How Should We Prioritize Loving God, Loving Others, and Loving Ourselves?

Growing up, I was taught the acronym J-O-Y as a tool to remember and prioritize my loves, defined as Jesus, Others, and You. I should love Jesus before everything and anything else, then focus my attention on others, and finally, care for my own needs. If I order my attention this way, I will experience joy in my life and relationships. I still believe that there is a benefit to the simplicity of this ordering; the application to our practice and relationship and its alignment with Jesus’s answer regarding the greatest commandment is not this simple. We are to love God completely, with our whole self.

The word for love here is the verb agapao, which means to “cherish, have affection for, love; take pleasure in; prove one’s love” (BDAG Greek-English Lexicon). Loving God is active and engaged. The rest of the verse also indicates that while it is active, it is also comprehensive, including all your heart, soul, and mind. While we tend to think of the heart as our emotions or passions, it does include that in Scripture, but it also signifies our mind, character, and inner self. The word for “soul” in this passage is syche or psyche (from which we get psychology or soul-care), which is our vital essence or breath of life. Finally, Jesus says we should love God with our mind, which includes our dispositions, intellectual capacity, and thoughts.

Jesus follows up this comprehensive and overwhelming summary of the Law by saying, “This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:38-39). As a prolific list-maker, I read this summary from Jesus as a linear list of tasks to complete. Love God with every part of me. Check. Love my neighbor. Check. Love myself. Check. However, how am I to actually love God with every part of me? How do I demonstrate and practice this comprehensive love? In our individualistic and compartmentalized culture, this tends to mean performing religious activities, but Jesus, who is God and is one with the Father (Jn. 5:18, 8:58; 14:9), said that loving Him means keeping His commandments (Jn. 14:15).

Jesus explained the demonstration of His love for us and our love for Him and the Father this way, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love… This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:9-10, 12).

The Practice of Reciprocal Relationship

The linear, list-oriented perspective for loving God, then others, then self cannot work because each component of these commandments is dependent on one another in a reciprocal relationship. We demonstrate our love for God through our love and care for one another in a symbiotic, reciprocal relationship. We experience God’s love for ourselves in the community of fellowship with one another. God expresses His love to everyone as evidenced in the incarnation, seeking us out for redemption while sinners and enemies to His kingdom (Rom. 5:8). Our experience of that love and capacity to then be a conduit for that love to others must occur in community, connected to Christ and abiding in His love as it flows to us and through us to others (Jn. 15:4-5). We cannot experience or express God’s love outside of this abiding community. Our attempts to love God through individual, personal Bible study and reflection, while encouraging and sustaining, ignore His command of obedience to love Him by loving others.

As the pandemic of the past few years has demonstrated, we are not designed to live in isolation. A Christian attempting to walk in isolation from fellow believers is unable to obey the primary command of obedience that Jesus proclaimed, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35). Loving others as we love ourselves mirrors our experience of self as deeply loved by God, experienced through the love and acceptance of the community of believers loving us well right back. Dan Siegel posits that secure attachment requires feeling seen, feeling safe, and being soothed.

The greatest commandment and its required second summarize the Law and the Prophets well because, as Hagar explained, God is a God who sees (Gen. 16:13). God created us in perfect relationship with Him, others, ourselves, and creation; naked and unashamed (Gen. 2:25). Seen and able to be seen without fear, embarrassment, guilt, or shame. Sin creates separation from God, others, us, and creation (Isa. 59:2; Gal. 5:4; Eph. 2:12), preventing us from seeing each element clearly and causing us to hide ourselves (Gen. 3:8). God demonstrated His love for us by redeeming us, removing the curse and covering of sin and instead covering us in His blood so we can safely be seen in relationship with Him again. Jesus’s restatement of this redemption in the greatest and second commandment is a call for us to live within this redemption, allowing us to experience His love and express His love as naked and unashamed once again.

Photo credit: ©Unsplash/Evan Kirby

Seth L. Scott, PhD, NCC, LPC-S is an associate professor of clinical mental health counseling at Columbia International University in Columbia, South Carolina and provides clinical counseling and supervision in the community through his counseling practice, Sunrise Counseling. Seth, his wife, Jen, and their two middle school children enjoy outdoor activities, reading together as a family, board games, and meeting people through Jen’s pottery business at galleries and festivals.