Self-Care and Self-Love

This article is excerpted from Lisa Whittle’s new Bible study, Body and Soul: A Biblical Look at the Whole Person God Created You to Be.

We should love ourselves and our bodies as they come under the concept we now understand as imago Dei; we love ourselves as image bearers of God because we love Christ. Everything is from that outflow. As we love ourselves in that context, we care for ourselves differently.

We care for ourselves as temples housing the Holy Spirit, for the purpose of longevity to love, serve, and glorify God and to make disciples, according to Matthew 28:19.

So the lens is different and the motive is not the same as the one secular culture suggests (self-love and self-care with a goal of serving self). We may both be preaching self-care, but it will be born out of completely different goals.

And this is not a lower-tier love for ourselves, by the way. It simply takes out the muddied waters of self-interest, which removes chasing shallow pay-offs of love and care for ourselves that won’t last.

Where this has gotten confusing in the past has been when the church has discouraged us from self-care and self-love. In fact, self-denial has often been seen as the path to godliness. This view has largely been pure (if not misguided) in its motivation to counterbalance the world’s secular call of self-indulgence and self-obsession. The question then becomes: where do we draw the line as women to what’s caring about how we look versus obsessing about it?

First Corinthians 6:12 is a most important guideline when it comes to caring for ourselves, including caring about our outward appearances:

1. Legalism makes it too strict. Making details of hair, body, and skincare habits issues of right and wrong isn’t the core issue.

2. Liberalism gives too much allowance. Making physical habits a matter of “everyone do whatever you want when you want” isn’t the core issue.

Depending on your translation, at the end of verse 12 it may read to not be “mastered by anything” or “enslaved by anything” or “dominated by anything.” There is nothing inherently wrong about caring what we look like. But Jesus tells us we can only serve one master and that devotion to one will lead to despising the other.

In placing the right value on our bodies, we will love our bodies in balance and order—neither obsessing nor rejecting—as we follow, with the help of the Holy Spirit, the heart and example of Christ, who loves us. As He loves and cares for His creation, so do we.