Self-love in evangelism is the current topic. Last week we looked at the type of evangelism that starts with “God loves you’ and the terrible results this method leads to. Total depravity is still true and its affects and effects are enormous on those being evangelized. People who are dead in sins and trespasses are by nature children of wrath (Eph 2:1-3). Okay, but what does that mean? Without going into every issue of depravity and the nature of the fall, we can know that every unconverted person is fixated on themselves in self-love. The unregenerate individual does not have the Holy Spirit who pours out the love for God in the hearts of believers. This means that the person is moved by self as his or her chief love and goal in all things. The Great Commandment to love God is broken every moment. The Ten Commandments which hang on the Great Commandments (Mat 22:35-40) are violated when God is not loved. Conversely, the Ten Commandments are only kept when there is love (Romans 13:8-10). So, sin is lawlessness (I John 3:4), which is simply man not loving God. Man does not love God primarily because he loves himself and is the goal of all he does.
The unregenerate person in his focus on himself in selflove judges all things by whether it appears as good for himself or not. Something is not rational if it is not according to his self-love. Things are clearly immoral if they are not for the good of self. Yet, whatever fits with his goal of doing all for self can be rationalized to appear good to him. When an individual has self-love as the goal and standard by which all things are to be judged, self is really the god. So when Scripture is brought to bear on the sins of the person´s self-love, the battle for who is really God begins (though in a sense it is just heightened). While it is not a widely taught fact, this is one of the reasons behind the ten plagues that God sent on Egypt. “’For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments– I am the LORD’ (Exodus 12:12). Without going into great detail, in Exodus 7 we see a conflict between serpents. Moses, the representative of God, and Pharaoh, who was thought of as a god, squared off. Pharaoh had a symbol of a serpent (think of the serpent in the Garden who deceived Eve) on his headpiece. Moses threw down his staff and it became a serpent, but when the magicians mimicked this in some way the serpent of Moses swallowed up the others. The god of Pharaoh lost to God.
Without going through all of the plagues and the gods those represented, each plague that God brought on Egypt was a frontal attack on the gods of Egypt. The plagues were not just brought on to bring misery; they were brought on to show that God had power over creation and all so-called gods. When Moses called to God and according to his prayer the different plagues came and went, the gods of Egypt were shown to be false gods. The battle between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent was being carried on right there in Egypt. God won. In much the same way, then, evangelism is a battle between God and gods. Each individual is his own god and Christ must conquer that god for the person to be converted.
Since each person is his own god, the idolatry of that person´s heart must be seen. Each person carries within his own heart his own god. Each person walks according to the wisdom of his own god and obeys the god-self. At times, some people will become religious, but that does not mean that the god in the heart has changed. That person is still doing all for self-god. He goes to church and is religious for self-god. If praying a prayer is thought to be best for self-god, it is done. If following some form of outward conformity to God´s laws appears best for self-god, it is done. If he thinks that studying religion and becoming a pastor is the best thing that he can do for self-god, it is done. If he thinks that following unbiblical ways of “doing church’ is best for self-god, he does it. In other words, the very god within the person (self-god) reigns in the heart of each individual whether given over to outward sin or religion. That must be addressed for a person to be converted to the real God.
Now what I have described in the above paragraphs may appear harsh and over the top. How can it be, one might ask, that people who are so religious are really in the grip of self-idolatry? The Bible describes that quite clearly. Take the case of the Pharisees. Luke 18:11 shows a Pharisee who prayed to himself. Matthew 6:2 shows hypocrites giving to the poor in order to be honored by men. What is this but a man giving to that which is his chief love, that is, himself? In giving to the poor, he did an outwardly good thing, but in his heart, he only wanted to be honored by men. This was an act of love for himself rather than God, so his religious act was instead an act of idolatry as it was from self-love. He was his own god in terms of affection and primary purpose.
We can continue on in Matthew 6 and find in verse 5 a hypocrite who prayed long prayers in order to be honored by men. Who were those prayers offered to? They were offered with love for the main desire, which was self. When prayer is offered and man simply wants honor from others, that prayer is idolatry and is to the god-self and not God. Another way to look at this is to see that god-self tries to use God for selfish ends. This is using the name of God to serve the ends or purposes of god-self. Surely, that is taking the name of God in vain too. But what we see, again, is a person that has never been broken from god-self or self-love using religion as a way to gain honor for himself. Then, in verses 16-18, we see the religious hypocrite or the self-god exerted in a different religious exercise. This time the hypocrite fasts for the sake of gaining honor before men. This guy puts on a gloomy face and neglects his appearance so that others will see and know that he is fasting and honor him for religious sacrifice in fasting. Is this person fasting for God or for self-god? Is this person seeking to glorify God or self-god? Without question, then, a person can be outwardly religious to the extreme and still be in full worship of the self-god.
Now, how are we to evangelize people like this? After all, these are the only kind of people that we will ever evangelize. People will take whatever we say and twist it to fit with their self-love (self-god). If we tell them that God loves them, they will twist that according to their god of self and fit it very neatly in with their selfidolatry. Instead, I would think, we must understand evangelism as a battle between God and self-god. When we bring the commandments of Scripture to them, we are telling them that self-god is in rebellion against the true God. We must proclaim the Great Commandment, which demands that people repent of self-love and love God with all of their being. We must tell people that they must stop their worship of self and bow in obedience to the real God. We must proclaim the glory of God to them so that they will repent of living for the honor of their own name and live for the glory of His name. We must tell them that they must love their neighbor, not just be nice to them out of self-love. In fact, if I do something nice for my neighbor out of selflove, that is an act of idolatry for me in at least two ways. One, I am doing the nice deed out of love for myself instead of love for God. Two, I want my neighbor to honor me instead of honor God. Both of those acts are wicked in the heart. But beware; it is better to be nice to the neighbor out of self-love than it is to be cruel out of self-love.
Evangelism, then, requires good theology and the wisdom of Christ. We must learn to pierce hearts that are in full god-self mode. Hearts that love self view all things through the lenses of self-love. That is a heart that will deceive itself and others. That is a heart that will justify itself and seek refuge for itself as well. As those who truly want to see the reign of God in the hearts of people and not just gather “convert scalps,’ we must learn to love people and pierce through their self-deceptions and self-love to the core of the heart. We must learn how to show them that their self-love is enmity with God. We must learn that when they hate us it is really Christ that they hate and learn to accept the brunt of the anger of their self-gods with meekness. After all, the Golden Rule requires us to do this. We would want others to do this for us wouldn´t we?
As Moses was the representative of God and Pharaoh was the representative of the serpent in the battle of the gods in Egypt, so believers are to be Moses (in a representative sense) and view unbelievers as defending the self-god as Pharaoh did his god (himself) and the gods. We cannot allow an outward conformity be construed as true repentance and true belief. We know that until the god-self has died (death to self-love) and Christ is ruling over that person in the heart, true conversion has not happened. This is why we must show men their sin in order that they may see the godself that rules in them and deceives them, perhaps even with great religious devotion. The intents of the thoughts of the heart are only evil continually because man lives out of self-love and for god-self instead of the true and living God. No matter how religious or Reformed in doctrine a person may become, that person is not converted until that person is doing what he does out of love for God. I know that sounds hard and perhaps even harsh to many, but examine the Scriptures to see if this is correct. If the sign of conversion is love to God and our neighbor, how can we argue that a person who is religious out of self-love is truly converted? Can we argue that they need more teaching on how God loves them? Can we argue that they need more instruction in doing religious things? No, they need to know that god-self must be repented of or they will perish. If that is true, isn´t it time we rethink our methods of evangelism and make sure they are in line with our doctrine? “The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives’ (Phil 1:17). “For they all seek after their own interests, not those of Christ Jesus’ (Phil 2:21).
God Loves... Himself 
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