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“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” Matthew 22:36-40 (NKJV). Love is the greatest gift that God gives. Loving your neighbor as yourself is found eight times in the Bible. Not once. Not twice. Eight times. Loving your neighbor as yourself is so important to God that He not only repeats Himself, He makes it a command. And not just one in a list of many commands. Jesus coupled the command to love your neighbor as yourself with loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. The problem we have in the world today is people no longer recognize their selves, as such are unable to love their selves, as such are unable to love others. How then to love your neighbor? By directing at your neighbor actions that reinforce and build up your neighbors’ self. This of course implies that outside of moral and ethical boundaries bound up in civil codes, you do not attempt to impose yourself on your neighbor. Just as you love yourself by feeding yourself with what builds up yourself, so also your love for your neighbor must serve for building up of their self. Love for a neighbor that is of the same skin as love for the self is love that builds up, love that in its very essence is altruistic. “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” Mark 12:30-31 (NKJV).
You love your neighbor the same way you love yourself, within boundaries of morality and ethics, by doing to them only what serves for building up of their chosen self. When something is important, we repeat it and emphasize it. Learning that we are to love our neighbors is so important – perhaps that is why it is written at least 8 times throughout the Bible. It is by adopting and practicing principles that we become, that we recognize, and develop capacity for loving of the self. Before you can show genuine love to others, you need to know and understand what love is. True, unconditional love. You know, the type of love you receive only from our Heavenly Father. To love others, you have to understand how to love. Once you have accepted and worked on the above, coming to accept God’s love and loving yourself, only then will you be ready to be there for your neighbors. It is important to understand that loving your neighbors is not just a simple task. Instead, it requires your entire self to be selfless. It requires you to show compassion, kindness, forgiveness, and provide service and meet needs to and for your neighbors. God shows us that. If you do not know who your self is, how exactly are you able to love yourself? “Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures” James 4:1-3 (NKJV).
Do we truly understand the way Jesus Christ intended? Today the word “love” is among the most misused English terms. It’s almost impossible to spend a full day before you hear it several times. We have diluted its meaning such that today ‘love’ and ‘like’ carry the same weight of meaning. To many people, the only way they feel loved is when others give them undivided attention. To others, love is having many partners, many likes on social media, or not being corrected even when they are wrong. But is this what the bible teaches as love? According to the scripture, True love is not selfish; it is kind, keeps no record of wrongs, doesn’t exalt itself, and freely puts others ahead of itself. We all want to receive love. Love your neighbor as yourself is the second great commandment of Jesus. It immediately follows His commandment of loving God with all your heart, mind and soul. Following this commandment is the key Jesus Christ gave us for loving others as God loves us. “Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures” James 4:1-3 (NKJV).
When Christ was asked what the greatest of all the commandments was, it was not asked in earnest by someone who sincerely wanted to know. Rather, it was asked by someone who considered himself to be an expert in the law of the prophets, who only wanted to test Jesus. And so, with Christ’s answer of his great commandments of love, we can truly see His infinite grace and wisdom, as well as God’s infinite mercy which is the key to our salvation. By loving our neighbor as ourselves, Christ has made it impossible for us to fail because we are very good at taking care of ourselves. We want what is best for us and by making our own selves as the benchmark of how we should love others, Christ has shown us how to truly love our neighbor. Another important teaching in loving our neighbor as ourselves is that we realize that we should not wait for when we feel loved before we start to love others. “Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord: looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled” Hebrews 12:14-15 (NKJV).
We do not have to wait until we feel that we have a surplus of self-love before we give it away to our neighbors. The commandment made it perfectly clear: love your neighbor exactly as you love yourself. No more and no less. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important commandment. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commandments” These are the great commandments of Jesus. Christ gave us two commandments that encapsulate all the laws and commands previously mentioned in the Old Testament. The commandments as told by the prophets is about our bond with God and our fellow men. Jesus first teaches us that the greatest of all commandments is to love God with our whole being because God is the foundation of love. It is only by loving God that we truly learn how to love. Right away Christ follows it up with loving your neighbor as yourself because once we put God at the center of our love, we learn how it is to genuinely do the same for our neighbors. “Do not say to your neighbor, “Go, and come back, And tomorrow I will give it,” When you have it with you. Do not devise evil against your neighbor, For he dwells by you for safety’s sake” Proverbs 3:28-29 (NKJV).
The imperative of ‘loving neighbors as oneself’ is an age-old necessity. If everyone loves their neighbor as themselves, with love interpreted as non-inflicting of hurt on neighbors. With the moral imperative respecified as love your neighbor as yourself, there is realization that the imperative does not commence with your neighbor. Rather, the imperative commences with the insight that it is important you recognize and love yourself. The typical interpretation of loving of a neighbor as oneself is affinity for kindness, patience, gentleness etc. in relations with neighbors. This interpretation of course is right. The easiest way to avoid doing of wrong to others is focus on doing of what is right. If you do not want to hurt your neighbor, the easiest way to arrive at this outcome is to ask yourself, what is right to do to your neighbor. “Fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself” Philippians 2:2-3 (NKJV).
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