My name is Anthony Joseph Hopkins and I am from Dayton Ohio. I am a 59 year old man who has written three books within a 23 year period . My Book Publisher is Authorhouse Publishing Company in Bloomington Indiana. My supervisor is Mrs. Heather Carter. My three books are called Essays, My Grace is Sufficient for Me, and The Best of Anthony Hopkins. My books are about my personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I am a person who is academically lifted. I am extremely intelligent and smart. I have made a lot of mistakes and bad choices in my personal life. I graduated from Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Dayton Ohio three years late. My grade point average in high school was a 1.1. I graduated from the University of Toledo in Toledo Ohio on Saturday June 12th 1993 and on Saturday June 17, 1995 with my Associates Degree in Applied Sciences in Social Services Technology and my Bachelors Degree in Interdisciplinary Studies. I minored in American Sign Language . I love to be around other people as well as being all by myself. I have been writing for over 30 years now. I have a birthday coming up within the next 18 days. I will be 60 years old this year. I have been in the hospital for two weeks recently. I still suffer from Schizoid Affective Disorder, Diabetes, Gastric Ulcers, and Schizophrenia. I have a learning disability in math and reading. I failed math in college twice at the University of Toledo and I also failed economics in college
I failed a general business class my freshman year in high school at Nettie Lee Roth High School in Dayton Ohio from 1979 to 1980. I used to be a juvenile delinquency for 8 years. I was truancy from high school for three years straight. I even failed the Permit Tedt to get a Driver’s License in Dayton Ohio and Charlotte North Carolina. I also failed the test in the State of Michigan as well. I am responsible for holding myself back because I have been complainant and a procrastinator. I almost failed my family therapy class in college as well as my drug awareness class. I do not take multiple choice test very well throughout my entire life. I suffer from athletic foot fungus right now. For the past 36 years I have lived in the Toledo Ohio Area for almost 6 years. I used to live inside of a Crack house for three years from 1991 through 1994. I worked for 49 years of my life . I am a Born Again Christian Man and a Grateful Recovering Alcoholic. I am a Child of The Most High God.
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7 Core Personality Factors: Definitions and Examples
Home » Blog » 7 Core Personality Factors: Definitions and Examples
Personality has long captivated the field of psychology, serving as one of its most fascinating and widely applied areas. The roots of experimental psychology and the study of human personality trace back to the late 19th century, when German physiologist and philosopher Wilhelm Wundt laid the groundwork for this burgeoning field1. Over the next century, research advanced significantly, culminating in a study by Costa and McCrae that found most personality traits can be viewed as facets of five core personality factors: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (low Emotional Stability).2 These traits collectively form the Five-Factor Model (FFM), often summarized by the acronym “OCEAN.”
Building on this foundation, Canadian psychology professors Kibeom Lee and Michael C. Ashton introduced the HEXACO model by adding Honesty/Humility as a sixth factor.3 Today, the Jackson Personality Inventory™-3 (JPI™-3) has further refined our understanding by dividing Conscientiousness into two distinct higher-order factors: Industriousness and Methodicalness, resulting in a seven-factor model. This expanded framework offers a deeper understanding of individuals’ conscientiousness, which has been described as “the most potent, non-cognitive predictor of workplace performance.”4 In this blog, SIGMA’s experts delve into the definitions, benefits, and key considerations for each of these seven core personality factors.
7 Core Personality Factors
- Agreeableness
- Emotional Stability
- Extraversion
- Honesty/Humility
- Industriousness
- Methodicalness
- Openness to Experience
What is Personality?
Though personality is an abstract concept, it can be defined in a few fundamental ways. At its core, personality is composed of the unique characteristics that distinguish individuals from one another. These traits — distinctive patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors — help us recognize similarities and differences among people. Although personality traits are non-physical, although they often manifest in physical expressions, such as choices in clothing or hairstyle, though these expressions are not personality traits themselves.
Personality is shaped by a combination of biological factors and environmental influences, and generally remains consistent throughout adult life. However, certain traits can be developed to modest degrees through life events, or behavioral interventions and coaching. This potential for growth is crucial when assessing talent and identifying opportunities for personal and professional development.
1. Agreeableness
What is Agreeableness?
Agreeableness refers to the tendency to get along easily with others and be willing to help those in need. People who score high on Agreeableness are forgiving, non-judgmental, and trusting in nature.
6 Traits of Agreeable People:
Cooperative, empathetic, forgiving, non-judgmental, nurturing, trusting.
Benefits of Strong Agreeableness:
- High scores on Agreeableness are positively related to group performance.5
- High scores on Agreeableness are negatively related to abusive supervision.6
- Agreeableness is positively related to supportive leadership7 and the charismatic dimension of transformational leadership.8
- Agreeableness has been shown to predict the growth of interpersonal relationships9.
Cautions for High Scores on Agreeableness:
- May prefer to avoid conflict rather than manage or proactively mitigate it.
- May try to please others and avoid offering alternative opinions or ideas, even if they are viable or better options.
- May be overly trusting of other people, allowing them to be taken advantage of.
Cautions for Low Scores on Agreeableness:
- May be prone towards instigating or exacerbating conflict.
- May adopt a contentious perspective for unproductive purposes.
- May disrupt group cohesion, teambuilding, and unity.
2. Emotional Stability
What is Emotional Stability?
Emotional Stability refers to the tendency to remain calm and composed when faced with uncertain or stressful situations. People who score high on Emotional Stability are confident and capable of regulating their moods.
6 Traits of Emotionally Stable People:
Accepting of criticism, carefree, even-tempered, capable of handling stress, optimistic, strong self-esteem.
Benefits of Strong Emotional Stability:
- High scores on Emotional Stability have been linked to greater career resilience.10
- The ability to regulate emotions is associated with better mental health outcomes.11
- Emotional Stability is related to better job satisfaction and performance.12
Cautions for High Scores on Emotional Stability:
- May not be able to share in strong emotions to the same extent as others on their team.
- May struggle to understand or be patient with those who are more sensitive to negative emotions
- May not take emotional factors into account when communicating or making decisions.
Cautions for Low Scores on Emotional Stability:
- May not effectively handle pressure, uncertainty, or stressful situations.
- May struggle with receiving constructive criticism and managing conflict.
- May let emotions impede job productivity and satisfaction.
3. Extraversion
What is Extraversion?
Extraversion refers to the tendency to enjoy, feel comfortable, and demonstrate confidence in group settings, including persuading others and assuming leadership roles. Extraverted people are able to modify their actions and words to suit different situations.
6 Traits of Extraverted People:
Desiring affiliation (belonging), desiring to lead, enjoying attention, persuasive, socially adaptable, socially confident.
Benefits of Strong Extraversion:
- Out of all personality traits, Extraversion is the best and most consistent predictor of important leadership outcomes;13 Extraversion has also been found to be positively related to transformational leadership14,15,16,17,18 and charismatic leadership.19
- Extraversion is associated with greater life satisfaction and positive relationships.20
- On average, extraverted individuals score higher on motivation and performance.21
Cautions for High Scores on Extraversion:
- May struggle to stay motivated and focused when working independently.
- May have a tendency of dominating conversations and struggle with active listening.
- May have a hard time working remotely if living on their own.
Cautions for Low Scores on Extraversion:
- May avoid meetings and teamwork even when they would be beneficial.
- May take longer to adapt to new teams.
- May be less inclined towards management, liaison, or other roles that require more assertiveness or leadership skills.
4. Honesty/Humility
What is Honesty/Humility?
Honesty/Humility refers to the tendency to be truthful, humble, and straightforward with others. People who score high on Honesty/Humility avoid taking risks and carefully follow established rules.
6 Traits of Honest/Humble People:
Modest, risk averse, rule compliant, sincere, truthful, unentitled.
Benefits of Strong Honesty/Humility:
- Studies have shown that leaders’ Honesty/Humility is negatively related to abusive supervision22 and positively related to ethical23 and authentic leadership.24
- Honesty/Humility is positively correlated with supervisor ratings of overall job performance;25 in fact, in measures of individual and contextual performance, humility has been shown to compensate for lower cognitive ability.26
- Leaders’ expressed humility is positively related with follower engagement.27
Cautions for High Scores on Honesty/Humility:
- May be less adept at communicating strategically and knowing when it is wise to omit information.
- May overlook opportunities due to a strong aversion to risk.
- May struggle to be innovative and creative if they strictly adhere to established procedures.
Cautions for Low Scores on Honesty/Humility:
- May be more prone towards risk-taking and bending the rules.
- May be inclined toward twisting or obscuring difficult news or undesired outcomes.
- May disrupt group cohesion by acting entitled and arrogant.
5. Industriousness
What is Industriousness?
Industriousness refers to the tendency to strive tirelessly for excellence. People who score high on Industriousness work hard, set challenging goals, and derive meaning from work.
6 Traits of Industrious People:
Achievement-oriented, competitive, high/sustained energy, engaged, hard-working, persistent.
Benefits of Strong Industriousness:
- Employees who are engaged in their work tend to do better on overall scores of productivity, well-being, and organizational citizenship.28
- Organizations are more profitable and productive when their employees are engaged.29
- Employee competitiveness is positively related to innovation and career satisfaction.30
Cautions for High Scores on Industriousness:
- May wear out, stress, or frustrate individuals who cannot match their high and sustained energy.
- May disrupt teamwork with their strong competitive spirit.
- May prioritize achievement over maintaining relationships or work/life balance.
Cautions for Low Scores on Industriousness:
- May struggle to stay motivated or to motivate others.
- May be more prone to giving up when a project or relationship becomes difficult.
- May be less inclined to strive for excellence in their work.
6. Methodicalness
What is Methodicalness?
Methodicalness refers to the tendency to act in a deliberate and planful manner. People who score high on Methodicalness can be counted on to meet commitments and deadlines.
6 Traits of Methodical People:
Strong impulse control, organized, planner, punctual, reliable, self-disciplined.
Benefits of Strong Methodicalness:
- Employees with good time management skills are more engaged, proactive, and productive in their roles.31
- There is a positive association between time management skills and reduced stress levels among employees.32
- Self-control is related to higher salary and occupational prestige.33
Cautions for High Scores on Methodicalness:
- May focus excessively on planning and neglect to implement plans.
- May struggle to make quick decisions or take part in activities spontaneously.
- May have difficulty being flexible and adapting project goals and timelines.
Cautions for Low Scores on Methodicalness:
- May have difficulty adhering to standardized processes.
- May deprioritize punctuality and reliability.
- May struggle to spot subtle mistakes or deliver a high-quality product when the work requires attention to detail.
7. Openness to Experience
What is Openness to Experience?
Openness to Experience refers to the tendency to enjoy creative pursuits and original thinking. People who score high on Openness to Experience thrive when there is an opportunity to learn, discuss differences of opinion, or try something new.
6 Traits of People Who Are Open to Experience:
Abstract thinking, appreciation of aesthetics, breadth of interest, embraces change, embraces differences, innovative.
Benefits of Strong Openness to Experience:
- Openness to Experience is positively related to subjective well-being.34
- Being open minded has a positive, significant effect on group learning capacity.35
- Trying something new has been found to increase the brain’s ability to adapt and solve problems.36
Cautions for High Scores on Openness to Experience:
- May be inclined towards change and innovation when maintaining the status quo is the better option.
- May require a variety of tasks to satisfy their intellectual curiosity.
- May prolong the completion of routine, practical tasks because of a preference for those involving thinking or creativity.
Cautions for Low Scores on Openness to Experience:
- May prefer to follow established procedures rather than trying novel methods that might be more effective.
- May struggle to appreciate different personalities, experiences, and approaches to work.
- May have difficulty grasping “the big picture,” including abstract concepts such as long-term strategy or mission/vision statements.
7 Core Personality Factors: How to Measure
Are you ready to measure the seven core personality factors outlined above? The JPI-3 provides a convenient and scientifically validated solution. Administered online through SIGMA’s state-of-the-art platform, this assessment takes only 20 minutes to complete, making it an ideal tool for your research and talent development initiatives. Complete the form below to share your objectives, and let us help you unlock the full potential of your team. We look forward to hearing from you.
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Discounts are available for researchers interested in using SIGMA’s assessments in their studies. If you are interested in using the JPI-3 for research, apply for a research discount below.
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1 Rieber, R. W. (Robert W. ). (1980). Wilhelm Wundt and the making of a scientific psychology. Plenum Press.
2 Costa, P. & McCrae, R. R. (1999). A five-factor theory of personality. The Five-Factor Model of Personality: Theoretical Perspectives, 2, 51-87.
3 Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2007). Empirical, theoretical, and practical advantages of the HEXACO model of personality structure. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11(2), 150-166. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868306294907.
4 Campbell, D. (2019, November 4). Being conscientious is one of the strongest predictors of success in the workplace, U of T study finds. University of Toronto. https://www.utoronto.ca/news/being-conscientious-one-strongest-predictors-success-workplace-u-t-study-finds.
5 Yukl, G., & Van Fleet, D. D. (1992). Theory and research on leadership in organizations. In M. D. Dunnette & L. M. Hough (Eds.), Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology (2nd ed., pp. 147-197). Consulting Psychologists Press.
6 Breevaart, K., & de Vries, R. E. (2017). Supervisor’s HEXACO personality traits and subordinate perceptions of abusive supervision. The Leadership Quarterly, 28(5), 691-700. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2017.02.001.
7 de Vries, R. E. (2012). Personality predictors of leadership styles and the self-other agreement problem. Leadership Quarterly, 23(5), 809-821. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2012.03.002.
8 Judge, T. A., & Bono, J. E. (2000). Five-factor model of personality and transformational leadership. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85(5),751-765. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.85.5.751.
9 Yang, D., & Tu, C. (2020). Influence of college students’ agreeableness on interpersonal relationships: Moderating role of empathy. Education and Urban Society, 53(4), 383-401. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013124520928609.
10 Arora, R., & Rangnekar, S. (2015). Relationships between emotional stability, psychosocial mentoring support and career resilience. Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 11(1), 16-33. https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v11i1.835.
11 Kraiss, J. T., ten Klooster, P. M., Moskowitz, J. T., & Bohlmeijer, E. T. (2020). The relationship between emotion regulation and well-being in patients with mental disorders: A meta-analysis. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 102, Article 152189. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comppsych.2020.152189.
12 Judge, T.A., & Bono, J. E. (2001). Relationship of core self-evaluations traits—self-esteem, generalized self-efficacy, locus of control, and emotional stability—with job satisfaction and job performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(1), 80-92. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.86.1.80.
13 Zhang, J., Yin, K., & Li, S. (2022). Leader extraversion and team performance: A moderated mediation model. PLoS One, 17 (12), Article e027876. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278769
14 Felfe, J., & Schyns, B. (2006). Personality and the perception of transformational leadership: The impact of extraversion, neuroticism, personal need for structure, and occupational self efficacy. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 36(3), 708-739. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0021-9029.2006.00026.x.
15 Judge, T. A., & Bono, J. E. (2000). Five-Factor Model of personality and transformational leadership. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85(5), 751-765. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.85.5.751.
16 Lim, B. C., & Ployhart, R. E. (2004). Transformational leadership: Relations to the Five-Factor Model and team performance in typical and maximum contexts. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(4), 610-621. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.89.4.610.
17 Phipps, S. T., & Prieto, L. C. (2011). The influence of personality factors on transformational leadership: Exploring the moderating role of political skill. International Journal of Leadership Studies, 6(3), 430-447.
18 Rubin, R. S., Munz, D. C., & Bommer, W. H. (2005). Leading from within: The effects of emotion recognition and personality on transformational leadership behaviour. The Academy of Management Journal, 48(5), 845-858. https://doi.org/10.5465/AMJ.2005.18803926.
19 de Vries, R. E. (2012). Personality predictors of leadership styles and the self-other agreement problem. Leadership Quarterly, 23(5), 809-821. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2012.03.002.
20 Wilmot, M. P., Wanberg, C. R., Kammeyer-Mueller, J. D., & Ones, D. S. (2019). Extraversion advantages at work: A quantitative review and synthesis of the meta-analytic evidence. Journal of Applied Psychology, 104(12), 1447–1470. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000415.
21 Ibid.
22 Breevaart, K., & de Vries, R. E. (2017). Supervisor’s HEXACO personality traits and subordinate perceptions of abusive supervision. The Leadership Quarterly, 28, 691–700. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2017.02.001.
23 de Vries, R. E. (2012). Personality predictors of leadership styles and the self-other agreement problem. Leadership Quarterly, 23(5), 809-821. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2012.03.002.
24 Malik, M. F., Burhan, Q., & Khan, M. A. (2023). The role of HEXACO in the development of authentic leadership and its consequences on task performance. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 44(1), 52-71. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-08-2022-0356.
25 Shen, M., Rowatt, W. & Petrini, L. (2011). A new trait on the market: Honesty-Humility as a unique predictor of job performance ratings. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(6), 857-862. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2011.01.011.
26 Owens, B. P., Johnson, M. D., & Mitchell, T. R. (2013). Expressed humility in organizations: Implications for
performance, teams, and leadership. Organization Science, 24(5), 1517-1538. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1120.0795
27 Ibid.
28 Gallup. (2024). The relationship between engagement at work and organizational outcomes: Q12® Meta-Analysis [11th Ed.]. Gallup. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/321725/gallup-q12-meta-analysis-report.aspx
29 Ibid.
30 Songke, X., Meng, X., Chaoping, L., & Dege, L. (2023). Can trait competitiveness foster positive outcomes? The role of perceived insider status and leader competitiveness. Personality and Individual Differences, 202, Article 111968. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2022.111968.
31 Claessens, B. J. C., van Eerde, W., Rutte, C. G., & Roe, R. A. (2007). A review of the time management literature. Personnel Review, 36(2), 255–276. https://doi.org/10.1108/00483480710726136.
32 Bond M. J., & Feather, N.T. (1988). Some correlates of structure and purpose in the use of time. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 61(4), 319-329. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.55.2.321.
33 Converse, P., Pathak, J., DePaul-Haddock, A., Gotlib, T., & Merbedone, M. (2012). Controlling your environment and yourself: Implications for career success. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80(1), 148-159. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2011.07.003.
34 Tucaković, L., & Nedeljković, B. (2023). Personality and affective correlates of openness to experience from Big Five and HEXACO personality models: The dual nature of Big Five openness. Journal of Personality Assessment, 105(4), 544-554. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2022.2117047.
35 Lord, M. (2015). Group learning capacity: The roles of open-mindedness and shared vision. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, Article 150. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00150.
36 Park, A. J., Harris, A. Z., Martyniuk, K. M., Chang, C.-Y., Abbas, A. I., Lowes, D. C., Kellendonk, C., Gogos, J. A., & Gordon, J. A. (2021). Reset of hippocampal-prefrontal circuitry facilitates learning. Nature, 591(7851), 615–619. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03272-1.
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The Five Personality of The Self
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7 MIN READ
The Big Five OCEAN Personality Types: Introduction and Discussions
Chris Martin
The big five personality traits, often referred to as OCEAN, and sometimes CANOE, are: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. These five traits represent broad domains of human behaviour and account for differences in both personality and decision making. Today, the model is used by HR practitioners to evaluate potential employees and marketers to understand the audiences of their products.The history and development of the traits is long and not without significant challenge. In fact, the earliest known attempt to build a taxonomy of human behaviour dates back to the late 1800s. Between that first investigation and the 1940s, the taxonomy was refined from over 4,000 traits to 171 and eventually 5.However, psychological and sociological discourse over the next two decades would call into question the validity of any attempt to correlate personality with behaviour. The influential book Personality and Assessment, authored by Walter Mischel , went so far as to suggest that there was only a correlation of 0.3 between personality and behaviour. Mischel argued the case that situational variables had a much greater impact on action than pre-disposition.Tweet ThisThe Big 5 OCEAN personality traits – openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism – took over 100 years to be narrowed from 4,500 to just five.By the 1990s, it had been widely accepted that both situational and personality factors affect in-the-moment behaviours. As recently as 2016, research and refinement of the OCEAN model has been ongoing, demonstrating just how influential it is – even to this day.The Big Five Personality TraitsOpenness to experience. Sometimes called intellect or imagination, this represents the willingness to try new things and think outside the box. Traits include insightfulness, originality and curiosity.Conscientiousness. The desire to be careful, diligent and to regulate immediate gratification with self-discipline. Traits include ambition, discipline, consistency and reliability.Extroversion. A state where an individual draws energy from others and seeks social connections or interaction, as opposed to being alone (introversion). Traits include being outgoing, energetic and confident.Agreeableness The measure of how an individual interacts with others, characterised by degree of compassion and co-operation. Traits include tactfulness, kindness and loyalty.Neuroticism. A tendency towards negative personality traits, emotional instability and self-destructive thinking. Traits include pessimism, anxiety, insecurity and fearfulness.

How the Model is Used TodayThe OCEAN model is best thought of as a series of interconnected scales. Everyone will sit somewhere on each scale, but tests that use the OCEAN framework aim to determine the degree to which an individual shows the traits covered by each of the domains.Many organisations use employee scores to determine cultural fit, in addition to building teams that have similar or complimentary personality traits. Some even take this a step further by providing staff with a summary of their results and advice on how best to communicate with employees with different personality types.Outside of HR departments, marketers are the most frequent users of the OCEAN framework. Often combined with demographic or other targeting factors, the model is used to help understand audiences and what will likely appeal to them based on the commonalities within their personality profiles. Much has been written about subsets of personality types that marketers can target, in addition to strategies for doing so.Debates and ChallengesWhile the Big Five represent the prevailing theory of personality, the model is not without its challenges. The most significant is simply the fast changing nature of the discourse around topics of the self, identity and personality. Additionally, there is no single consensus on how to assess an individual based on the OCEAN framework. The most well accepted is the NEO PI assessment, which has been three times since its initial inception in the late 1970s. However, there are also NEO FFR and NEO PI-R assessments which offer variations on assessment tactic.A more direct challenge that researchers and marketers face is that assessing personality types is a lengthy process. Even the shortest accepted assessment – the NEO FFI – asks individuals to rate 60 items on a 5-point scale. This drawn out process makes it difficult to put the OCEAN framework to use on a regular basis. But that is not to say the model does not add value when it can be implemented.Tweet ThisThe most significant challenges researchers must overcome to make full use of the OCEAN framework is finding a succinct way to assess consumers without lengthy, un-engaging surveys.Writing in Greenbook, Brooke Patton highlights recent examples from GutCheck that apply the Big Five personality traits to consumer research. By including personality assessments, the agency found that the favourable audience of a brand’s new product concept also scored high on the agreeableness scale. The result highlighted the messages and communications that the brand should use in order to reach their target audience in a positive way.On the other hand, a literature review of studies into The Big Five and their applications in marketing from The University of Vienna points out some of the reasons for marketers and researchers alike to be cautious. Notably:Personality traits do not take into consideration cross-cultural or demographic differences in behaviourThe OCEAN framework is a simplification of a complex topic and should never be used without a hint of cautionThe theory of personality traits and assessment methods are frequently changing, making choice of methodology is importantIn summary, while there are – as with most measures – both advantages and limitations to The Big Five personality traits, they still represent the most coherent and researched model of personality that has been devised to date. With careful planning and a clear understanding of how they will inform research, the OCEAN model can add a huge amount of value to brands’ understanding of their audiences.
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The Knowledge of Self 2
Sacred TextsIslamIndexPreviousNext
CHAPTER I
THE KNOWLEDGE OF SELF
KNOWLEDGE of self is the key to the knowledge of God, according to the saying: “He who knows himself knows God,”[1] and, as it is Written in the Koran, “We will show them Our signs in the world and in themselves, that the truth may be manifest to them.” Now nothing is nearer to thee than thyself, and if thou knowest not thyself how canst thou know anything else? If thou sayest “I know myself,” meaning thy outward shape, body, face, limbs, and so forth, such knowledge can never be a key to the knowledge of God. Nor, if thy knowledge as to that which is within only extends so far, that when thou art hungry thou eatest, and when thou art angry thou attackest some one, wilt thou progress any further in this path, for the beasts are thy partners in this? But real self-knowledge consists in knowing the following things: What art thou in thyself,
[1. Traditional saying of Muhammad.]
{p. 20}
and from whence hast thou come? Whither art thou going, and for what purpose hast thou come to tarry here awhile, and in what does thy real happiness and misery consist? Some of thy attributes are those of animals, some of devils, and some of angels, and thou hast to find out which of these attributes are accidental and which essential. Till thou knowest this, thou canst not find out where thy real happiness lies. The occupation of animals is eating, sleeping, and fighting; therefore, if thou art an animal, busy thyself in these things. Devils are busy in stirring up mischief, and in guile and deceit; if thou belongest to them, do their work. Angels contemplate the beauty of God, and are entirely free from animal qualities; if thou art of angelic nature, then strive towards thine origin, that thou mayest know and contemplate the Most High, and be delivered from the thraldom of lust and anger. Thou shouldest also discover why thou hast been created with these two animal instincts: whether that they should subdue and lead thee captive, or whether that thou shouldest subdue them, and, in thy upward progress, make of one thy steed and of the other thy weapon.
{p. 21}
The first step to self-knowledge is to know that thou art composed of an outward shape, called the body, and an inward entity called the heart, or soul. By “heart” I do not mean the piece of flesh situated in the left of our bodies, but that which uses all the other faculties as its instruments and servants. In truth it does not belong to the visible world, but to the invisible, and has come into this world as a traveller visits a foreign country for the sake of merchandise, and will presently return to its native land. It is the knowledge of this entity and its attributes which is the key to the knowledge of God.
Some idea of the reality of the heart, or spirit, may be obtained by a man closing his eves and forgetting everything around except his individuality. He will thus also obtain a glimpse of the unending nature of that individuality. Too close inquiry, however, into the essence of spirit is forbidden by the Law. In the Koran it is written: “They will question thee concerning the spirit. Say: ‘The Spirit comes by the command of my Lord.'” Thus much is known of it that it is an indivisible essence belonging to the world of decrees, and
{p. 22}
that it is not from everlasting, but created. An exact philosophical knowledge of the spirit is not a necessary preliminary to walking in the path of religion, but comes rather as the result of self-discipline and perseverance in that path, as it is said in the Koran: “Those who strive in Our way, verily We will guide them to the right paths.”
For the carrying on of this spiritual warfare by which the knowledge of oneself and of God is to be obtained, the body may be figured as a kingdom, the soul as its king, and the different senses and faculties as constituting an army. Reason may be called the vizier, or prime minister, passion the revenue-collector, and anger the police-officer. Under the guise of collecting revenue, passion is continually prone to plunder on its own account, while resentment is always inclined to harshness and extreme severity. Both of these, the revenue-collector and the police-officer, have to be kept in due subordination to the king, but not killed or expelled, as they have their own proper functions to fulfil. But if passion and resentment master reason, the ruin of the soul infallibly ensues. A
{p. 23}
soul which allows its lower faculties to dominate the higher is as one who should hand over an angel to the power of a dog or a Mussalman to the tyranny of an unbeliever. The cultivation of demonic, animal, or angelic qualities results in the production of corresponding characters, which in the Day of Judgment will be manifested in visible shapes, the sensual appearing as swine, the ferocious as dogs and wolves, and the pure as angels. The aim of moral discipline is to purify the heart from the rust of passion and resentment, till, like a clear mirror, it reflects the light of God.
Some one may here object, “But if man has been created with animal and demonic qualities as well as angelic, how are we to know that the latter constitute his real essence, while the former are merely accidental and transitory?” To this I answer that the essence of each creature is to be sought in that which is highest in it and peculiar to it. Thus the horse and the ass are both burden-bearing animals, but the superiority of the horse to the ass consists in its being adapted for use in battle. If it fails in this, it becomes degraded to the rank
{p. 24}
of burden-bearing animals. Similarly with man: the highest faculty in him is reason, which fits him for the contemplation of God. If this. predominates in him, when he dies, he leaves behind him all tendencies to passion and resentment, and becomes capable of association with angels. As regards his mere animal qualities, man is inferior to many animals, but reason makes him superior to them, as it is written in the Koran: “To man We have subjected all things in the earth.” But if his lower tendencies have triumphed, after death he will ever be looking towards the earth and longing for earthly delights.
Now the rational soul in man abounds in, marvels, both of knowledge and power. By means of it he masters arts and sciences, can pass in a flash from earth to heaven and back again, can map out the skies and measure the distances between the stars. By it also he can draw the fish from the sea and the birds from the air, and can subdue to his service animals, like the elephant, the camel, and the horse. His five senses are like five doors opening on the external world; but, more wonderful than this,
{p. 26}
his heart has a window which opens on the unseen world of spirits. In the state of sleep, when the avenues of the senses are closed, this window is opened and man receives impressions from the unseen world and sometimes foreshadowings of the future. His heart is then like a mirror which reflects what is pictured in the Tablet of Fate. But, even in sleep, thoughts of worldly things dull this mirror, so, that the impressions it receives are not clear. After death, however, such thoughts vanish and things are seen in their naked reality, and the saying in the Koran is fulfilled: “We have stripped the veil from off thee and thy sight today is keen.”
This opening of a window in the heart towards the unseen also takes place in conditions. approaching those of prophetic inspiration, when intuitions spring up in the mind unconveyed through any sense-channel. The more a man purifies himself from fleshly lusts and concentrates his mind on God, the more conscious will he be of such intuitions. Those who are not conscious of them have no right to deny their reality.
{p. 26}
Nor are such intuitions confined only to those of prophetic rank. Just as iron, by sufficient polishing, can be made into a mirror, so any mind by due discipline can be rendered receptive of such impressions. It was at this truth the Prophet hinted when he said, “Every child is born with a predisposition towards Islam; then his parents make a Jew, or a, Christian, or a star-worshipper of him.” Every human being has in the depths of his consciousness heard the question “Am I not your Lord?” and answered “Yes” to it. But some hearts are like mirrors so befouled with rust and dirt that they give no clear reflections, while those of the prophets and saints, though they are men “of like passions with us,” are extremely sensitive to all divine impressions.
Nor is it only by reason of knowledge acquired and intuitive that the soul of man holds the first rank among created things, but also by reason of power. Just as angels preside over the elements, so does the soul rule the members of the body. Those souls which attain a special degree of power not only rule their own body but those of others also. If
{p. 27}
they wish a sick man to recover he recovers, or a person in health to fall ill he becomes ill, or if they will the presence of a person he comes to them. According as the effects produced by these powerful souls are good or bad they are termed miracles or sorceries. These souls differ from common folk in three ways: (1) what others only see in dreams they see in their waking moments. (2) While others’ wills only affect their own bodies, these, by will-power, can move bodies extraneous to themselves. (3) The knowledge which others acquire by laborious learning comes to them by intuition.
These three, of course, are not the only marks which differentiate them from common people, but the only ones that come within our cognisance. Just as no one knows the real nature of God but God Himself, so no one knows the real nature of a prophet but a prophet. Nor is this to be wondered at, as in everyday matters we see that it is impossible to explain the charm of poetry to one whose ear is insusceptible of cadence and rhythm, or the glories of colour to one who is stone-blind. Besides mere incapacity, there are other
{p. 28}
hindrances to the attainment of spiritual truth. One of these is externally acquired knowledge. To use a figure, the heart may be represented as a well, and the five senses as five streams which are continually conveying water to it. In order to find out the real contents of the heart these streams must be stopped for a time, at any rate, and the refuse they have brought with them must be cleared out of the well. In other words, if we are to arrive at pure spiritual truth, we must put away, for the time, knowledge which has been acquired by, external processes and which too often hardens into dogmatic prejudice.
A mistake of an opposite kind is made by shallow people who, echoing some phrases which they have caught from Sufi teachers, go about decrying all knowledge. This is as if a person who was not an adept in alchemy were to go about saying, “Alchemy is better than in gold,” and were to refuse gold when it was offered to him. Alchemy is better than gold, but real alchemists are very rare, and so are real Sufis. He who has a mere smattering of Sufism is not superior to a learned main, any more
{p. 29}
than he who has tried a few experiments in alchemy has ground for despising a rich man.
Any one who will look into the matter will see that happiness is necessarily linked with the knowledge of God. Each faculty of ours delights in that for which it was created: lust delights in accomplishing desire, anger in taking vengeance, the eye in seeing beautiful objects, and the ear in hearing harmonious sounds. The highest function of the soul of man is the perception of truth; in this accordingly it finds its special delight. Even in trifling matters, such, as learning chess, this holds good, and the higher the subject-matter of the knowledge obtained the greater the delight. A man would be pleased at being admitted into the confidence of a prime minister, but how much more if the king makes an intimate of him and discloses state secrets to him!
An astronomer who, by his knowledge, can map the stars and describe their courses, derives more pleasure from his knowledge than the chess-player from his. Seeing, then, that nothing is higher than God, how great must be the
{p. 30}
delight which springs from the true knowledge of Him!
A person in whom the desire for this knowledge has disappeared is like one who has lost his appetite for healthy food, or who prefers feeding on clay to eating bread. All bodily appetites perish at death with the organs they use, but the soul dies not, and retains whatever knowledge of God it possesses; nay, increases it.
An important part of our knowledge of God arises from the study and contemplation of our own bodies, which reveal to us the power, wisdom, and love of the Creator. His power, in that from a mere drop He has built up the wonderful frame of man; His wisdom is revealed in its intricacies and the mutual adaptability of its parts; and His love is shown by His not only supplying such organs as are absolutely necessary for existence, as the liver, the heart, and the brain, but those which are not absolutely necessary, as the hand, the foot, the tongue, and the eye. To these He has added, as ornaments, the blackness of the hair, the redness of lips, and the curve of the eyebrows.
{p. 31}
Man has been truly termed a “microcosm,” or little world in himself, and the structure of his body should be studied not only by those who wish to become doctors, but by those who wish to attain to a more intimate knowledge of God, just as close study of the niceties and shades of language in a great poem reveals to us more and more of the genius of its author.
But, when all is said, the knowledge of the soul plays a more important part in leading to the knowledge of God than the knowledge of our body and its functions. The body may be compared to a steed and the soul to its rider; the body was created for the soul, the soul for the body. If a man knows not his own soul, which is the nearest thing to him, what is the use of his claiming to know others? It is as if a beggar who has not the wherewithal for a meal should claim to be able to, feed a town.
In this chapter we have attempted, in some degree, to expound, the greatness of man’s soul. He who neglects it and suffers its capacities to rust or to degenerate must necessarily be the loser in this world and the next. The true greatness; of man lies in his capacity for eternal
{p. 32}
progress, otherwise in this temporal sphere he is the weakest of all things, being subject to hunger, thirst, heat, cold, and sorrow. Those things he takes most delight in are often the most injurious to him, and those things which benefit him are not to be obtained without toil and trouble. As to his intellect, a slight disarrangement of matter in his brain is sufficient to destroy or madden him; as to his power, the sting of a wasp is sufficient to rob him of ease and sleep; as to his temper, he is upset by the loss of a sixpence; as to his beauty, he is little more than nauseous matter covered with a fair skin. Without frequent washing he becomes utterly repulsive and disgraceful.
In truth, man in this world is extremely weak and contemptible; it is only in the next that he will be of value, if by means of the “alchemy of happiness” he rises from the rank of beasts to that of angels. Otherwise his condition will be worse than the brutes, which perish and turn to dust. It is necessary for him, at the same time that he is conscious of his superiority as the climax of created things, to learn to know also his helplessness, as that too is one of the keys to the knowledge of God.
{p. 33}
What Does It Mean to Love Your Neighbor as Yourself? | Finds.Life.Church
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What Does it Mean to Love Your Neighbor as Yourself?
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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 3
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‘Love Your Neighbor as Yourself’ Bible Verse
Examples in Several Different Passages of Scripture
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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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LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF 2
The Moral Meaning of Loving One’s Neighbor
By
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.
Applying All the Scriptures to All of Life
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Editor-in-Chief: David Schrock • Theological Editors: Stephen Wellum, Ardel Caneday, Brad Green • Pastoral Editor: Trent Hunter • Managing Editor: Kevin McClure • Assistant Editor: Chase Rea
Editorial Email: Christisoverall at gmail.com
Love Your Neighbor as Yourself
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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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God is most glorified in us
when we are most satisfied in him
Ways to Follow
New Resources in Your Inbox
DailyWeekly
