Last Friday night, before heading home, I wrote down three different conclusions for Sunday’s sermon.  All three would be good.  But all three together would be confusing.  I let myself roll into Saturday and let the sermon ruminate in my head.  By the time Saturday night rolled around, I still did not have clarity on how to end the sermon.  I decided to get up extra early on Sunday and landed with the ending of 1 Corinthians 13 that I did.  There was quite a bit that I cut out of the sermon.  For most of this post, I’ll cover some items I cut out.  

But there is a severe issue with this “love myself first” strategy. Namely, it is not the way that God created us. God created us to love God and love others, with the same type of “others-focus, sacrifice” that we find in the Godhead. So, the question is, what did Jesus mean by “love your neighbor as yourself”? Did He mean, “love yourself first, then you can love others like you’re loving yourself”? Or did He mean something else?