Loving Your Neighbor
If you thought it is tough
to love other Christians wait until you read this
message! It all begins with loving God, so if you are
not ready to be challenged in this area, then maybe you
don’t love God after all so don’t bother to continue to
read. But if you really do love God, then you had better
read this. Remember that loving God is not a feeling or
a theory it is something that we do. Our love for God
finds its expression in loving His Word, loving His
people and now, loving our neighbor.
This phrase, love your
neighbor, appears twelve times in the Bible. The first
time it is mentioned is in the Law of Moses (Leviticus
19:18). In Matthew 22:36 a lawyer tried to trick Jesus
by asking Him which was the great command in the Law.
Jesus responded “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.” So the second command after loving God is to
love our neighbor. This is not only an Old Testament
command, it is repeated in the New Testament (Romans
13:9-10, Galatians 5:14, James 2:8). So this law applies
to us as much as to those of the Old Testament.
Of course, if we do not love
God, loving our neighbor will be impossible. Again, it
all has to begin with, and flow from, our relationship
to God. Paul stresses that if we love our neighbor, we
have fulfilled the law. And, knowing that we so easily
justify ourselves by saying we have warm fuzzy feelings
towards everybody, Paul explains that loving our
neighbor entails certain behavior: “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. Love
does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the
fulfillment of the law.” (Romans 13:9-10). In other
words; loving my neighbor will result in me not taking
his wife, killing him, stealing from him, spreading
rumors about him or even coveting anything that is his.
This does not only mean physical adultery, murder,
stealing etc, but embraces looking at his wife with
lust, being angry with him or even taking anything that
is his including, honor, time, respect or anything else
that belongs to him.
While the idea of “neighbor”
includes other Christians, it is not limited to
Christians only. And if this is hard to do for another
believer, it is much harder to be loving towards those
who are not true Christians. In Luke 10:29 a lawyer
finding this command a bit restrictive thought that he
could get off the hook by asking Jesus to “Define
neighbor”. It is then that Jesus tells the parable of
the Good Samaritan. We often forget the bottom line of
this parable as we get involved in all the little
details of the story. The bottom line is that our
neighbor is anyone we come across in life. The religious
people who went past the poor man in the gutter had all
sorts of excuses and explanations as to why the dirty,
wounded fellow was not their neighbor. Maybe he was not
a Jew, maybe he was a sinner, maybe he had been
excommunicated from the temple. But no excuse holds
water. The fact that they saw him lying there, made him
their neighbor – whether they liked it or not. And
everybody you come across in your daily life is your
neighbor. This includes the friendly Christian and
the rude unbeliever. From the person who cuts you off in
the traffic to the lady who pushed in front of you in
the line. From the homeless beggar to the powerful
government official who makes your life hard. If you
know the person’s name, or have seen their face, they
are your neighbor and you must love them.
Many feel that surely we are
not expected to love those who persecute us or are our
enemies. But Jesus said: “I say to you, love your
enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who
hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and
persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in
heaven… For if you love those who love you, what reward
have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more
than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so?
Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in
heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:44-48). Notice that Jesus
links loving our enemies to being sons of our Father.
What He is saying is that if we are truly born-again and
God is our father, then we need to act and be
like Him. One of the ways we do that is by loving our
enemies, just like Jesus had only compassion for those
who flogged Him and crucified Him. And right there lies
the rub. For too long, christians have adopted the name
and trappings of being God’s children without the
reality. We cannot be God’s children and continue to act
like Adam or the Devil is our father. The children of
darkness are hateful, bitter and take vengeance. The
children of light are different. In fact, so different
that the world will take note that we are not the same
as those who only love those who love them, but that we
do love those who hate and abuse us.
But more, Matthew 5:48 links
loving our enemies with the command to “be perfect just
as our Father in heaven is perfect”. Yes, that is a very
high standard indeed. We too easily excuse ourselves
from doing the hard things because we feel that God
surely cannot expect that from us. But the fact is, He
does! He expects you to be just as perfect as God
Himself is. To which we have to respond; “but that is
impossible, I can never achieve that”. That’s exactly
the point. Humanly, it is impossible but with God all
things are possible. He is able to impart His nature to
us so we can do those things that we cannot do on our
own. We can love as He does because “the love of God has
been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was
given to us” (Romans 5:4). Our human love is very weak
but His love is able to love the most unlovely. Thus we
need His love to be poured into our hearts.
But here is the problem, He
can only pour His love into us, when we make room for
His love by emptying ourselves of the love of self. As
long as we love ourselves, there just is no room for
God’s selfless love. When we are willing to die to the
love of self, then the love of God will be able to rise
in our hearts. 1Corinthians 13:4 says: “Love suffers
long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not
parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely,
does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;
does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things,
endures all things”. None of these things are possible
as long as self is still on the throne. Why are we
impatient with others, why are we rude and not kind, why
are we envious of others, why do we love to speak of
ourselves (parade itself)? Because self is the centre of
our lives. Allow self to be crucified and watch the love
of God flow through you empowering you to love the most
abominable enemy in the world.
Anton Bosch
anton@ifcb.net
3310
W Magnolia Blvd
Burbank,
CA, 91505
Tel
818 846 5520
www.burbankchurch.org