My brother,

I know you’ve been going through a lot recently. After our last talk, I thought writing you a letter might help. I know you tend to forget that the people you love truly love you back. I wanted to write this to you so you would have something to return to whenever you feel like all have abandoned you. I know you feel as if you don’t deserve our love and you cannot believe that we actually love you, but we do. I do.

Last time we talked, you shared the struggles of the battle in your mind in more detail. Without going too much into what you already know, I just wanted to say that I know it has been hard for you. I know your thoughts have been consistently beating you down. I know in almost every situation, you see yourself as inferior. I know that you think the people you are closest to hate you the most. I remember you telling me that it seems those negative thoughts are what your brain defaults to when you’re in silence. I know you would describe those thoughts as an enemy. I can’t imagine having my enemy around me at all hours, constantly telling me how much he hates me. Because I love you, I want you to know that the self-hating thoughts in your head are not true. 

As your brother in Christ, I want to boldly say that those thoughts end up calling the love of God a lie. I know you know that. I just need to remind you and show you why that means you need to love yourself.

You were made in the image of God. When God created Adam, He said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26 [ESV]). After this, God gave humanity dominion over His creation and called them to be representatives of His kingship on earth. Being made in the image of God means that we reflect Him both in the beauty of our creation and the works of our hands. We don’t just contain a part of His image, but we were made in His image. As Herman Bavink says, “A human being does not bear or have the image of God but that he or she is the image of God.”¹ Not only are you His creation but you deeply resemble Him. That’s one of the main reasons why God did not allow Israel to make images of Him; He already has His image on earth in humanity. 

You and I have been raised in a world that does not teach us that we have been created in such a great image. In Love Thy Body, Nancy Pearcy wrote about how modern culture creates a stark divide between one’s feelings and body. She explained how society tends to put one’s emotions or feelings over their physical body and how they were created. She was applying this mainly to human sexuality but I think this applies to you. You are putting your sinful feelings over how you were created. You were created in the image of God. That is a fact, we just saw the Bible say as such. If you see yourself any differently, you are wrong. Look at how God created you and define yourself by His Word, not by the distortion of your sinful thoughts.

Brother, to hate yourself is to hate the image of God. I know how much you love God and how much the idea of hating Him would make you hurt. By hating something made in His image, you declare that you dislike the image of Him. You hate the resemblance of Him on this earth. That is a serious problem. 

This reminds me of what James says when talking about the tongue, saying, “No human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God” (James 3:8-9). You would never want to use your tongue to hate a brother made in the likeness of God. But isn’t that what you’re doing? The tongue of your mind is constantly berating yourself, a person made in the image of God. How is that any different from what the people James wrote to were doing? As James said, I now say to you, “these things ought not to be so” (James 3:10).

Here’s the thing: you are not only made in the image of God, but you are also united to Christ. I must remind you of Ephesians 2 which says, “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved” (Eph. 2:4-5). In the death and resurrection of Jesus, you have been united to Him. You have been united to Him in such a way that Jesus can infallibly pray to the Father, “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one,” (John 17:22-23). This wonderful union with Christ makes your value immeasurable. 

By hating yourself, you are devaluing a person united to Christ. You attempt to cheapen the work of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. God the Son came to earth and died for you. Then He resurrected and united you to Himself, glorifying you. You are without a doubt immensely valuable to Him. Who are you to say that you are worthless? How could you say that your life is meaningless? How could you think you could end that life that God values so dearly? 

Jesus put eternal worth on you. The whole story of human history involves your salvation. Jesus died so that you might live forever. God is not an idiot and He never does anything whimsically. If He is going to create a world, allow the fall into sin, create you, call you by name, send His Son to die for you, redeem you, raise your dead body, and glorify you, He’s going to have good reason. He did these things because you have value since He loves you. Don’t dare disparage that by thinking you can hate yourself. 

When relating our union to Christ with sexual sin, Paul says that to join your body to a prostitute is to “take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute,” (1 Cor. 6:15). This is because “he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him,” (1 Cor. 6:17). There is clearly a context here of our union to Christ and our one-flesh union to another human through sex. However, I think it is helpful for you to think about this union in relation to your self-hatred. This passage brings out the force of our union with Christ. This isn’t just a metaphorical union; it’s real! Commenting on this passage, Calvin says “Christ is joined with us and we with him in such a way, that we become one body with him”² and that “our connection with Christ is closer than that of a husband and wife.”³ This union is real. It is so real that God looks at the righteousness of Christ and justifies you. Your union with Christ is your salvation from the wrath of God for your innumerable and eternal sins. To forget about this union is to forget about your salvation. Thus, in a very real way, to hate your body or to hate yourself is to hate Christ. 

Lastly, these two things bring out something obvious but profound: God loves you. He created you in His image and united you to Christ. He loves you. I know this point will be the hardest for you to understand. I know you don’t think you are deserving of love from people, much less from God. I know everything above is easy for you to logically accept and believe. Those are good and necessary things to believe, but if you stop there and forget the love of God, you have missed the whole point. I know that you will have trouble hearing this, but allow the truth to overcome the lies in your mind. God truly loves you and for you to hate yourself is for you to hate something God loves with unending love. 

John Owen says it is very common for Christians to question the love of the Father, saying that they can find themselves “oftentimes with exceedingly troubled hearts, concerning the thoughts of the Father towards them.”⁴ However, despite this, Owen says that the Father’s love is the “fountain of all following gracious dispensations.”⁵ The Father’s love is sweet and tender towards His children and is the source of all the grace that flows to them. He loves you deeply. 

God’s love is also impassible, meaning it is not swayed by anything external. He does not love someone because they do things for Him or because they have a special quality about them. God loves because He loves. He loves you because He loves you. He is not affected by you. He simply, profoundly, loves you. This means no matter how awful you think you are, God loves you. He is not at all bothered by how undeserving of love you think you are. He loves you anyway. Any value you have is placed on you by God. As such, He has decided to place His unending, unshakable, unconditional love on you.

Stop being so fixated on yourself. I know it might not seem like it but this self-hatred is profoundly rooted in self-centeredness. Stop looking at yourself in every situation. Stop looking to yourself for a reason to be loved. When you feel like dirt that is simply tolerated by others as an unfortunate circumstance of life, look to how the invaluable God values you. He has called you loved and so you are. Believe Him. 

He loves you so much that when humanity fell, He did not leave them there. You, along with all of our other brothers, were not left where we should have been left. As Pearcy says, “The reason the fall is such a tragedy is precisely because humans have such a high value to begin with.”⁶ If He had not placed value on us and loved us, He would not have saved us. There would have been no reason for Him to do so. He could have punished us forever in hell and still remained perfectly just. The fact you are breathing right now is proof enough that God loves you and values you. 

For how much I love you, my brother, God loves you infinitely more. He created the universe because He loves you. He created the trees because He loves you. He created the cool breeze to blow on your skin because He loves you. He gave you your friends and family because He loves you. He gives you grace every time you sin because He loves you. When it seems every devil you have known surrounds you, He upholds you out of His love for you. He united you to Christ because He loves you. He made you in His image because He loves you. He is love and He loves you.

When your thoughts turn against you, they turn against someone God loves with an unfathomable love. When you hate yourself, you hate something God loves. You would never treat a brother the way you treat yourself. Would you ever hate a brother in Christ? Would you ever say the things you say to yourself to a brother you love? I know you; you love your brothers deeply because you know God loves them deeply. How sinful would it be if you treated your brothers this way? Can this same way of thinking not also be applied to yourself? Do you not know that you are loved by God just as much as your brothers are? 

I know how much loving your brothers means to you. Here’s the thing: you can’t love your brothers as you ought if you don’t love yourself. Anthony Hoekema said that man’s relationship with himself “underlies all… relationships toward God, others, and nature.”⁷ He continues to say,

A person who has an extremely negative self-image, who thinks of himself as totally worthless, will not be able effectively to love his neighbor as himself; he will not dare to give himself to his neighbor in fellowship, since he feels he has nothing worthwhile to give.⁸

Have you fallen into this? If you cannot love yourself, how are you going to love your brothers properly? I feel you may end up focusing your relationships on filling your perceived shortcomings with your brothers. That is not loving! Alternatively, you may deny yourself so much that you become like a shadow to your brother, who becomes the only substance of the relationship. Either way, this is not how a relationship in Christ ought to function. You need to love yourself before you can properly love others. 

My dear brother, do not call the love of God a lie; believe Him. He loves you. He has created you in such a way that you resemble Him on this earth. Do not hate the image of God. Jesus came to die for you, uniting you to Himself even as His own body. Do not hate the body of Christ by hating yourself. Believe in the love of God that He would create the universe out of His love and send His Son to die for you while you were still a sinner. Do not hate that which God loves with an unending love. Define yourself by how God sees you, not how you see yourself. Finally, believe that your brothers love you. None of us are deserving of love, yet we still love. 

Run to God when you feel the pain of this life. Your suffering will not end while on this earth. See the beauty in that. When you suffer, you are brought nearer and nearer to the love of God. When you suffer, God sends His children for you to lean on. Trust the Father, He is breaking you to renew you. God is carrying you as a shepherd carries His sheep. He has given you brothers to hold your hand while you travel in His arms. 

Your suffering will end. One day, your Savior will come and take you home to a place where there will be no more tears. In the meantime, as Jesus told His disciples, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me,” (John 14:1). He will come to you soon. Hold on. He has not left you.

I love you, my brother

1. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 291. ↩︎
2. John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, trans. John Pringle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1948), 217. ↩︎
3. Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, 219. ↩︎
4. John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed. William Goold, vol. 2 (PA: The Leighton Publications, n.d.), 21. ↩︎
5. Owen, The Works of John Owen, 2:21. ↩︎
6. Nancy R. Pearcy, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2018), 45. ↩︎
7. Anthony A. Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, First Edition. (Carlisle, UK ; Grand Rapids, MI: Paternoster Press ; Eerdmans, 1986), 102. ↩︎
8. Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, 102. ↩︎