Love your neighbor as yourself.
This phrase is familiar and clear, yet it pushes us to the extreme of neighboring well. It is not complicated to understand. It is challenging to undertake. Not one of us can say it without being a hypocrite.
To help us get out minds around this massive concept we will ask, “why?”, “what?”, “how much” and we will consider the example of the Good Samaritan.
Why?
Why should we accept “love your neighbor as yourself” as the standard for neighboring well?
The lawyer was not just giving fancy lawyer talk when he said, “love your neighbor as yourself”. He was sharing God’s law.
The lawyer answered the question by quoting two Old Testament commands.
Deuteronomy 6:5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
Leviticus 19:18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord..
Luke 10 and Leviticus 19 are two of eight total times that “love your neighbor as yourself” appears in the Bible. As we consider each citation, we get a sense for how important this law is.
When James quotes it, he calls it the “royal law according to the Scripture” (James 2:8).
When Jesus listed commandments to the rich young ruler, he quoted five of the ten commandments. He listed all the commandments about how to treat others except “thou shall not covet” (Matthew 19:19). Then he added “love your neighbor as yourself”. Jesus bundled this phrase with the Ten Commandments. That’s a big deal.
When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was also quoted Deuteronomy 6:5 about loving God. Then he added, “love your neighbor as yourself” as the second greatest commandment (Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31). Pause and recognize the significance of this. The greatest person to ever live told us the greatest commandments ever given.
Jesus concluded his statement with these mind-blowing words, “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:40). If love for God or love for others goes away, the entire revelation of God goes with it. If the anchor of love breaks, everything else he has called us to falls. Your pursuit of happiness in Christ fall. Your influence for the kingdom falls. Your possibility for a God glorifying marriage falls. Your church or school ministry falls. Your Sabbath keeping falls. Your impact in the community falls. There is a lot hanging on the commands to love God with all we are and to love our neighbor as our self.
When Paul quotes the command to love your neighbor as yourself, he says it fulfills the law (Romans 13:8-10; Galatians 5:13-15). That is right, the rest of the law hangs on it and it fulfills the rest of the law. That places it at the beginning of the law and the end. It is the foundational anchor that the rest of the law hangs on and it is the ultimate fulfillment of the rest of the law.
So, there is a good reason for why we should love our neighbor as ourselves.
What?
What are we supposed to do to our neighbor?
There is one verb in the phrase “Love your neighbor as yourself”. Love! That’s what we are supposed to do to our neighbors. Wait, isn’t that a bit too intimate for neighbors? When we struggle to love the people in our own home it is a dramatic jump to love our neighbor.
Unfortunately, if we supplied the verb for this phrase based on what we see in the world around us, it would more likely read something like, “judge your neighbor”, “compete with your neighbor”, or “gossip about your neighbor”. Or worse, “hate your neighbor”, “protest against your neighbor”, “oppress your neighbor”, “kill your neighbor”, “cancel your neighbor”, or “condemn your neighbor”. The reality of this kind of evil toward neighbors make us feel virtuous when we hold to a low standard like “tolerate your neighbor”. The celebration of tolerance allows us to simply ignore our neighbor and pat ourselves on the back because we didn’t hate them. We would be cultural overachievers if we aimed to like our neighbor, serve our neighbor, help them, notice them, or befriend them. None of these are the verb the Bible puts in the phrase. The Bible says, “Love your neighbor”. How radically countercultural!
Love it not a negative command, like “don’t hate”. It is a positive command, “do love”. It is easier to not do something bad than to actively do something good. In the parable, the robbers were actively bad, the priest and Levite were passively bad, the Good Samaritan was not passively good but actively good.
What are we supposed to do to our neighbor? Love them!
How much?
How much are we supposed to do it?
Ok, so it is clear that we are supposed to love our neighbor but how much do we have to love them? As yourself! This is where the standard goes from extreme to supernatural.
For some of us, it would be an improvement to love our neighbor as we love our dog, our car, our hot drink, our music, our hobby, our house, or our job. If this level of love would make a better world, imagine what loving our neighbor as ourselves might do.
To love your neighbor as yourself requires that you love yourself. Don’t worry, you do. When we have a want or a need, we do whatever we can to satisfy it because we love ourselves.
To love others as we love ourselves means that our hearts should ache to feed others when they are hungry just as our stomachs ache to be fed when we are hungry. We should hurry to clothe others when they are exposed as we hurry to clothe ourselves when we are exposed. We should look to be a companion to those who are lonely with the same eagerness that we look for a companion when we are lonely. We should value others as we long to be valued. We should labor for the success of others as we labor for our own. We should pray for others with the interest that we pray for ourselves. We should delight in the pleasure of others like we delight in our own. We should feel the same urgency to relieve their suffering that we feel to relieve ours. We should bring the same creativity and energy into solving their problems as we do to our own. We should extend the same patience and forgiveness to them that we give to ourselves. We should have the same level of determination and sacrifice for their good as for ours.
We can know how much to love others because we see how much we love ourselves.
Example
The Good Samaritan is the example Jesus gives of loving your neighbor as yourself.
33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. 34 He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’
He saw the man. It begins with seeing the needs of other people. But seeing isn’t enough. Both the priest and Levite also saw. The parable says of both of them, “when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.” (v.31-32). What do we do with what we see?
He had compassion. When we see, we have a choice to feel with the person we see or to push those feelings away. This was the pivotal point that differentiated the Good Samaritan from the others, he felt compassion. Compassion is feeling with others. Love connects us to the feelings of others. I know when I am hungry, my stomach tells my brain. I know I need clothes when my skin tells my brain. We have sensors that tell us how we feel. How do I feel when others are hungry? Compassion grows in us an ability to feel what others feel so we can love them as we love ourselves.
He went to him. He put himself in a high-risk situation to go to the man. The man was left for dead but wasn’t dead yet. That means that the people who put him in this condition were not far off. Going to him was not only a matter of taking time to show kindness, but it was also bringing significant risk upon himself.
He bound his wounds and poured oil and wine on them. The actions of love work to reverse the actions of evil. Evil wounded him; love bound the wounds.
He set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. The man went beyond meeting his needs in the moment, he brought him to a better place. It is one thing to share a meal and another to invite them home. He continued with the man in need.
He gave two denarii. The gospels portray a denarius in the time of Christ to be equal to a day’s wage for a common laborer (Matthew 20:2, John 12:5). It was not a small gift.
The man gave instructions to the inn keeper. He didn’t just neighbor well, he networked with his community to meet needs. Maybe you don’t have what is needed but you could inspire those who do to meet needs.
He promised to repay whatever was spent. That is a bad business move. With a blank check, the more money the inn keeper spent on the man the more profit he made.
He promised to come back. His care for the stranger brought him back. He didn’t just help and leave. He invested. He committed.
A Conclusion of 1,000 Questions
As we have asked, “why?”, “what?”, “how much?” and considered the example, we have arrived at some amazing answers. As we process these answers, a thousand other questions quietly arise within us. How do we do it? How do I love someone who is trying to hurt me? Where do I set boundaries and where, so I accept risks? How do I love if I am really struggling to simply not hate?
To love your neighbor as yourself is hard. It is not a naïve, fluffy, meatless piece of overly religious advice. Knowing how to love others takes emotional maturity, toughness, discretion, and courage.
Before we despair of the difficulty of this message, let’s root this week’s message in last week’s message. Loving your neighbor as yourself flows out of experiencing God’s love. It is the second greatest commandment. We live out this second greatest commandment by living in the 1st greatest commandment.
By the grace of God, love your neighbor as yourself.