A sermon on self-care, self-centredness, and Christ-centred rest
A sermon from Latimer Church examining the concept of self-care through a biblical lens.
Summary
This is a solo sermon delivered at Latimer Church, most likely by James de Costobadie (Costa), Senior Pastor. The sermon takes the modern concept of "self-care" as its starting point and subjects it to biblical scrutiny, arguing that while self-care recognises some genuine truths — human limitation, individual difference, the need for rest — it is built on a foundation that too easily slides into self-centredness, self-deception, and self-indulgence. The preacher contends that the Bible offers no category for self-care as such, but does offer something far better: care that is Christ-centred, Christ-shaped, and communal. Drawing on Matthew 11, Mark 6 (the feeding of the five thousand), Philippians 2, and the lives of Timothy and Epaphroditus, the sermon argues that genuine rest and care flow from coming to Jesus, imitating his patterns of life, and being embedded in a loving church community.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Opening passage and introduction to self-care
Jesus said, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." That's Matthew 11:28–30.
I don't know what comes to mind or how you feel when you hear that invitation from Jesus. It's a pretty well-known one. I don't know what you hear, but it sounds pretty good to me. We live in such a complex, convoluted, busy, and frantic modern world. Although there are things to be thankful for, so many things move at a mile a minute. And I know many people often feel tired, overwhelmed, anxious. And then you hear an invitation like that from Jesus — to come to him and he will give you rest.
Today we're thinking about the concept of self-care. If you haven't heard the term, it's become something of a modern buzzword, along with related terms of wellness and well-being. Now, as I'm sure many of you do, when I heard the term I just thought it was simply about taking care of yourself in healthy and balanced ways, which seemed pretty good on the surface to me. I was surprised — maybe I shouldn't have been — when I looked it up online, and you get all manner of comments about it. At one end of the scale, people online speak of self-care as a historically combative response against political and religious oppression, which started in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, that sort of time. On the other hand, some people speak of it as an incredibly clever global marketing scheme, with one estimate I looked at saying that the global wellness economy was worth upwards of five and a half trillion dollars a year. That was just a few years ago.
Now I don't know how much of that is true — you can read anything on the internet — and in many ways I'm not fussed. Because regardless of what's said out there, self-care itself has become such a prevalent ideal in modern Western culture that Christians need to think about this biblically, to bring God's word to bear so that we can think clearly, recognising what's good — and there is good — and avoiding what isn't.
What is genuinely good about self-care
I'm going to begin with a few general comments before landing in a more biblical framework for how to approach and think about things.
First, the good. At its best, what are the good ideals and purposes and assumptions of self-care? In its best form, self-care recognises a few helpful truths.
One: we are limited. Now of course, theories of self-care didn't come up with this fact. The Bible has been abundantly clear on this for thousands of years. It even calls us to delight in the fact that we have been designed with limits as human beings. It's one of the many good things that remind us — and it is a good thing — that we are not God and we depend on him for everything. We are limited. You've been awake for a while, you need sleep. You're sick, you need to recover. We need food and drink, we need rest, we need time alone, we need many and various inputs to keep going. We can't do everything, and we can't keep going indefinitely. And knowing our limits is a good thing. It's not a bad thing. It inevitably shows us that God is God and we are not.
Two: we're all different. Although we are all equally created in God's image and equally valued, we each have our own unique gifts, strengths, weaknesses, and limitations, which God places on us for our good. These aren't always physical differences — sometimes they're mental or emotional. Some of us are introverts, some of us are extroverts. Everyone's unique. We have different strengths and needs.
So recognising these facts, modern self-care tells us that we need to be mindful of our individual limitations and differences and build in routines and practices of rest and exercise — activities that fill our cup as opposed to emptying it, as the language goes — so that we can maintain and sustain healthy living and avoid burning out or mental meltdown. All of these things sound good, and they are pretty good.
Why the term "self-care" is problematic for Christians
But the question is, as Christians, is self-care the best way of describing or even attaining these things? We'll get to this in more detail later on, but the Bible itself tells us to implement patterns of rest. And doing what God says in the Bible isn't self-care — that's obedience. Terminology, maybe. But let me say something else, because the danger of speaking of self-care is that, as far as I can tell, there is no biblical category for it. We have calls for self-sacrifice, self-control, self-denial, self-emptying — but not self-care. And at the very least, as Christians, that should give us pause. It should lead us to think about why that is. Is it wrong, or are we just using the wrong terms? Is it just a matter of semantics?
Let me give you an example. I contend to be something of a people pleaser, which means I often keep saying yes to things until I'm fully booked, behind on most things, worrying about my performance — leading on occasion to tiredness, stress, and anxiety. Now you might say, under the umbrella of self-care, that I should learn to say no to some things over there so that I can find rest and balance to sustainably keep going over here. However, I want to ask: is that self-care, or is that self-discipline or self-control? Because they are biblical categories. They are God-ordained restraints for the sinful parts of our nature, acknowledging that we're not God, so that we can live to his glory and for the good of others, and operate as we were designed to.
Now maybe, as I say, it's just a matter of terminology. Maybe we don't have to think too much about these things. But I think it is helpful to think intentionally about them so that we can avoid the dangers and the temptations which come with it.
The three dangers: self-determinism, self-deception, self-indulgence
Because the central danger is that self-care so easily slips into being self-centred. If you start with self, the likelihood is you'll end with self. And this can show itself in at least three related ways.
It begins with a sort of self-determinism — the conviction that only I know what is best for myself. Now the Bible is very clear. Ever since the Garden of Eden, we've desired the knowledge and authority of deciding what is right and best for ourselves. Remember, Eve saw that eating the fruit was useful for gaining wisdom and would make her like God, knowing and therefore being able to judge what is good and evil, right and wrong, best and worse for herself. The Bible was also very clear how wrong she was. God knew best, and she didn't listen. And the Bible continues to show us that ultimately we don't know what the end results of our own judgment will be. Proverbs 14:12 says, "There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death." Self-determinism is dangerous. Self-awareness is slightly different — self-determinism can be dangerous. Not all our judgments are good ones, and often a lot of them aren't very good ones.
Now a big part of the reason for that is a related danger: self-deception. Jeremiah 17:9 warns us that the heart is deceitful above all things, and it is beyond cure. We know there is a cure in the Lord Jesus, but that is an ultimate cure and it's one day still to come. Now the modern premise of self-care tells us that we have to decide what is best for ourselves, but can we ever truly trust our own judgment when we know our hearts to be deceitful? It's worth asking.
And it leads to a third danger, which is self-indulgence. Because we can never fully trust our hearts and minds to know the limits of what is helpful and what is sinful, the danger is that what looks like self-care actually becomes self-indulgence. Overwork swings to underwork. Busyness becomes laziness, that sort of thing.
Now one of the difficulties in this area is that there's no strict set of guidelines for what this looks like for everyone. There's no Bible passage that you can go to that says this is what you do on Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays. There's a wisdom and a flexibility needed for us to navigate this in a good and godly way. And if you know the Bible at all, you know it's going to radically upend many or maybe all of our natural inclinations. It's going to push us in ways that we know will be difficult. It will shift our priorities and patterns in ways we don't at first see as beneficial.
And if we're honest, I wonder if we worry that as we come to the Bible — knowing that it's going to ask some difficult things of us, that it's going to ask us to seek the glory of God and the good of others above ourselves — we're left with this fearful question: who's going to look after me?
God knows and wants what is best for you more than you do
The world will tell you that in the end no one will look after you. You have to look out for yourself. But the Bible says something different. The world says no one knows you better than you know yourself. Well, the Bible says that not only does God know you better than you know yourself because he created you — he wants what is best for you more than you do. God wants more good for you than you want for yourself. It's an interesting concept, isn't it?
And actually, if you rely on self-care, you're receiving substandard treatment. Complaints to head office — which is still just you, if you get the drift. The infinite God who is love and the wellspring of all things loving loves you more than you can ever love yourself. And because he loves you, because he knows you, knows what's best for you and wants what's best for you, the best place to look for care isn't within yourself. It's to look to God — supremely in the person of his Son Jesus, and specifically in his word in the Bible.
So we land right back where we began. Jesus says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls."
Friends, there is much to be taken from these few words of our Lord Jesus — too much for one evening. But from these and a few other places, we need to see tonight three things from the Bible. First, the best care is Christ-centred — not self-centred, Christ-centred. Secondly, the best care is Christ-shaped — I'll explain that when we get there. And third, the best care is also communal, not individual. And what you get from this is: help doesn't come from within, help comes from without. And that's a wonderful blessing.
The best care is Christ-centred
Let's start from the first one. Jesus says, "Come to me and I will give you rest." Now yes, Jesus here is speaking finally of an ultimate rest — that is, a peace with God that will last for eternity, which only comes by faith in Jesus. If you've been a Christian for any degree of time, you understand that. It's trusting in his life and death and resurrection for an ultimate and future rest. But even saying that has an immediate effect, an immediate form of rest, which is a rest from thinking that our salvation depends on our own efforts. And all of a sudden that burden is lifted, because Jesus took that burden on the cross. It's a rest because we are safe in Christ now and into eternity. That's a central part of what faith is — it's trusting and resting in Christ. It's not up to you. He's done it for us.
But Jesus is not just calling us to come to him for rest — he calls us to learn from him, and he will give you rest. Friends, that means we have to learn to rest. We have to be taught. Oddly, it doesn't come naturally. Rest is not necessarily that lump I form on the couch at the end of every week. I may think that's rest, but it may not be the best rest. And the best rest is to be found in Jesus, first and foremost. And from there, it flows outward into the rest of life. And learning takes time. We have to learn these things — wisdom and maturity in Christ.
The key is you have to come to Jesus and his word to figure out what is actually best. And it takes trust — a great deal of trust, I think — to relinquish control of our care into the hands of the Lord and trust that his ways are the best ways. Now theoretically, the beauty of this is that we know he loves us, we know he knows and wants what's best for us. The tricky thing is that sometimes the Lord demands or asks more of us than we feel able to do at the time. It maybe leads us in directions we wouldn't have chosen for ourselves. Where we might have chosen more time to kick our feet up, the Lord sometimes asks us to press on in love for others. Well, I still think you'll find that in the end, when Jesus says it's best, it's best. But this requires us to step out in trusting the promise — for example, that we are able to do all things in the strength that Christ gives us. It is literally living by faith.
The feeding of the five thousand and the shape of Jesus's care
Now I find the passage that we had read for us — the feeding of the five thousand — interesting in this regard. You might wonder what it has to do with the topic of self-care. But it becomes relevant when you think in terms of how Jesus cares for his disciples and those around him.
If you're not familiar, the narrative picks things up after Jesus and his disciples have just been out on a mission preaching and healing the sick. It's been hard work, but it's been fruitful and rewarding. The disciples are pretty excited about what's been going on. They tell Jesus about it. But Mark notes, if you are following along, that because so many people were coming and going, they didn't even have a chance to eat. Jesus said to them, "Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest." Notice that the disciples don't complain, they don't pipe up — Jesus notices and knows what they need, and then he commands them to come to a quiet place for some rest. Jesus knows that sometimes the best thing is to get away from the clamour and the noise for some peace and quiet and a good feed.
Mark carries on and notes that they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place. But the story continues by noting that the huge crowds noticed them going and went around the lake to the place where they landed. They were already there when Jesus and the disciples arrived. What does Jesus do? Does he say, "Sorry everyone, this is my me time. The disciples and I have set this time aside. You'll have to wait until we're ready for you"? No. Jesus looks on the crowds and he has compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began to teach them. And even there, notice the priority of Jesus — he's concerned with the spiritual health of the people in front of him before anything else. And likely — we don't have time to explore this fully — we experience unrest in our own lives more from the fact that we are spiritually unhealthy than from any other factor. Spiritual health is vitally important.
And yet Jesus isn't only concerned about that. Jesus then also provides a huge meal which more than satisfies everyone — that came in the part of the story that wasn't read — including the disciples who were hungry. So put yourself in the mind of a disciple, never mind the crowds at this moment. The disciples have now come along here. They've been able to sit down for a long time, hearing the teaching of Jesus, and they've had a good feed. Seems like heaven to me. But it doesn't happen the way you might expect it to happen. Jesus's care is not always the way we would envisage or choose.
Now that's not the main point of that particular passage, but it just speaks into something on the modern claim of self-care. Sometimes the good and right thing is not to claim the right of rest, but to press on for the good of others and the glory of Jesus. How do we know which? We learn. But it always begins by coming to Christ — learning from his teaching, but also, secondly, learning from his example.
The best care is Christ-shaped
So the best care is Christ-centred, but the best care is also Christ-shaped. And the main question here is: what would Jesus do? This is harking back to — and you might be showing your age here, and if you give a little giggle it's the throwback to — those bracelets that were common a few decades ago which read WWJD. I haven't seen one in ages. It's a reminder that in every circumstance you're to ask the question: what would Jesus do?
But just before we get to that, it's important to understand why Jesus did what he did. And there may be no more relevant pattern for us to think about than Philippians 2. I invite you to read the whole passage when you get home. But you get this in Paul's commands from chapter 2, verse 3, as he writes to the Christians in Philippi: that Christians should do nothing out of selfish ambition but put the needs of others above their own. He says that we should have the mind of Christ — Christ's mindset — who, instead of grasping at the glory which was rightfully his, was obedient to his heavenly Father, obedient even to death on a cross for the salvation of those who didn't deserve it. This is Jesus's mindset as he lived. You get a similar thing in Mark 10:45: "The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many."
Now you might be thinking, well that doesn't sound like self-care at all. It's not. And it's one of the reasons I think Christians should be cautious about using the term. Remember — self-denial, self-sacrifice, self-control. These are the mindsets of the Bible and of Jesus himself.
But hold on to that mindset of Jesus and then look at the life of Jesus, how that plays out, and you get a number of different examples. You still find a Jesus who, for example — Luke 5:16 — often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. That he had a mindset for serving and saving others didn't mean he spent every minute of every day engaged with those people on the clock, as it were. Sometimes the Lord Jesus needed space. He went to a beautiful garden and he prayed to his heavenly Father. And note that what he actually sought was refreshment and communion with his heavenly Father.
Jesus knows where to find the best rest — in speaking to and hearing from God his Father. I'm pretty sure if you run the numbers on the most predominant habits in the Bible, you'll come up with two at the top of that list. They will be reading and meditating on the word of God, and prayer. They are the two most important habits for any Christian. You can add to that — don't give up meeting together — there are probably one or two others. But listening to the word of God and speaking to him in prayer are the two most important habits. Even Jesus relied on God's word. You see that when he's tempted in the desert and he has to know God's word as he lives it out. Even Jesus relied on praying to his heavenly Father regularly, and when he was alone, for strength and comfort and guidance. And if Jesus needs that, so do we. And if you get nothing else from today, increasing our patterns of receiving the word and reaching out in prayer is not going to harm us. They are only ever going to help.
Other patterns, though. Sabbath rest and various festivals and feasts are outlined in the Old Testament and were lived out by Jesus. Now you've got to be a little bit careful here. Jesus shows that the Sabbath was misunderstood in some ways, and I think it still is. The Bible more broadly shows that the Sabbath particularly was a picture of the greater rest to come, and precisely how those after Jesus follow Sabbath patterns is a debate for another day. But it doesn't change this fact: that God not only created us with patterns of rest, he legislated them. Isn't that interesting? God commands rest for his people. And Jesus lived out those commands perfectly, because he perfectly obeyed God's law. And so we should be quite stringent in enforcing those commands. However they apply, that rest is God-given and God-ordained. As I said earlier, we don't have to call deliberate and intentional rest self-care. We can call it what it is: obedience.
A few other examples. Jesus also ate a lot of food — you notice. There's a lot of that in the Gospels. He's regularly sitting down and eating meals with people. Sometimes people he doesn't know, and he speaks to them and he evangelises. Sometimes it's just with his disciples. Sometimes it's just with his closest friends for rest and relaxation. Jesus fell asleep in boats when he was tired. He got up to calm the odd storm when needed. But sleep is a wonderful gift from God that we often place less of a priority on than we should, because we like streaming services. It's true, isn't it?
Another one: Jesus walked everywhere. He got plenty of exercise and he was never in a rush. How much of our need for rest comes from rushing around like mad hatters all day and all week?
I don't know if you've ever thought — and this feels like a weird question — but have you ever thought, if you asked Jesus to sit down with you as you plan out your calendar, what do you think he'd suggest? Maybe an odd question. It is an odd question, but it might be a good one. What would Jesus do? What would he not do? It's worth asking.
I think we're frantic and busy not truly because the Bible tells us we should be busy — or not in the same ways as it tells us to be. So much of the pressure we face is the pressure of the world's expectations, or our own expectations, or Instagram's expectations. The world and our own desires drive us to have and to do so much that is so completely unnecessary, so that if we actually stopped and thought about it and applied the priorities and patterns laid out for us in Scripture, and let the Lord determine more of what we did and didn't do, we'd be better off, strangely.
Lots more that could be said. We must move on.
The best care is communal
Now, imitating Christ isn't oddly limited to imitating Jesus, but also those who lived and spoke with his authority. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, "Imitate me as I imitate Christ." So the whole of Scripture falls under that. And if we imitate how we see other believers act, particularly in the New Testament, we find one more place for the best care.
Number three: the best care is also communal. And this is Philippians 2:19–30, if you're taking notes, and it's on the screen. Listen to these words and note that they follow on the heels of the passage about having the mind of Christ we've mentioned earlier. These words are from later on in Philippians 2, from verse 19. Paul says:
"There's no one else like him who will show genuine concern for your welfare. For everyone looks out for their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ."
And you've got to connect the dots there. Paul is saying that a genuine concern for Jesus Christ flows out into a concern for his people.
"But you know that Timothy has proved himself, because as a son with his father he has served with me in the work of the gospel in that care and support and gospel proclamation. I hope, therefore, to send him as soon as I see how things go with me. And I am confident in the Lord that I myself will come soon."
Paul himself wants to get in on the action of caring and supporting.
"But I think it is necessary to send back to you Epaphroditus, my brother, co-worker and fellow soldier, who is also your messenger, whom you sent to take care of my needs. For he longs for all of you and is distressed because you heard he was ill. And he was ill and almost died, but God had mercy on him — and not on him only, but also on me, to spare me sorrow upon sorrow. Therefore I am all the more eager to send him so that when you see him again you may be glad and I may have less anxiety. So welcome him in the Lord with great joy and honour people like him, because he almost died for the work of Christ. He risked his life to make up for the help you yourselves could not give me."
It would take a long time to unravel all the wonderful interconnected care and genuine concern shown in that passage, wouldn't it? The anxiety left in comfort, the strength and the support of one another it displays.
I've said this before, though. This is so clear from the Gospel. As God's love pours into us through the Lord Jesus, it overflows in us and out of us into a love for other people, which flows out into a love for the world. It's just what happens. And the best care happens in community. A church family shaped by the love and humility of Christ is one which looks out for and cares for one another.
It means lots of different things. Sometimes this means urging people to press on and spurring them on to love and good deeds — the gentle, loving nudge, call it. At other times it means helping them carry their burdens. Sometimes it means sitting down to pray with them. Sometimes it just means sitting down with them, giving space for the confession of sins and prayers for strength and comfort. Sometimes it means giving them a meal so that they don't have to cook for themselves, because they're struggling, or just to let them know that they're loved and thought of. Sometimes it might mean telling them to stop and to slow down.
Whatever it is, it's full of grace and truth — that wonderful balance that the Lord Jesus does well and we fail in so often. Grace and truth. I think as a church it means being careful not to demand too much or to be too strict in our expectations of one another. That means a lot of things in a lot of situations, but what it always means is loving one another and caring for one another. The Christian walk is not a solitary exercise.
And I've got to say, I'm so encouraged by how people love one another here at Latimer. But as Paul encourages the Thessalonians, he says:
"Now about your love for one another, we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all of God's family. And yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more."
And I pray that we only ever increase in our care for one another.
Conclusion
Friends, this is not the end of a discussion — it's just the beginning. We learn from Jesus. But I hope you can see some of the dangers of the world's obsession at the moment with self-care, which far too easily lands in being self-centred. That's not to say that it doesn't recognise good things, because we're all limited and unique and designed for patterns of rest which are not all the same. The term may not be helpful, but it's not the real problem. So avoid the dangers of self-determined, self-deceiving, self-indulgence, laziness, and selfishness. And trust that Jesus knows and wants what is best for you. Not just to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey — that's something for the oldies out there who will recognise that hymn. Sorry if I've offended you by calling you an oldie.
Friends, the best care is not self-centred, it's Christ-centred. It's shaped by his priorities and his teaching, always with the ultimate assurance of his salvation — because it's not on our shoulders, it was on his. He bore that burden on the cross for us so that we don't have to.
The best care is also Christ-shaped. It's based on the patterns of Jesus's life. In humility, it is other-person focused. It is patiently built with patterns of rest, prayer, feasting, and fun.
And friends, the best care is also communal. As Christ loves the church, so we grow in and show our love for one another.
Jesus says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls."