PROMISES AND WARNINGS
(7-minute read)
All relationships involve rights, responsibilities and risks for the parties involved. In terms of rights, we can all expect respect, honesty and concern from each other, while upholding the mutual responsibility to be truthful, transparent and thoughtful. However, relationships also run the risk of being one-sided where one person’s preferences and needs are prioritized over the other, leading to alienation and hurt. God is acutely aware of all the threats that can lead to relational breakdown. It is why Jesus made this the first and greatest command for all believers: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” And for the second most important command, He emphasized, “Love your neighbour as yourself.
From the beginning, Jesus had warned us about the emergence of a world culture that will increasingly threaten our commitment to love God and love people. In the Lord’s words, “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold”. He was referring to a pervasive culture of self-reliance that would increasingly diminish our need for each other. Make no mistake: people will continue to show up for church duties, and they will sign up for volunteer work all the while maintaining a safe distance from others thinking that Christians need only to evangelize and not socialize. The enemy’s greatest success is in making us prioritize performance and privacy over intimacy within the body of Christ. The evidence of this is the growing disengagement and loneliness in the local church.
True love from God the Father is not something we keep to ourselves. It is not something we hijack and withhold from others to serve our own interests. In fact, true biblical love necessitates real connections with others, or we will begin to develop the narcissistic qualities that make our relationships hollow and lifeless.
So what can we do to ensure we do not turn God’s love inwards, ‘having a form of godliness but denying its power’ as we are warned in 2 Timothy 3:1-5? We can take three key lessons from the Bible to ensure we have the spiritual safeguards to keep us from turning into ‘lovers of ourselves’:
1. TRUST FULLY IN GOD
To be lovers of ourselves is self-idolatry. In other words, when we love ourselves first, we turn self into an idol. Ordinarily, it’s an attitude that takes root over time in small choices and rationalizations even when they consistently contradict the Word of God. Putting ourselves first will always limit our ability and willingness to bear the discomfort of experiencing anything new with God. Trust in God always involves risks; so to avoid risks is to avoid trusting Him.
The Bible calls us to demonstrate a standard of biblical love that ‘always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres’ (1 Corinthians 13:7). This is how we are to love God especially when the stakes are high and when there is no perceivable element of pleasure and comfort from trusting Him! But here is our promised reward, ‘but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved’. (Matthew 24:13).
Indeed, the most compelling stories of God’s love comes from people whose private lives demonstrate a deep trust in Him. There are people who experience God moving powerfully in this or that ministry but privately, they will not trust Him to make any important moves in their lives because they want to control the narratives they construct to make Him look good. Resist doing this! Instead, face your fears with God because that is the only way we will develop character and grow in our knowledge of who He is.
The Bible has clear warnings against self-reliance and letting wealth define our self-esteem (Jeremiah 17:5, Hebrews 13:5). When we struggle to trust God fully, we end up trusting ourselves foolishly. This happens when we begin to rely more and more on ourselves rather than on God. One thing will lead to another and before we know it, we find ourselves in a sinkhole of materialistic and self-indulgent lifestyle, wondering how we got sucked into it.
The antidote to resisting self-reliance is this: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek His will in all you do, and He will show you which path to take.” (Proverbs 3:5-6). It bears repeating that God has promised us, “I will never fail you. I will never abandon you.” (Hebrews 13:5). He always comes through for those who trust Him – not those with the best solutions, inventions or justifications.
2. HUMILITY
Lovers of themselves are people who have a grandiose sense of self-importance, even when they do something in service to others. Don’t be mistaken, many of us do it unconsciously even while citing Scripture about God’s power, blessing and provisions. In truth, we are really only using people as objects to affirm our importance.
On one occasion, Jesus was invited to a dinner by a prominent person at his residence. He quickly observed the power dynamics playing out right before Him about who sits where, and just couldn’t help pointing out the irony, “For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 14:11).
Are you trapped in the power dynamic where you are exclusively interacting only with people who are ‘less’ than you? God puts us in communities so that we won’t lose sight of the second greatest commandment, “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). Let’s not forget that we were once living in spiritual darkness, and we are now walking “in His wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9). We don’t forget where we were before and we don’t say we have arrived now. We fall right into the enemy’s trap if we reserve our time and concern only for people living in spiritual darkness while ignoring the need to build healthy ties with our brothers and sisters in the body of Christ.
Philippians 2:3-4 tells us, ‘Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.’ To think of others and to take an interest in others is not a detached mental exercise, but involves an active involvement in other people’s lives. On the other hand, those who are secretly lovers of themselves live on the constant diet of affirmation and attention. They are clueless what empathy looks like and they are blind to the apathy that they reveal in their actions towards others. Tellingly, they lack relational vocabulary because their world really revolves around self-interests.
The apostle Paul instructed his followers, without exception, “All of you, clothe yourselves with humility towards one another, because, “God opposes the proud but shows favour to the humble.” (1 Peter 5:5b). He was referring to our humility cultivated through building enduring relationships within the body of Christ. It starts with having a right-sized perspective of self that is biblical and Christlike.
3. LIVE FOR GOD’S GLORY
Lovers of themselves want to live life only on their terms. They can be seen participating in church activities and programmes, but they primarily go about every aspect of life on their own terms. This is in direct contradiction to living for God’s glory alone.
On the other hand, lovers of God will take risks with Him because they have learnt to live with the tension between what they think works, and their confidence in God’s ability to come through for them. They constantly train themselves to keep their focus on God and not just on the chaos and uncertainties in their lives because they know that, somehow, God will make everything fall into place.
John 3:30 gives us this biblical mandate, “He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less.” This means that even though we feel that we are becoming more and more vulnerable to threats – health, finance, employability, relationships – God is still greater than our situations and our fears. And He will definitely come through for us and make His greatness known through what we go through.
The closer we keep these three spiritual safeguards to heart, the further we turn away from behaviour and decisions that turn us into lovers of ourselves.
This is a summary and reflection based on a virtual BIR Session held on 20 September 2025.
