What does the Bible say about self-hatred?

Job said, "I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:6). Is that a real experience with us? Is this true with every one of us here, do we absolutely hate ourselves? Jacob hated Leah. Do I hate myself? There are not many people who would like to go that far and say they hate themselves, yet Job said so. If a person is told that he is to hate himself in order to find blessing from God he could not do that, it would be impossible. The reason Job hated himself is given in the preceding verse, "I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee: Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes". If you are actually in the presence of the Lord Jesus, and look into His face and see absolute perfection and beauty there to satisfy your heart completely, is it a great thing to hate yourself? You will naturally hate yourself in comparison with Him, you will have done with yourself and have nothing more to do with yourself. This is a great lesson to be learnt.

It is better to be thinking of what God is than of what we are. This looking at ourselves at the bottom is really pride, a want of the thorough consciousness that we are good for nothing. Till we see this we never look quite away from self to God. Sometimes perhaps the looking at our evil may be a partial instrument in teaching us it, but still even that is not all that is needed. In looking to Christ it is our privilege to forget ourselves. True humility does not so much consist in thinking badly of ourselves, as in not thinking of ourselves at all. I am too bad to be worth thinking about; what I want is to forget myself and to look at God, who is indeed worth all my thoughts. Is there need of being humbled about ourselves? We may be quite sure that will do it.

We may talk in a lowly way of ourselves, but self-depreciation is no evidence of the lowly mind, rather the reverse. In self-depreciation we are, after all, talking about ourselves, and this may be the worst form of pride — the pride of humility. The lowly mind does not think of self — good or bad — it thinks of others to serve in love. It is the ignoring of self, not the depreciation of self.

If you met a man with a doleful face you would say, "You look very down to-day. What is troubling you?" Now the mind has a very great effect on the body. The Psalmist was so troubled that he could not sleep. He could not pray, and he hardly liked to talk to his fellow-men. What has he been dwelling upon? He tells us. "I have considered the days of old, the years of ancient times." People often speak of the good old days, and exaggerate the blessedness of them. He says, "I call to remembrance my song in the night." But that does not help him. He adds, "I commune with my own heart, and my spirit made diligent search." He was trying to find something to lay hold of as a source of happiness in the old days. What will that do for him? The next verse shows us. "Will the Lord cast off for ever? Will He be favourable no more? Is His mercy clean gone forever? Does His promise fail for evermore? … Hath He in anger shut up His tender mercies?" It seems to me as if these questions came out like a torrent, tumbling over one another. What is the man doing? He begins to judge God by his own miserable experiences? He doubts God. Will the Lord cast off forever? Wherever is there anything to give the smallest idea of such a calamity as that? He asks these questions: "Is His mercy clean gone for ever? Does His promise fail for evermore?" We can answer these five questions and say "No" to every one of them. He doubts God because of what he finds in his own wretched heart. Now that is the tendency of us all if occupied with ourselves. It may be that to-day you fear that you have deviated from the right path. The devil would like you to brood over that. It is right to confess this failing, but God desires that having confessed it you should have done with it, so that the happy link of communion between your soul and the Lord may be restored. The enemy would use these things to bend us double, to make us look morbidly within. Nowhere are we told to brood over our failures. We are told to confess our sins. God is faithful and just to forgive them, so that we may go on in communion and in power.

Is there any hope for a man like this? Look at verse 9 of our Psalm. That little word "Selah" marks a pause. Now stop and think. Think of the length to which a man will go in his doubting and questioning of God. Now the scales fall from this man's eyes, and the first thing he says when he comes to himself is, "This is my infirmity." That is the very word that is used in regard to the woman in Luke 13. Lay hold of that, and it will do you good. The spell is broken as soon as we label the thing with its right name. God's way is that you should judge yourself, and condemn yourself in thorough accord with the cross of Christ, where all that you are as a man in the flesh was condemned. God's desire is that you should confess and be forgiven, and go on in communion. In the days when the Psalmist was looking within, he remembered God, and he was troubled. Now he says, "I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High. I will remember" — not "my own miserable failures," but — "the works of the Lord. Surely I will remember Thy wonders of old." He thinks of better things.

Our apostle says, "No man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it." A necessary way of nature is here assumed, and assumed with approval, by the Spirit of God. That regard to one's self which each one of us is ready enough to render, is divinely sanctioned. And then, on this very principle of nature, the apostle goes on to put the Lord's nurture of the Church. "For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church; for we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones." Christ is declared to act towards us on this instinctive verdict of nature, that a man is to love his own body. The Holy Ghost, through the apostle, would let our hearts embrace this joy, that the force of this first law of nature is felt by Christ towards us, and the duty it imposes is owned by Him. So that if I can understand my love for myself, I may understand Christ's love to me. The duty I owe myself is acknowledged by my Lord as due by Him to me. He can but nourish and cherish me, as I would nourish and cherish myself.

As Eve was of Adam's body before she became his wife, so the wife is entitled to the husband's love just as he loves his own body, for the bond of marriage makes them one. In loving her, he loves himself. Never has man hated his own flesh: the law of self-preservation is predominant in mankind. One does not willingly starve himself to death. Rather, he nourishes his body and cares for its needs. These two things nourishing and cherishing -- are not included in the Lord's counsels (vs.25-27), but are rather His ways with His Church. The care involved in cherishing is both tender and supportive.

This is the true moral ground for every one of us. Job took a long time to reach it; and so do we. Many of us imagine that we have reached the end of self when we have given a nominal assent to the doctrine of human depravity, or judged some of those sprouts which have appeared above the surface of our practical life. But, alas! it is to be feared that very few of us indeed really know the full truth about ourselves. It is one thing to say "We are all vile," and quite another to feel, deep down in the heart, that "I am vile." This latter can only be known and habitually realised in the immediate presence of God. The two things must ever go together, "Mine eye sees Thee" — "Wherefore I abhor myself." It is as the light of what God is shines in upon what I am, that I abhor myself. And then my self-abhorrence is a real thing. It is not in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. It will be seen in a life of self-abnegation, an humble spirit, a lowly mind, a gracious carriage in the midst of the scene through which I am called to pass. It is of little use to profess very low thoughts of self, while, at the same time, we are quick to resent any injury done to us, any fancied insult, slight, or disparagement. The true secret of a broken and contrite heart is to abide ever in the Divine presence, and then we are able to carry ourselves right toward those with whom we have to do.

The lost sheep is one who has come to an end of himself, and is debtor wholly to the grace that comes after him, to seek and to save him where he is. To put it again — take as an illustration, beloved friends, what the Lord has given us elsewhere about this very thing — repentance. Who was Job? The very best man upon the earth. When God wishes to teach us the lesson of repentance He does not go to the jails. People do that. God takes up the very best man on earth. He says deliberately of Job, "There is no one like him on earth." But what does He do? He passes that man through unexampled sorrows which have made his name a proverb, and, beloved friends, for what? What are the last words of Job? "I repent in dust and ashes" — "I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." Was he turning over a new leaf? was he repenting of his sins? Why, beloved friends, he was the best man upon the earth at any rate; so if he had to repent and turn over a new leaf, it would be pretty hard for any body else. Was he a drunkard delivered from his cups? was he a criminal just let out of prison? He was the very best man on earth. What did he repent of? Himself, abhorred himself, and repented in dust and ashes. What was Job's repentance? Turning over a new leaf and cleaving faster to his righteousness and all that? No, beloved: his repentance was giving up all pretension to righteousness, and taking his place in self-abhorrence before God. Job was a child of God, — a saint. — That makes it so solemn. "Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord; for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified."

The experience recounted in this Psalm is that of one who had already known God, not only in power, but in grace. Hence there is a recurring of the troubled spirit in its distress to the works of old; the abiding tokens of that mercy, which has established its earlier acts as pledges of the assured fulfilment in due time of promises not yet received. The true nature of faith, and its wide distinction from all other means of Divine knowledge, are here most strikingly brought out. At verse 3 it is: "I remembered God, and was troubled." God, that is, when thought of by the self-judging spirit apart from the word of His grace, is not, and cannot be, the object of hopeful faith, but is the end of the conscience in fear. Nothing casts forth fear from the heart of a regenerate man but the realized enjoyment of grace; but grace can never be inferred from the inward experience of a heart that judges itself according to truth. The fountains of grace are in God; they flow to meet the sinner in the word of His grace. What the tried soul wants for its relief is "contained in Scripture." The buffeted Christian knows this well. It is only when the heart is diverted from self-dissection, to consider Him in whom the brightness of the Father's glory shines in loving mercy on us as the effect of His atoning work, that light and joy revisit the sin-burdened spirit of the self-condemned believer.

After speaking of the rich grace of God that prepared the "great supper," the Lord Jesus turned and said to the multitudes, "if any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26). This is not the old nature hating, but the divine nature in the believer hating in ourselves, or in those nearest and dearest to us, anything that would hinder us from following the Lord or carrying out His will. The divine nature that loves is the nature that hates, even as it is written concerning our Master, "Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity" (Heb. 1:9).

Then the Lord added, "And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:27). There has not only to be the hatred of self, but the end of self, if we are to be true disciples of the Son of God. Do we not see this exemplified in the Apostle Paul where he writes, "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake"? (2 Cor. 4:10-11). The true disciple is content to share the place the world has given to his Lord, even as Paul wrote, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20).