In the modern world self-love is considered a necessary thing to get by and even to be moral. The necessary consequence of supreme self-love, however, is enmity with God. The Greatest Command is to love God with all of our beings. If we do not have a supreme love to God, which only truly converted people have, then we are of necessity given over to the love of self as the supreme love and governing principle in the heart. If the command is to love God with all of the heart, mind, soul, and strength, then any love for self or for our neighbor must flow from a love for Him. Any love for self that does not flow from a primary love for Him is idolatry and is clearly to be at enmity with Him. The supreme love of a human being is to be reserved for God and for Him alone.
Scripture tells us this in other words as well: “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:26). Surely this verse requires a supreme love to God in all things and shows us how easy it is to fall into idolatry. It is so easy to love family and friends simply from a love for self and think that we have true love. When we think we have true love, we think that we have God and so use our idolatrous love of others to confirm us in our sin. In other words, it is very easy to use our enmity with God as a “biblical” reason to justify ourselves into thinking we have love. The Bible commands people to honor their fathers and mothers. However, one cannot truly love them apart from having the Spirit who works the fruit of love in the soul and one cannot truly love them apart from loving God with the whole being. Yet when a person has been raised in a family where the people are knit together in some way it is very easy to think that is true love. True love must always comes from God and will have God first.
The Scripture will show us the need to be stripped of self and the power of self to truly love. The Spirit will use that Word to hack and hew away at the love of self that all have. The reason this is true is because the love of self is to be at enmity with true love. The Spirit will not allow His people to have such unholiness to remain in the heart that God dwells in. Those that do not truly believe must be broken of this hideous sin of self and pride which is at the heart of the natural man. God demands supreme love for Himself which demands that we love all things for His sake rather than our own. God demands supreme love for Himself even in human relations and our regard for self. That supreme love, of course, is not in the power of the human being but must be worked in the hearts of humans by God Himself. This requires an act or declaration of war in all cases.
When self is supreme, it is the enemy of God. The “mind set on the flesh [self-love, pride, self-centeredness] is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom 8:7-8). The Great Commandment is the Law that all other laws bow to. The mind set on the flesh is hostile to God because it does not love God and so cannot keep even the slightest of His laws from the heart. The mind set on the flesh is a mind that does not have the love of God dwelling in it and so has no ability to keep His law and cannot please God in any way. That mind has no love of God in it and so is at enmity with the true God in all that it does. It is at enmity with God in all it does in religion and even in the ministry. This mind has nothing but enmity toward the true God because it has no true love for God. That mind that has no love for God in it may be very civil toward family and others, but without the true love of God in that soul all that it does is enmity toward God.
The love of human beings for self is the moral governor in the soul and is nothing but the height of idolatry in its enmity toward God and His Great Commandments. The person that is at enmity with God in all that s/he does may be the nicest of human beings as far as other people can tell. That person may be very sweet and servant-like on the outside, but without the love of God in that soul that person is at enmity with Him. That person that is so sweet may go to prayer meetings and plead with God for the physical well-being of others and perhaps even for the salvation of others, but without the love of God in that soul those prayers are at enmity with God too. “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD, But the prayer of the upright is His delight” (Proverbs 15:8). What we must get our hearts to see and then the hearts of others is that even our prayers and greatest acts we can think of are acts of enmity against God unless we have a true supreme love for Him in our hearts. Human beings idolize self and use the means of grace given by God as nothing but means of self. The idol of self cannot be touched without anger toward people. Why is there so much trouble in professing churches today? It is because there are so many idols of self either being challenged by the truth or they are simply colliding with each other. When our prayers and prayer meetings are acts of enmity against God, we are in great darkness.
God Loves... Himself 
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