Loving Others As We Love Ourselves
Love is the only thing we are commanded to do
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:36-40)
The one word that holds everything together in Judaism and Christianity is love and the commandments to love the Lord and to love our neighbour. In fact, most civilisations sum up their moral systems through the Golden Rule: that you should treat others the way you wish to be treated, spreading kindness and refraining from actions that would harm others.
In Leviticus we read, “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19.34). Leviticus is of course a key reminder of how we should behave towards refugees.
And when Jesus said, that the entirety of the law hung on loving God and neighbour he wasn’t the first to state the Golden Rule, but he added two important dimensions.
Firstly, he made a link between loving God and loving neighbour which Paul takes further by reducing loving God and loving neighbour to the same thing, “For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: Love your neighbour as yourself” (Galatians 5.14). But what is “love” and who is my “neighbour”? In the Hebrew (Old Testament) and the Greek (New Testament) there are several words covered by our single words and the different usage of these words means that the different versions of the Golden Rule mean slightly different things. When Jesus used the word “love” it referred to a self-sacrificial, unconditional, active love that seeks the well-being of others, not just a feeling. There is an inclination when using the word to give it an emotional attachment which seems impossible. How can you have an emotional attachment to someone you dislike or someone you have never met. The answer is that, counterintuitive though it sounds, the nuances of words allow you to love someone you don’t like. Perhaps “compassion” illustrates the point, a word that occurs many times in both the Old and New Testaments.
And what about neighbour? This is easier. Although Jesus’ choice of the word “neighbour” implies proximity and closeness, through the story of the Good Samaritan, he expanded its meaning to include strangers and even enemies. We now understand it to include literally everyone.
Secondly, though the commandment to love neighbour is a challenge in itself, Jesus asked more, “Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:15-16). Worship isn’t enough. You cannot love God without loving neighbour, neighbour has to be the primary focus of our love and a demonstration of our love for God, “We are commanded to put our faith into action and to spread the Gospel by the way we live our lives” (often attributed to St Francis of Assisi). Living our lives through faith in action is frustrating when the target for action is people far away in situations of destitution or conflict
Perhaps the reason that we see a lot of people in church but not a lot of “faith in action” is that it is too challenging, but take heart. In our world gone wrong it is impossible to come even close to living the live that Jesus asks of us but he understands the human condition and human experience testifies that we are not made perfect. We must grow in various ways over time and we must continue to struggle against sin.
The bible gives us the concept of gradualness, a principle in moral and pastoral theology, according to which people should be encouraged to grow closer to God and his plan for our lives in a step-by-step manner rather than expecting to jump from an initial conversion to perfection in a single step, “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of God’s word. You need milk, not solid food; for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil [Heb. 5:12-14].
So let us pray that we increase our love for our neighbour and the whole of humanity, but in small steps, and is so doing approach the fulfilment of a perfect love of God.
Divine Father and teacher who has shown us true love in Christ Jesus,
Show your people how to love in practice with true compassion for others.
As we reflect on the many ways You show countless complexions of love,
May we embrace all whom we encounter, have Your insight enough to see them as neighbour
Whether stranger , enemy or just different and so share the light of that creative healing love that shines from Your very being.
