We do not see that much of what we live by, instead of the law of God’s Spirit, is the law of self.

The law of God is something we have to work to unearth to get back to the true meaning of it. It is not this hateful nonsense so many preach from the church, but it is the law of Light: “For the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true.” (Ephesians 5:9) We have to hold onto this meaning of God’s law as we continue talking about this.

Instead of living from the law of God, setting our lives by the course of what is truly good and godly, we instead live our lives by what we desire. And instead of judging by the law of God, we judge by this law of self.

The law of self is self-prejudice. It is to see the world around us from the view of ourselves, and not from the view of God. We judge everything from what we want, we even deal out justice and “reality” from this place of what is to our advantage.

We do have a small law in the midst of this that we shouldn’t do wrong to others in our pursuit of self, yet we don’t see how our pursuit of self is harmful to others.

Self-prejudice always spins the world in the colors of what we want to be true and justifiable. That is why we spend so much of our efforts trying to prove we are “allowed” to do something, rather than trying to just do what is good. We are often very busy trying to justify ourselves and this is why we cannot quiet ourselves to just listen to the true standard of God.

Self-prejudice does so much greater harm than we ever imagine. It is the very reason the entire world is as it is. All sin is bound up in this. It is the problem of where we see the world only from the view of self, and we do not see the world from God first, and our neighbor as equal to ourself. That is why the Lord shows us that the two greatest commandments speak to the entire core of sin:

“'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:36-40)

Because this corrects the issue of self in us, judging everything purely by self. As much as we might claim that this self in us is “tame”, it is far more unjust, cruel, and selfish than we ever care to know or admit.

Self takes what it wants, hoping to not be seen as having done wrong in doing so, justifying ourselves to death when we are called out for any degree of selfishness, because such a great part of self-love is our image of ourselves that we are very devoted to.

Self can be more extreme in others, it is true that the wickedness in murderers and abusers is very different from the self love in others. What we need to see though is the way of self is still the law in both people. The murderer is a good example of the working of self because of the evident example of it, you prize your life and yet you are willing to snuff out the life of another. Yet this is how self works under the surface in all of us. We may not murder others with our hands, but we murder people in our hearts every day in our elevation of ourselves and contempt upon the lives and values of other people.

Self is that which seeks our own end, even at the cost of another. More so, self is actually served most by the elevation of ourselves and the putting down of others. We feel worth and importance that depends upon the inferiority of other people. And self is very busy building our version of this.

All of this leads to the corruption we have in our world. Some examples of this are: People chasing ambition with no regard to the cost impact they make in the world. People taking others all to serve their sinful desires, people seeking fame and popularity to elevate themselves, people busy with their little worlds and building it however they want. People twisting reality to hide the truth of the effect of their ways. People spending all their energy to justify their doings. People using others then discarding them. Or think of all the ways people, when guilty of crimes or wrongdoing, vehemently defend themselves and only focus upon escaping justice.

From the great evils of slavery, sexism, and oppression, to the great greed of the rich, yet down to the ways we go about dating others to serve our desires, or how we go about our jobs… This self is sinful, even in the “mild” ways we go about it.