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What Does it Mean to Love Your Neighbor as Yourself?

Danielle Bernock

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“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ there is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31

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. 

James calls it the royal law. It sounds beautiful, and it is when we obey it.

But loving your neighbor as yourself isn’t always easy. That’s why God made it a command. He knew we’d struggle. Making it a commandment is actually to our benefit. How is that? We have to do it on purpose, be intentional about it. Sometimes even out of our need. 

This is what it means to love your neighbor as yourself:

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1. Loving your neighbor means receiving God’s love.

Too begin to love your neighbor as yourself, you need to know two things: you need to know what love is and that you are loved.

The Bible tells us “this is love. Not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent his Son as a propitiation…” (1 John 4:10). You are the object of this love. God loves you. Knowing this is imperative. And not just loved in a general kind of way, but deeply loved and unconditionally loved. We tap into this when we understand that God loved us first. He’s the source of our love. God loved us even before Jesus gave Himself for us. God the Father is the source of all love. Before we can give this love we need to receive it for ourselves. You can’t give what you don’t have.

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2. Loving your neighbor means loving ourselves as well.

To love your neighbor as yourself as commanded, you need to measure correctly. The measurement within this command is—as yourself. To love your neighbor as yourself you need to love yourself. This is something that gets misunderstood in the body of Christ often. It gets mixed up with dying to self and denying self as if we need to destroy our self. This is not true.

Jesus died for each and every one of us. If Jesus valued us enough to go through what He went through, we owe it to Him to value what He values. We need to love what He loves – us. The Bible even tells us that the Father loves us as much as He loves Jesus (John 17:23). How dare we not love what the Father loves. Learning to love ourselves prepares and helps us to love our neighbor.

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3. Loving your neighbor means showing grace.

Knowing God is love and that this love is for you is not enough. It needs to be developed. Imagine if you had a field of good soil and a bag of top notch seeds. Would they produce a crop all by themselves? No. The seeds must be planted and cared for. Grace takes the seed of His love and the soil of our heart and creates fruit for the kingdom of God.

The Bible says, “it’s God who works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Philippians 2.13). Loving Him and our neighbor pleases Him. Grace helps us do this. Grace teaches us proper love and respect for ourselves and for our neighbor. Freely receiving His grace empowers us to freely give it.

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4. Loving your neighbor means acting with compassion.

When Jesus was asked, “Who is my neighbor?” He responded with a story: the Good Samaritan. Even those who have no love for God see the value of the story. What is the bottom line of this story? Who did Jesus say was being a neighbor? The one who had compassion.

Compassion is not simply a warm fuzzy feeling in our hearts. Compassion does something. A heart that’s moved by compassion cannot sit idly by while someone suffers a need. Loving your neighbor as yourself is being moved to help to the full extent of your ability.

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5. Loving your neighbor means looking out for their wellbeing.

The NIV translation of 1 Corinthians 13 says, “love protects.” In Philippians 2:4 it says, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Loving your neighbor as yourself is to look out for other people’s wellbeing.

To look out for them is to pay attention. You notice if they need something and then you help. For example, their clothing tag is sticking out or they have food on their face so you let them know. Or something more serious like when my neighbor’s toddler got out and crossed the street. Concerned for his safety, I headed over there. I was almost there when the grandma came out to intercept him and thanked me.

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6. Loving your neighbor means serving them.

Serving from the heart is kindness in action. Kindness is one of the attributes of love listed in 1 Corinthians 13. The funny thing about kindness, though, is you can do acts of kindness without kindness residing in your heart. If the kind thing is done out of duty then it isn’t love.

Jesus said he came to serve (Matthew 20:28). God, who is love, came to serve. Love serves. For you to love your neighbor as yourself, you’ll have a heart to serve them. Let them know you’re there for them. If they need a ride somewhere, you drive them. If they need their dog or cat checked on while they’re out of town, you do that for them. Other examples are getting their mail for them or taking them a meal if they’re not well. Examples in a public setting are to let people in front of you in line at the store or in traffic.

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7. Loving your neighbor means speaking kindly.

The childhood rhyme about stick and stones versus words is not true. Words build up or tear down. God created the world using words. The Bible says Jesus IS the Word (John 1:1).

To love your neighbor as yourself is to use words to build them up. Speaking words of encouragement to someone who’s down is the most obvious example but there are others. We can be more intentional with our words by looking for and magnifying the good. We can always find something good if we’ll take the time to look for it. Examples of this are giving someone a compliment and telling someone you appreciate them.

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8. Loving your neighbor means making allowances for other people’s humanity.

We live in a day and age when offense is as common as breathing. Criticism is running rampant. Love is not easily offended or critical. Everyone does dumb things; no one is always right or knows everything. We’re all a work in progress.

I remember sitting through a green light. I wasn’t trying to inconvenience anyone. I got stuck in grieving daze because a family member died. I remember that when I encounter people driving too slow, sitting at lights, or even cutting me off. Maybe they have a reason. Maybe they’re just being human. We’re imperfect beings that do dumb things often.

Giving people the benefit of the doubt is loving your neighbor. For example, I had a lady flailing her arms and cursing because I didn’t go through an almost red light. She was behind me so got stuck at the red light with me. I don’t know why she was so angry but she may have had other circumstances surrounding her that day. I prayed for her.

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9. Loving your neighbor means sharing in their joys and sorrows.

The Bible says we are to “rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn” (Romans 12:15).

Celebrating can be difficult for us at times, especially if our neighbor is getting something we have longed for. For example, a new job, a raise, or a pregnancy. Celebrating with them in spite of our own pain is a strong show of love.

Likewise. mourning with our neighbor can be hard if we don’t know what to say, or have recently lost something or someone ourselves. Loving your neighbor as yourself is showing up and being there with your heart open, allowing them to be what they are and support them.

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10. Loving your neighbor means forgiving.

Forgiveness is a big deal to God. The Bible says He planned it for us from the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4). Jesus frequently spoke forgiveness over others that resulted in the healing of their bodies.

Forgiveness is freely given to us and to love your neighbor as yourself you’ll pass the forgiveness on. Jesus highlighted this in His story in Matthew 18 when Peter asks how many times is he to forgive. He tells the story of a king who forgave an enormous debt to one of his servants. This servant failed to pass the forgiveness on. He demanded payment of a small debt from his neighbor. When the king heard of it, he had his servant remanded for his debt, revoking the debt cancellation. Jesus’ story tells us that love always forgives.

We all need forgiveness, so loving your neighbor is to forgive them as you have been.

Danielle Bernock writes about overcoming the effects of childhood and emotional trauma through the power of the love of God. Her first book Emerging With Wings: A True Story of Lies, Pain, And The LOVE that Heals has ushered many to emotional and spiritual freedom. Other books include A Bird Named Payn, and Love’s Manifesto. For more information or to connect with Danielle go here: https://www.daniellebernock.com/  

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Originally published March 09, 2021.

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‘Love Your Neighbor as Yourself’ Bible Verse

Examples in Several Different Passages of Scripture

By 

Mary Fairchild

Updated on March 08, 2019

“Love your neighbor as yourself” is a favorite Bible verse about love. These exact words are found several places in Scripture. Examine the many different instances of this key Bible passage.

Second only to loving God, loving your neighbor as yourself is the central point of all biblical laws and personal holiness. It is the anecdote to correcting all negative behaviors toward others:

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Leviticus 19:18

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. (NKJV)

When the rich young man asked Jesus Christ what good deed he must do to have eternal life, Jesus ended his summary of the all commandments with “love your neighbor as yourself:”

Matthew 19:19

“‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'” (NKJV)

In the next two verses, Jesus named “love your neighbor as yourself” as the second greatest commandment after loving God:

Matthew 22:37–39

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.’ (NKJV)

Mark 12:30–31

“‘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.” (NKJV)

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In the following passage in the Gospel of Luke, a lawyer asked Jesus, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responded with a question of his own: “What is written in the law?” The lawyer answered correctly:

Luke 10:27

So he answered and said, “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself.'” (NKJV)

Here the Apostle Paul explained that a Christian’s obligation to love is without limits. Believers are to love not only other members of the family of God, but their fellow men as well:

Romans 13:9

For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not bear false witness,” “You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (NKJV)

Paul summarized the law, reminding the Galatians that Christians are commissioned by God to love one another deeply and wholly:

Galatians 5:14

For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (NKJV)

Here James is addressing the problem of showing favoritism. According to God’s law, there should be no acts of favoritism. All people, non-believers included, deserve to be loved equally, without distinction. James explained the way to avoid favoritism: 

James 2:8

If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well … (NKJV)

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• (How to) Love Thy Neighbor
• Feb 2023
• Longform
• 2.20.2023

The Moral Meaning of Loving One’s Neighbor

By

Andrew T. Walker

Editor’s Note: Our friends at Crossway have generously allowed our readers this month to download a free copy of D.A. Carson’s important work The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God. We hope this resource will help you understand the manifold love of God.

Listen to the reading of this longform essay here. Listen as Andrew Walker, David Schrock, and Stephen Wellum discuss the essay here.

Few biblical phrases are as ubiquitous or have greater cultural standing than the biblical teaching to “love your neighbor” (see e.g., Matt. 19:19; 22:39). For the non-Christian, it may be the only moral truism he or she could identify as stemming from a cultural heritage informed by the Bible. No one to my awareness expresses disagreement with the principle. It is almost a stock phrase repeatedly cited by figures of historical and political influence. For example, in 2008, the Commonwealth of Kentucky passed what it ceremoniously called “The Golden Rule Act,” a law which calls for greater protections around the safety and well-being of students in schools. This recent legislation drew on Jesus’s summary of the Law and the Prophets in the Golden Rule. Likewise, President Abraham Lincoln, drawing on a principle of natural law, wrote, “As I would not be a slave, so I cannot be a master.”^[1] Further examples could be multiplied ad infinitum. We should be thankful for a culture and civil society where biblical principles are welcomed, even if they are not always properly understood or applied. For even in their misuse, opportunity avails the Christian to speak correctively of what this passage means and its impact for leavening our society with the fruits of the gospel.

1. Quote by Abraham Lincoln in his personal notes from 1858. For more on this note, see Christian McWhirter, “Lincoln Draws the Line on Slavery,” Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, February 23, 2021.

The Logic of Loving Your Neighbor

What loving one’s neighbor foregrounds is the most basic principle necessary to sustain life in society: A reciprocal assurance that decency and kindness will be faithfully returned if given. Indeed, that America, along with so many other countries, has enjoyed this kind of civil arrangement and civic compact reflects the abundance of God’s common grace in our fallen world. This grace, perceived through general revelation, is multiplied when the light of the gospel shines into the world. Yet, even where such light is fading, there is a moral trust inhering within the imago Dei that undergirds the principle to love one’s neighbor.

With this light in the world, there exists an unstated truth of social cooperation. If we have no assurance that our cooperation in society—not simply our niceties—will be returned, that would be the end of society itself. Consider a society where no one lets you merge into their lane ahead of them, no one’s personal property is respected, contracts between laborers and employers are unenforced, everybody cuts in line, and everyone interrupts whoever speaks. Reciprocity means that cooperation toward moral goods prevails. Study any dystopic novel and one will quickly see that society breaks down when trust in moral interaction collapses. Trust in moral reciprocity, then, makes life in society not only manageable but potentially promising, as the mutual exchange of moral goods is realized between agents.

The love of neighbor assumes, of course, that people intuit the inherent good that one’s own self should be treated fairly. The call to love your neighbor as yourself has principles of the natural law built into it; principles that we recognize as “written on the heart” (Rom. 2:14-15). Why we possess any moral knowledge at all can only be seen as a grace issuing from creation order in general. That we can accurately perceive, sense, and communicate our well-being has presuppositions about the type of universe God has brought into existence—God’s moral order is intelligible, operational, and reliable.

Built into the principle is a moral “ought” that persons just should act in this way if they are in their right mind. The teaching’s principle is as simple as it is profound, which is why it is common for parents to teach this to their children as among the first bits of moral instruction. We teach this principle because it easily captures the most intuitive of principles: People innately understand what it means to prosper and feel respected as persons. Achieving a state of affairs where this is realized is hindered or even vitiated if we are unwilling to grant this state of affairs to others. The moral order requires the reciprocal execution of its norms in order for the individual and society’s good to be realized. The possibility of obtaining our good is enhanced in proportion to our willing the good of our neighbor.

When we think of such ideas as the just society, we understand that the common good is loving one’s neighbor in the aggregate. My safety on the road depends on another’s safety on the road. As I want to be protected from wanton endangerment, so I should avoid wantonly endangering others. I do this not out of any pleasure-seeking utilitarian contract where pleasure is whatever society deems as desirable, but out of a belief in the concrete existence of goods that are valuable for their own sake.

But before criticizing the misuse of loving one’s neighbor, as Christians, we should be willing to grant with thanksgiving to God that if moral laws are what they are—existent and intelligible, not to mention a gift of common grace—then basic moral laws should not be difficult to grasp. The relative ease in grasping a moral truth does not at all mean that a moral truth will be perfectly or consistently obeyed; only that it exists. Since the dawning of sin in Genesis 3, the reality of sin assures that human beings will create an unending cascade of rival conceptions of personal thriving.

The Biblical Grounds of Loving Your Neighbor

The biblical references to loving one’s neighbor can be found in the Old and New Testaments. In Leviticus 19:18, the LORD tells Israel, “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.” The fact that evidence of this principle predates Jesus is significant and will be further discussed. In Matthew 7:12, Jesus declares “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” In Mark 12:29-31 (par. Luke 10:27), when Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is, he replies,

The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.

Quite simply, loving one’s neighbor can never be severed from telling one’s neighbor the truth. Scripture is quite clear that love and truth are a conjoined reality (1 Cor. 13:6; Eph. 4:15). This produces a conflict in what the application of loving one’s neighbor practically results in for our culture. Graciously telling a homosexual that their same-sex “marriage” is not an ontological marriage will doubtlessly be interpreted as anything but loving. Loving one’s neighbor must mean, then, that love is not boundless, but circumscribed by the moral goods and moral laws that Scripture deems as good. Love is biblical insofar as love is biblically ordered to what God defines as good. Loving one’s neighbor does not mean being nice and accommodating to whatever your neighbor believes is in their best interest. Loving one’s neighbor, in other words, is not an invitation to moral relativism.

As philosopher Francis Beckwith writes, “The Golden Rule is not about merely protecting your neighbor’s preferences, but rather, advancing your neighbor’s good.” The language of “good” is pregnant with moral meaning. To say that we are to love our neighbor according to their good is to assume that “goodness” as a moral property has objective meaning to it; that it is not simply a product of one’s will, desires, or autonomy.

When Christians love their neighbor, we do not do this only with generic commitment to the natural law (as valuable as that is), but out of a commitment to the ultimate finality of revelation given in Scripture. In Scripture is deposited the fullness of our neighbor’s good, which is not merely temporal and penultimate, but eternal and ultimate. Loving our neighbor, then, requires us to operate on two horizons: We honor and strive for their earthly good but as Augustine writes in the City of God in 19.17, Christians should make use of civil compacts to order persons to their ultimate good.

Of course, the eternal, ultimate good of the new heavens and earth is not in conflict with the temporal, penultimate good; rather, all instances of the temporal good are opportunities for us to use them as signposts for the ultimate good. Whatever is the neighborly good comports with God’s order of creation and produces temporal joy while that which comports with God’s order of redemption produces eternal and ultimate joy. Our neighbor’s good is not only their neighborly safety, but their eternal destiny secured in Jesus Christ, who is goodness incarnated (Mark 10:18). For Christians, the love of neighbor means we insist that people are made to know God. He is their ultimate good and happiness.

To address moral goodness from another angle, we are to genuinely seek after the fulfillment of our neighbor’s good, which has both positive and negative dimensions. As a positive reality, I should treat my neighbor with the dignity and respect befitting their existence. As a negative reality, I should work to restrain—by either my own agency or the political agency of the community—privations from raining down on my neighbor. I should neither personally hinder their good nor seek after policies that will result in their privation. Writ large, this describes the role of government in securing the common good (see 1 Pet. 2:14).

In between individuals and the state, however, we see the principle of loving one’s neighbor taken in the aggregate. The shared beneficence common to humanity can only be achieved by family formation and a respect for coordination among the institutions of creation order. Jeremiah 29:4–7 also furnishes an understanding of the common good by YHWH’s call for exilic Israel to engage in communal participation for the benefit of all.

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Notice that the logic of the text is explicit: If you seek the welfare of where you are (if you seek its good), your welfare will be obtained as well. This principle of reciprocity shows how the moral good is often born of a mutual commitment between agents.

Loving Your Neighbor and the Natural Law

Even if misapplied by sinful persons, it should come as no surprise that the natural law tradition has considered the command to love one’s neighbor as a principle of the natural law. To cite the famous maxim of Immanuel Kant, we should “act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” What Kant meant as a rule is that we should consider something to be a moral law universally binding if it is a law that we believe all should follow. It is a judgment born of practical reason about moral duties that we have to love others and ourselves. Kant’s analysis has much to commend, even if it is lacking in fuller analysis, as I think is the case.

As I mentioned above, loving one’s neighbor has the appearance of an indemonstrable truth. An indemonstrable truth is a truth whose premises we cannot prove. It just is. Secular moral philosophers might refer to this as a “brute fact,” in the sense that it is inexplicable apart from the duty to obey it. There may be no explanation for where the moral law came from, but one is obligated to obey it, nonetheless. While secular philosophy cannot give an adequate account for an indemonstrable truth of this kind, the Christian can. We are not left with empty speculation. The doctrine of revelation foregrounds the foundation for why moral truth is at all universal, intelligible, and objective.

Natural law theory helps give better explanation to the underlying moral tenets of the command. Loving one’s neighbor assumes that there is a state of affairs where one’s neighbor can reach the fulfillment of their being. This we can call “flourishing.” For agents to flourish, we believe there must be goods constitutive of their being that comprise their nature. What Kant saw as a principle, I would suggest is better categorized as a teleological reality, a reality that is concerned with the final outcome of flourishing. As Christians, we believe that God—not pure reason or “brute facts”—ordered the existence of moral goods, and that people will have the end result of flourishing to the degree that they are living in accordance with how God created them to live.^[2]

2. Editor’s Note: For more on the relationship between natural law, brute facts, and the God who is there, check out the forthcoming podcast with Andrew Walker, Stephen Wellum, and David Schrock.

Justice and Natural Law

Loving one’s neighbor is both a requirement and fulfillment of justice. For our purposes, we will define justice as “giving to each what is owed to them.” Martin Luther argued that Matthew 7:12 teaches a natural law principle of basic justice:

3. Martin Luther, Sermons for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany: Romans 13:8-10, in Luther’s Epistle Sermons: Epiphany, Easter, and Pentecost, ed. John Nicholas (Minneapolis: Lutheran Press, 1909), 73.

Not an individual is there who does not realize, and who is not forced to confess, the justice and truth of the natural law outlined in the command, ‘All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them.’ The light of this law shines in the inborn reason of all men. Did they but regard it, what need have they of books, teachers or laws? They carry with them in the depths of their hearts a living book, fitted to teach them fully what to do and what to omit, what to accept and what to reject, and what decision to make.^[3]

It would seem, then, that the love of God and the love for neighbor are ratifications of the first and second table of the Decalogue, which many in the Reformed tradition consider a distilled and codified expression of the natural law woven into the creation order. C. S. Lewis similarly argued that the Golden Rule has parallels around the world in different cultures and religions, including some predating Jesus, evidence of humanity’s ability to grasp the principle of reciprocal justice without special revelation or regeneration.^[4]

4. C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, 83ff.

Markus Bockmuehl comments similarly on how “the uncomplicated assumption of a kind of natural reciprocity and commonality of human needs suggests the acceptance of a moral category that is general and self-evident, rather than positively revealed in the Torah.”^[5] David Haines and Andrew Fulford also observe natural law reciprocity behind our Lord’s words:

5. Markus Bockmuehl, Jewish Law in Gentile Churches: Halakhah and the Beginning of Christian Public Ethics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 118–19.

6. Haines and Fulford, Natural Law, 82.

Jesus teaches his disciples to take their own basic desires as ones that every human being has. Secondly, by telling them to satisfy those basic desires of others, he affirms those desiderata as good. The implication of these two premises is that Jesus teaches all people actually know what is good for them, on some level, since they have desires that ought to be met.^[6]

Misuse of the Love of Neighbor

Virtually everyone in our society would praise the concept of loving one’s neighbor, but this does not mean that appealing to the principle necessarily results in a correct application of it. If someone wants their pet political project accomplished, all one must do is invoke how the law helps further the love of neighbor. For example, love of neighbor has been invoked to justify nearly any immigration policy one wants under the guise that loving the immigrant is inherently good. It is doubtlessly good to love immigrants because the immigrant is a person made in God’s image. But it is also possible to use a good moral principle with imprudence. Appealing to the love of neighbor to justify large-scale amnesty programs should cause us to question whether a blanketed appeal to “love” can be used to the neglect of better policy that someone may consider less “loving” but has better practical benefit. To love one’s neighbor does not in itself provide specific data to deduce specific policy outcomes.

Unfortunately, the phrase has become warped and malformed left to the desires of the unregenerate. In common vernacular, the love of neighbor takes defaced expression when secondary goods such as human emotion are elevated as ultimate goods. Thus, when our neighbor insists that affirmation of one’s desires or emotional states is what constitutes his good, we must dissent. “Live your truth” and “You do you” are taken as moral entailments from secularized accounts of loving one’s neighbor. “If you affirm me, I’ll affirm you” or “If you do not object to my preference, I won’t object to your preference” is at irreconcilable odds with a biblical vision for the love of neighbor. We do not love our neighbor by omitting the truth to them. Furthering someone’s delusion or debauchery under a false account of loving them is actually to hate them. So, I cannot affirm someone’s desired pronouns precisely because that is not his good—and thus it is not loving to him. As Francis Beckwith states in the same article from above, the love of neighbor “is not a quid pro quo for preference satisfaction reciprocity.”

Conclusion

As providence would have it, this essay was written on January 22, 2023. That date represents the fiftieth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade. That date also represents the apotheosis of America’s high watermark in failing to instill the love for one’s neighbor in law. Though Roe is overturned, the work to love our pre-born neighbor continues across every legislature and courtroom in this nation. And so the love of neighbor calls us to wage a war not only for political conquest, but for heavenly adornment.

Over sixty million Americans have had their lives unjustly taken under the false rubric that prioritizing “bodily autonomy” or economic opportunity as a condition of love that can justify murder. As the love of neighbor is the most basic condition of the flourishing society, so a basic instantiation of the just society is a respect for the human person. Our laws have failed to do that from the very beginning of our nation even into today. But the resilience of our nation is the ability for moral reformation under the promises that we can “form a more perfect union.” This in turn fosters an environment to better love our neighbor as they deserve, in the realization of their earthly good and ultimately in the fulfillment of their ultimate good.

†

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew T. WalkerAndrew T. Walker is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also serves as an Associate Dean in the School of Theology. He is a Fellow with The Ethics and Public Policy Center and Managing Editor of WORLD Opinions. He and his family are members of Highview Baptist Church where he leads a Sunday community group and men’s Bible study.

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April 30, 1995

Love Your Neighbor as Yourself, Part 1

• Message by John Piper
• Scripture: Matthew 22:34–40    Topic: Life Together

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But when the Pharisees heard that He had put the Sadducees to silence, they gathered themselves together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

The Incredible Context of This Commandment

My main concern in this text is the commandment: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But it is surrounded by such stupendous statements we would be foolhardy to plunge into it without pondering these surroundings. So it is going to take us two weeks at least to deal with this text.

The Great and Foremost Commandment

The two stupendous things I have in mind are, first, the greatest commandment in the Word of God. In verse 36 a Pharisee asks Jesus, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” Jesus answers by quoting Deuteronomy 6:5,

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.

Then he adds his own words to put the commandment even higher than the question required. The question was, “Which is the great commandment?” and Jesus says, “This is the great and foremost commandment.”

So the first stupendous thing surrounding the commandment to love your neighbor as you love yourself is the commandment to love God as the greatest and foremost thing that is in the entire Word of God. The greatest and most important thing you can do is love God—love GOD—with all your heart and soul and mind.

On These Two Depend the Whole Law and the Prophets

The other stupendous thing surrounding the command to love your neighbor as you love yourself is what follows in verse 40,

On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.

Everything else in the Old Testament in some sense depends on these two commandments: the commandment to love God and the commandment to love our neighbor. This is an amazing statement. We have the authority of the Son of God here telling us something utterly stupendous about the origin and design of the entire plan and Word of God.

The Overwhelming Commandment to Neighbor Love

Now those are the two stupendous things we need to ponder before we dive into the overwhelming commandment to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. I say it is overwhelming because it seems to demand that I tear the skin off my body and wrap it around another person so that I feel that I am that other person; and all the longings that I have for my own safety and health and success and happiness I now feel for that other person as though he were me.

It is an absolutely staggering commandment. If this is what it means, then something unbelievably powerful and earthshaking and reconstructing and overturning and upending will have to happen in our souls. Something supernatural. Something well beyond what self-preserving, self-enhancing, self-exalting, self-esteeming, self-advancing human beings like John Piper can do on their own.

Before we take up such a commandment and apply it to our lives, we need to ponder these two stupendous things that surround the commandment. That the commandment to love God is the great and foremost commandment in the Word of God and that all the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commandments.

The Whole Law and the Prophets 

Let’s start with verse 40. “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

He Didn’t Have to Say This

First, consider the sheer fact that Jesus said this. He didn’t have to say it. The Pharisee didn’t ask this. Jesus went beyond what he asked and said more. He seems to want to push the importance and centrality of these commandments as much as he can. He has said that the commandment to love God is great and foremost. He has said the commandment to love your neighbor as you love yourself is “like it.” Verse 39: “The second is like it . . . ” That’s enough to raise the stakes here almost as high as they can be raised. We have the greatest commandment in all the revelation of God to humanity (Love God); and we have the second greatest, which is like the greatest (Love your neighbor).

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He wants us to be stunned at how important these two commandments are. He wants us to stop and wonder. He wants us to spend more than a passing moment on these things. More than a week or two of preaching. So he adds, “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” They are 1) the first and the greatest, and 2) the second that is like the first and the greatest. But they are also the two commandments on which everything else in the Bible depends. “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” 

Now what does this mean? Let me see if I can open a window into heaven by contrasting what Jesus says here (in v. 40) with what he says in Matthew 7:12 and what Paul says in Romans 13. Turn with me to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:12. This verse is better known as the Golden Rule. It is, I think, a good commentary on “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

Matthew 7:12: This Is the Law and the Prophets

Jesus has just said that God will give us good things if we ask and seek and knock, because he is a loving Father. Then in Matthew 7:12 he says,

Therefore, however you want people to treat you, so treat them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

Notice that again Jesus refers to the Law and the Prophets like he did in Matthew 22:40. He says, if you do to others what you would have them do to you, then “this is the Law and the Prophets.” In Matthew 22:40 he said, “On these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets.”

Take notice here that the first commandment is not mentioned in Matthew 7:12. Loving God with all your heart is not mentioned. Treating others the way we would like to be treated, he says, “is the Law and the Prophets.”

We must be careful here. Some people over the centuries have tried to take sentences like the Golden Rule and say that Jesus was mainly a profound teacher of human ethics; and that what he taught is not dependent on God or any relationship with God. They say, “See, he can sum up the whole Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets, in practical human relationships: the Golden Rule.”

I say we must be careful here, because thinking like that not only ignores the great things Jesus said about God elsewhere and the amazing things he said about himself coming from God to give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45); it also ignores the immediate context. Verse 12 begins with “therefore” (dropped in the NIV):

Therefore, however you want people to treat you, so treat them.

What this shows is that the Golden Rule depends on what went before—on our relationship to God as our Father who loves us and answers our prayers and gives us good things when we ask him (Matthew 7:9–11). In fact this is a very profound key to how we are able to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. So God is here upholding the Golden Rule by his fatherly provision. His love for us and our trusting, prayerful love back to him is the source of power for living the Golden Rule. So you can’t turn Jesus into a mere teacher of ethics.

But still, Jesus does say that treating others as you want to be treated “is the law and the prophets.” He does not say that loving God “is the Law and the Prophets.” Why does he say it in this way? I think what he means is that when you see people love like that (fulfill the Golden Rule), what you are seeing is the visible expression of the Law and the Prophets. This behavior among people manifests openly and publicly and practically what the Old Testament is about. It fulfills the Law and the Prophets. Loving God is invisible. It is an internal passion of the soul. But it comes to expression when you love others.

So loving others is the outward manifestation, the visible expression, the practical demonstration, and therefore the fulfillment of what the Old Testament is about. So there is a sense in which the second commandment (to love your neighbor) is the visible goal of the whole Word of God. It’s not as though loving God is not here, or that loving God is less important; rather loving God is made visible and manifest and full in our visibly, practically, sacrificially loving others. I think that is why the second commandment stands by itself when the New Testament says that love fulfills the law.

Romans 13:8–10: Love of Neighbor Fulfills the Law

Let’s look at one other text that points in this direction.

Look at Romans 13:8–10.

Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. 9 For this, ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,’ and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; love therefore is the fulfillment of the law.

Two times (vv. 8, 10) Paul says that the command to love our neighbor is the “fulfillment of the law.” This is what Jesus meant when he said (in Matthew 7:12) that treating others as you would like to be treated “is the law and the prophets.” And, just as in Matthew 7:12, Paul doesn’t say that the law is fulfilled in loving God and loving neighbors. He only says that if you love your neighbor, you fill up the law. I think this means the same as Matthew 7:12, Loving our neighbor as we love ourselves is the visible expression and manifestation and practical completion and fulfillment of all that the Old Testament was about, including love for God. Love for God comes to visible manifestation when we love others. Or you could say, our love for God is “fulfilled” when we love others.

We know Paul saw this practical love as utterly dependent on our relationship to God. In Romans 8:3–4 he says,

For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh [= self reliance], but according to the Spirit [= God-reliance].

In other words, fulfilling the law—loving our neighbor as we love ourselves—is not something we can do on our own. We do it by the Holy Spirit. And we saw last week that Paul teaches God supplies the Spirit to us through faith.

So it’s the same as in Matthew 7:12. When Jesus and Paul say that loving our neighbor as we love ourselves is the fulfillment of the Old Testament, they don’t exclude our love for God and his love for us; they assume it.

Matthew 22:37–40: On These Two Hang . . .

But let’s go back to our text in Matthew 22:37–40. Here Jesus DOES mention both love for God and love for neighbor; and he explicitly says (in v. 40), “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” Why? I want to suggest that he is saying something different here than in those other texts (Matthew 7:12; Romans 13:8, 10). Here he does not say that these two commandments “fulfill” the Law and the Prophets, or that they “are” the Law and the Prophets. He says that the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commandments. Verse 40:

On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.

Now this is a window into heaven, if you have eyes to see. When he says here that the Law and the Prophets depend (literally: “hang,” like a stone around the neck, or a snake on the hand, or a man on a cross) on love, this is the reverse of what those other texts were saying. They were saying that the Law and Prophets lead to and find expression and fulfillment in love. But here in Matthew 22:40 Jesus is saying the reverse: love leads to and finds expression in the Law and the Prophets. The Law and the Prophets are hanging on—depending on—something before them, namely, God’s passion that this world, this history of humankind, be a world of love to God and radical, other-oriented love to each other.

Illustration

Let me see if I can put this in a picture, so that you can see it more plainly. It is so important, if we are going to grasp the magnitude of the significance of love in our midst, as we move forward into the practical expressions of it in our preaching and in our life together at Bethlehem.

Let’s picture the inspired history of redemption from creation to consummation as a scroll like the one John saw in Revelation 5. This is the Law and the Prophets (and the New Testament). The story of God’s acts and purposes in history are told in this scroll, along with God’s commandments and promises. Matthew 7:12 and Romans 13:8–10 tell us that, when the people of God love their neighbor as they love themselves, the purpose of this scroll is being fulfilled. Its aim is being expressed visibly, manifested practically so “that people can see our good deeds and give glory to our Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). So the scroll is leading to love. Love is flowing from the scroll.

But then Jesus gives us an incredible perspective. He lifts us out of history and out of the world for a moment and shows us the scroll from a distance. Now we can see it whole—the Law and the Prophets, the Old Testament, the story of redemption, the purposes and acts of God in history. And what we see is that the scroll is hanging by two golden chains, one fastened to each end of the scroll handles. And Jesus lifts our eyes to heaven, and we see the chains run up and disappear into heaven.

Then he takes us up to heaven. And he shows us the ends of the chains. They are fastened to the throne of God. One chain is fastened to the right arm of the throne where the words are inscribed: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind.” And the other chain is fastened to the left arm of the throne where the words are inscribed, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

And Jesus turns to us and says, “The whole scroll, the whole Law and the Prophets, the whole history of redemption and all my Father’s plans and acts hang on these two great sovereign purposes of God—that he be loved by his people, and that his people love each other.”

I believe it would not be too much to say that all of creation, all of redemption, all of history hang on these two great purposes—that humans love God with all our heart, and that from the overflow of that love we love each other.

Which means that love is the origin (Matthew 22:40) and the goal (Romans 13:8, 10) of the Law and the Prophets. It is the beginning and the end of why God inspired the Bible. It’s the fountainhead and spring at the one end, and the shoreless ocean at the other end of the river of redemptive history—remembered and promised in the Word of God.

God’s Word to Us This Morning 

God’s word for us this morning is that we take with tremendous seriousness this season of dealing with love at Bethlehem. That we let this picture stun us and remake our priorities. That we get alone with him and deal with him about these things. That we not assume that we fully know what love is or that it has the proper centrality in our lives. He is saying: All of Scripture, all of his plans for history, hang—HANG—on these two great purposes: that he be loved with all our heart, and that we love each other as we love ourselves.John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of Desiring God and chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Foundations for Lifelong Learning: Education in Serious Joy. Read more about John.Series: The Greatest of These Is Love

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10/10

Way to go! You got a PERFECT score! We gave this basic test to 100 American high school students and not even ONE scored 10/10. You love history and geography. You keep an open mind, and are self-disciplined and ambitious. You maintain that respect has to be given to be received, and that good decisions lead to prosperity. Keep up the good work, and SHARE this 10-question drill to test every American you know.

By the way, based on your general knowledge, we bet you were born in the Midwest. Let us know in the comments if we’re spot on.

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You are oozing with American awesomeness!!

You passed!! You are a master of American geography. You must have a keen power of observation, and a quality of direction and leadership. You know how to handle maps, you think logically and scientifically, and there’s a 97% chance you are an introvert. But above all – you know EVERYTHING about AMERICA!

Take a look! 📌 https://pin.it/3kzTCkrrf

Jesus Loves You Ma’am and Sir!

Take a look! 📌 https://pin.it/7tqegkWtQ

SINLESSNESS AND SALVATION ASSURANCE “ROOTED” IN ETERNITY. Although it is true that there are people who don’t sin anymore and who are already assured of God’s gift of salvation, many nevertheless who claim to be recipients of this grace miserably misunderstand the doctrine, especially the nitty-gritty aspects which appertain to the OBJECT of grace and reference to the SINLESSNESS status of God’s people.This results in many Bible interpretation violations, among them the misapplication and the scrapping altogether of the Scripture’s proper and overall doctrinal context. This is a serious error because of its grave consequential implications for the claimants who teach and hold on to this erroneous interpretation, which is improper and a baseless and hopeless expectation.So, how is this doctrine on “SINLESSNESS” and “SALVATION-ASSURANCE” to be understood? A careful study of certain pillar texts appealed to (supporting the erroneous interpretation) is essential to understand—texts such as Heb. 10:12; Psalm 32:1; Rom. 8:1; Num. 23:21. What do these texts teach?Heb. 10:12 says, “But this man after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God.” Sins spoken of in the text refer to all forgiven sins–past, present, and future sins that have not yet been committed.Psalm 32:1-2 says, “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.” This passage is saying that there is a person who is incapable of sinning, the reason being that God does not impute his sin against him anymore because they have all been forgiven. This means clearly that such a person will remain sinless until the day of his resurrection and glorification.Rom. 8:1 says, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” The text is explicit. To all those who are IN Christ Jesus, salvation is already assured, which means that regardless of the plight of their life now, they can never fall from the grace of God anymore because they have been once saved and, therefore, are always saved. Num. 23:21, “He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel: the LORD his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them.” This text is not saying that there is no sin in Israel, for Israel is a stiff-necked people who sinned continually in all their wanderings in the wilderness. It simply says that God has already removed their sins from them and laid them on Christ, who bore them, made reconciliation for them, redeemed them, and saved them from their sins, which God does, owing to their being His chosen people.Considering the preceding–and gleaning the meaning from the quoted texts–we will understand that the OBJECT reference is TO THE PEOPLE OF GOD, the blessed people of God–those referred to in Heb. 12:21 as “the saints unto whom Christ offered one sacrifice forever”; in Psalms 32:1-2 as, “the blessed man whose transgression is forgiven, and unto whom the LORD does not impute iniquity”; in Rom. 8:1 as, “the saints IN Christ Jesus who are never to be under God’s condemnation”; in Num. 23:21 as, “the Israel of God that is seen to be without iniquity, and neither perverseness seen in them because the LORD their God is with them.”Moreover, they are they who are identified and called in the Scriptures by MANY NAMES: the weary and heavy-laden bidden by Christ to come to Him, those who thirst and hunger after righteousness. They are they who are the blessed of the LORD referred to in Christ’s beatitudes: the pure in heart, the poor in spirit, they that mourn, the meek, they that hunger after righteousness, the merciful, the peacemakers, they which are persecuted for righteousness sake: “they and they alone” are the OBJECT of God’s grace and love, and the people WHOSE SALVATION IS ASSURED.Most definitely, THEY DO NOT REFER to all people head-for-head–to the lawless or “antinomians,” to all those mentioned in Rev. 21:8, nor do they refer to anyone now who is living the life of a lie, a life that is bereft of morality and love for the things of God.One more question needs to be answered: How is it true that the people of God don’t sin anymore? The answer is true in PRINCIPLE and “only” in PRINCIPLE. Christ’s sacrifice and shedding of His blood on the cross has already accomplished God’s works of redemption: remission of sins, reconciliation, justification, and salvation of His people. It is only in that context that the children of God are said to be now sinless and incapable of sinning. But in REALITY, they still sin, and when they do, they repent; then again sin and repent, and on and on; the cycle goes until the day they join their Maker in His kingdom in eternal glory–they will continue to sin. In summary, SINLESSNESS and SALVATION-ASSURANCE are “rooted” in eternity. God’s people do not sin anymore, only in “PRINCIPLE.” But in our life now, we still sin. 1 John 1:10 explicitly states, “If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” That is why the Lord’s prayer teaches us to pray daily, “… Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Lastly, God’s people’s salvation is assured because Christ has already earned it for us by God’s works of redemption via the substitutionary sacrifice. — Rod Bongat_________________________For a free share of other studies/materials related to this post, available on this page, please click https://www.facebook.com/rodolfo.bongat, or send your message to ckb_ps@yahoo.com.PRCA Sister Church: If you are in the Philippines and looking for a distinctively Reformed church where you can fellowship and join God’s people in their reverent, God-glorifying and gospel-centered worship services on Sundays, please click here: https://m.facebook.com/bereanprc/

Good Afternoon Everyone!  God Loves You and God Bless You 🙌 🙏 ❤️. I would like for you to please keep me in your prayers because I was released from Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, Ohio yesterday at 11:45am.  I am a person who has been suffering from seizures for over 45 years now.   It is not very easy dealing with Epilepsy and Diabetes right now.  I know that I am single with no children.  If it is the Lord’s Will,  I will be 60 years old on June 24th of this year. 

 I have been clean and sober for 35 years now.   My sobriety date is May 2, 1990.  I am an Author and Blogger right now.   I have been writing for over 28 years now.   I am currently living with my relatives right now because I have been evicted out of my apartment at Wentworth Hi Rise Apartments 2765 Wentworth Ave Dayton, Ohio 45406.  I am a grateful recovering alcoholic and a Born Again Christian Man.   I want to inform you that I have 42 nieces and nephews in my family.  I am a graduate from the University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio; Class of 1993 and 1995 respectively.   I have written three books within a 23 year period.  My books are as follows:  Essays, My Grace is Sufficient for Me and The Best of Anthony Hopkins.   I graduated from Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Dayton, Ohio on Tuesday June 10, 1986 at 7:00PM. 

  I graduated from high school with a 1.1 Grade Point Average.  I graduated from the University of Toledo with a 2.41 Grade Point Average.   I had earned a total of 235 credit hours as well as my Associates Degree in Applied Sciences in Social Services Technology on Saturday June 12, 1993.  I graduated from college with my Bachelors Degree in Interdisciplinary Studies on Saturday June 17, 1995.  I also used to work inside of the University of Toledo William Carlson Library from December 15, 1992 through June 14, 1996.  I also worked at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte J. Murray Adkins Library from Monday March 5, 2001 through Wednesday April 9, 2009.  I have over 30 published manuscripts at the United States Copyright Office located in Washington, DC.  I attend the Fort McKinley United Methodist Church located on 3721 West Siebenthaler Avenue Dayton, Ohio 45406.  My hobbies are as follows: Reading, Writing, using computers, Traveling, and spending time with my family members and friends. 

 I am a Democrat and a person who is a Liberal when it comes to Politics.  I am still a Work in Progress.  I am a person who is very intelligent, smart, determined, honest, truthful, highly educated, and very respectful.   I am a person, who loves going to the Library and Church on a daily basis.   I love attending my self help groups such as Adult Children of Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous and NAMI CONNECTIONS. I STILL HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO, BUT A SHORT TIME TO GET THERE!  GOD BLESS ALL OF YOU WORLDWIDE!  GOD LOVES YOU AND SO DO I!  THANK YOU FOR PRAYING FOR ME AND READING MY ESSAY. 

Faithfully Submitted, 

Anthony Joseph Hopkins