On Pouring From an Empty Cup

Pouring From an Empty Cup

"Love yourself"

"treat yo'self"

"You can't love others if you don't first love yourself"

"You can't pour from an empty cup"

We are constantly told that in order to love others properly we have to love ourselves first, that we'll be unable to love anyone if we don't first love ourselves. People even will point to Scripture and Jesus' command to "Love your neighbor as yourself." This assumes that you love yourself already and therefore they say, you can't love your neighbor if you don't love yourself.

However, at the end of the day, we don't need to love ourselves before we can love others properly because if it is our love that we are giving them we aren't loving them properly anyhow.

Let me explain.

Rooted deep in the philosophy of loving yourself before you can love others, is the idea that we can love on our own. That as humans, we possess what we need in order to love those around us. But this raises the question, what is love?

"Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13 ESV).

The greatest love anyone can have is that he give up his life, that he sacrifice himself. In fact in this very passage, Jesus commands his disciples to "love one another as I have loved you" (Jn 15:12). And the simple matter of fact is that we can't do this on our own. Our human faculties are incapable of loving others in the same way that Christ loved us.

"I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing" (Jn 15:5 emphasis added).

When we try to do things in our own strength we will fail. The only thing we are capable of apart from God is sin.

People are correct in saying you can't pour from an empty cup, but the good news is that it's not my cup I have to pour from, it's His (I must confess I stole that phrase from a friend during the conversation on this very topic that prompted this post). Should we try to pour from our own cup, from our own love, it's like trying to fill a cracked cistern with a teaspoon. Instead let us dip our cups in the fountain of living waters and pour from HIS cup. Our love is bitter and twisted and broken. While HIS is sweet, and life giving, and the only thing that can satisfy.

A WARNING AGAINST BURN OUT

While I firmly stand by the statements made above, I am also a proponent of self care. While it is true that it is God's love that we are pouring from, unless we care for ourselves properly we will burn out eventually. God's love for his children is unconditional, and so should ours be. But we are also one of his children, and so if we don't love ourselves then we are not fulfilling God's commandment to love his children. However we love ourselves not in the sense that the world would strive for, self love isn't spa days and mall trips. It isn't arrogance and pride. Rather it is valuing oneself on the basis that you are an image bearer of God Almighty. I would caution anyone with serious self-hate problems to be wary of entering into ministry, not on the basis that it will be impossible for them, but on the basis that they will find themselves burning out. God values you, and God loves you, and so should you.