While this teaching of Scripture is not taught often, it is still necessary. Paul tells us in Romans 7:7 that he “would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “YOU SHALL NOT COVET.”” Neither do people know that they hate God unless people tell them. People will not believe this about themselves unless it is made clear. While it is clear that people are commanded to love God as the Greatest Commandment in Scripture, it is not so clear to the fallen mind and heart the greatness of the sin in not loving God with all of the being. The fallen mind and heart wants to think that its lack of loving God with all of its being is but a small thing. It wants to think that it is not all that bad and does some good things. The non-religious that do not absolutely deny that God exists think that they love God in not being as bad as others. The religious think that they love God to some degree and that the rest God will just close His eyes to them.
One thing that people do not understand is that their self-love is hatred of God. This is shocking to the fallen soul that does all for itself and then thinks that by doing good things it loves God. Let us look at some Scriptures and compare them with each other. From 1 Corinthians 13:5 we see that love “does not seek its own.” In direct contrast to that we see from II Timothy 3:2 that “men will be lovers of self.” Perhaps the depth of this issue is not obvious on the surface, but it is if we look into the shining character of God. The heart that has been regenerated has the very love of God in it. A true love is a love that comes from a heart that loves God supremely and that can only come from the God of love. A true love for God, then, comes from God and as such is a love that does not seek self as the center and focus of all things. Even in religious things to seek self is not to seek things out of love for God. Yet in the last days the Word tells us that men will be lovers of self. In other words, being given over to love for self is a great judgment because in those that love self supremely the love of God is absent. Where the love of God is absent is a heart that loves self supremely and so does all for self which is hatred of God.
Jesus tells us in Matthew 16:24 that “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.” On the other hand, Psalm 12:4 quotes people saying this: “With our tongue we will prevail; our lips are our own; who is lord over us?” We see the problem so clearly at this point. The denial of self is utterly necessary if we are going to follow Christ. Indeed many try to follow Christ by denying themselves certain things, but they have never truly denied self. When self is not denied, then all that the person does is to follow self. There is no taking up the cross in reality unless self has been denied. True enough some will do many religious things out of a love for the applause of others, but that is simply doing things out of a love for self. Instead people want to have their lips as their own which is to be lord of self. It is not just the lips of the self that people want to be lord over, but all of self. But surely it can be seen that the love of self always leads a person to follow self though it will pretend to follow Christ at times from a love for self. Following Christ out of love for self is hatred for God and not love for Him. It is an attempt to use Him to obtain something for self rather than to serve Him out of true love.
When we see hearts that are so out of line with the Word of God, we can know that there is hatred of God in those hearts whether it is admitted or not. The Word of God (Mat 6:24) tells us that “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.” If we love and are devoted to self, then we hate God. If we love God, we will hate the pride of self in our own hearts and cry out to God to deliver us from that. Self-love is not just a little something that we do that is wrong; it is to be at enmity with God. To be a lover of self (II Tim 3:2) ends up two verses later (II Tim 3:4) as being “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” If we are religious out of a love for self rather than a love for God, then the whole of our religion is idolatry. We like to think of ourselves as nice people that do mostly good things and refrain from most bad things. But when we are in the service of self, all that we do is bad. Even our righteous acts are as filthy rags (Isa 64:6). When we take Scripture seriously and see what we really do as contrasted with what Scripture really commands, we should be like Isaiah who saw that he had a filthy mouth and pronounced woes upon himself (Isaiah 6:1-5). If we think of ourselves as something other than vile wretches in utter need of grace, perhaps we have not seen the God that Isaiah saw. We must see the true God in order to see the true state of our own hearts.
God Loves... Himself 
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