. On the face of it, however, self-love in Mark 12 is merely presupposed, not advocated. To read much of the contemporary literature, evangelical and otherwise, on self-esteem is to inhabit a domain a long way removed from the second great commandment.
Imagine a father who claims to love his children but takes no action to stop them from becoming drug addicts or prostitutes. Or imagine seeing a brother in Christ walking alone heading straight toward quicksand, but you say nothing and walk away in silence. This isn’t genuine love; it’s apathy. It is not loving one’s neighbor as oneself; it is not loving as Jesus loved. Yet this is what we are like when we refuse to correct a wayward believer, to reprove sinful behavior, or to warn others of false teachers.
