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“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength” Deuteronomy 6:4–5 (NKJV).
(a) An expert in the law tried to test the Lord Jesus by asking Him to declare what was the greatest commandment in the Law of Moses. In one masterful statement, Jesus condensed the entire law that God had given Moses: “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.” Many Christians talk about the importance of loving God and loving others, and rightly so. Jesus declared these to be the greatest commandments. The idea that we are to love others is sometimes more specifically stated as the call to love one’s neighbor as oneself. “Who is my neighbor?” Which becomes a natural question to ask. The command to love one’s neighbor as oneself comes originally from Leviticus 19. “You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord” Leviticus 19:18 (NKJV).
The Jews of Jesus’ day would largely have understood their “neighbor” to be their fellow Israelites. But God has a broader definition in mind. Loving one’s neighbor is more than simply loving those who are like us and who can love us in return. We are called not only to love those who are similar to us or with whom we are comfortable, but all whom God places in our path. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? In context, the law was primarily concerned with the consistency and identity of a particular people, yet the application of the “neighbor” would in time be extended to all people and grounded in the recognition of shared humanity. Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect”. God shows love to all people. As His children, we are called to do the same. “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 22:37–40(NKJV).
It is important to understand what true love is. We love people by genuinely seeking what is best for them. Loving others does not mean agreeing with everything they say or do, nor does it mean acting in ways that always gain their approval. Loving our neighbors means attending to their needs—both physical and spiritual. We love our neighbors when we, like the Samaritan in Jesus’ parable, have compassion for them and help meet their needs as we are able. We love our neighbors best when we share God’s truth with them. Jesus alone can save, and He alone can meet people’s every need. We love our neighbors, including our neighbors who seem like enemies to us, when we act toward them with a heart that first loves God. We love our neighbors out of an overflow of God’s love for us and as a way of demonstrating our love toward God. Instead of striving to meet this high calling, it is easy to relax our understanding of “love your neighbor as yourself” into something trivial like “be nice.” But being nice is often nothing more than a facade and an excuse for disengaging from the people around us. “Reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself”. These two commands: both to love and to reprove your neighbor, seem like unlikely fellows, but they are brought together in the proverb, “Better is open rebuke than hidden love.” Love, then, is not an emotion here, but refers to treating one’s neighbor justly, the manner you might treat someone whom you do love. The command to love one’s neighbor as oneself is undoubtedly one of the great contributions of the Hebrew Bible to the ethical development of humanity. And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all, just as we do to you, so that He may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints” 1 Thessalonians 3:12-13 (NKJV).
The Bible also fuels us to love God with our hearts, minds, souls, and strength. Doctrine and theology should ignite a passion to go and live for God and be obedient to Him. Love requires more than one person: one to love and one to be loved Love flows between people: plural. Two or more. Loving yourself is impossible in the true sense but exists in a kind of counterfeit copy of genuine interpersonal love. And the Bible calls it out, people will be in love with themselves.” Unlike us, Christ walked the earth loving God and loving neighbor perfectly—he never gave way to the temptation to be disobedient, to slander, be sinfully angry, or selfish. He obeyed His Father in all that He did, unlike us. And when He died on the cross, He gave us this righteousness and took the punishment for our sins. We all have room to grow in this endeavor to love God and our neighbors better, and the only way growth will happen is by the Holy Spirit as He uses the Word in our hearts. We are responsible for moving onward, making disciples and being disciples who are loving toward God and loving neighbor, which is our fundamental belief as a follower of Christ. When we have placed our trust in Christ for salvation, we can stand before God as if we lived the perfect life that Christ did. Self-love is not real love and is, in fact, sinful and selfish. We call it narcissism. The Bible and say “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” is wrong. And it has consequences for our relationship with God and others, when he answers, “who is our neighbor”. “But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good” 2 Timothy 3.1–2 (NKJV).
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