Love Your Neighbor As Yourself
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
During the season of Super Bowl I, the great quarterback Bart Starr had a little incentive scheme going with his oldest son. For every perfect paper Bart Junior brought home from school, Starr gave him ten cents. After a particularly rough game against St. Louis, in which Starr felt he had performed poorly, he returned home weary and battered, late at night after a long plane ride. But he couldn’t help feeling better when he reached his bedroom. There attached to his pillow was a note: “Dear Dad, I thought you played a great game. Love, Bart.” Taped to the note were two dimes.
Granted this is a story of a father and son but it is a testament to loving your neighbor as yourself. The measure in which we treat each other will be the measure in which life will treat us. As we stand as the feet of Matthew 22:39 “And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
I need to point something out very important. To love one’s neighbor is a commandment. Regardless of what they look like, ascribe to, or affiliate with - Jesus requires us to love them. It can be a challenge loving others. Let’s be honest it can be a challenge loving ourselves sacrificially.
The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.
The foundation of why we are here to day was built on the nature of love. The Law given to Israel as they navigated the wilderness, the why behind the effort of the prophets was all contingent on Love sacrificially!
What is a Neighbor
What is a Neighbor
As we discussed last week, neighbor has multiple greek means in the New Testament text. Understand that Proximity is not a major difference in determining who is my neighbor and who is not. The idea of neighbor is moreso the attitude we possess toward those we come in contact with. From a modern perspective we have considered neighbors to be someone that lives in your neighborhood or even next door. Nonetheless, look beyond your proximity. New Testament and Old Testament text alike possess various means from close companionship, geographical and ethnicity similarities. Understand at the time that Jesus is sharing this command about loving your neighbor ethnicity was not as vast as it is today. Jesus’ community was very homogenous in ethnicity nonetheless by reading the ideologies of Pharisees and Saducees one can see that the society was not a monolith.
Even amongst our culture as a black church, our problem isn’t the commonality amongst our race or even culture, the challenge is diversity in thought. When we can’t seem to see past ideologies for the sake of God being the creator of the universe we miss an opportunity to live peaceably with all men.
How Do I Get to a Place where I love my Neighbor
How Do I Get to a Place where I love my Neighbor
Number one I have to love God, love myself and I have to see value in me before I can love others. Do you love you as the creation that God has specifically crafted.
One of our major obstacles within the confines of our religious community is we have used doctrine as some sort of justification to refuse to love one another. Righteousness does not exist in a vacuum. We can’t be publicly sound morally yet possess a high amount of hate or disdain for people within the confines of our private lives and expect God to see past our toxic heart because we’ve been able to conquer a couple of sins.
Be mindful that Jesus did not pull this commandment out of thin air, he references 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.”
This text is quoted more in the synoptic gospels more than any other old testament text! In other words “what you yourself hate, don’t do to your neighbor”.
Understand that this works both ways, as a Christian it’s imperative that we even love those who find our value system and beliefs defective. The issue with the Pharisees and Saducees was simple the fact that they couldn’t see humanity through the lens of love because they were blinded by this idea of needed strict and logical proof to do anything.
A Poor Definition of Love
A Poor Definition of Love
How do we define love? This unconditional, sacrificial love that we must bestow on our neighbors comes from God. It is the very nature of God. The roadblock we have is the fact that we have cornered love into being something conditonal or transactional.
How do we define self-love? The problem is we are in love with the perfect version of ourselves. It’s easy to love our ideal self, just like it’s easy to love a person who presents their ideal self. But when imperfection enters the chat, when a poor moral compass enters the chat, when the shortcomings we possess or others possess rise to the forefront of our interaction, now love becomes challenging. When love becomes challenging let us think about the fact that in spite of our shortcomings Jesus loved us.
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
To understand love is to understand the justice of the ressurection. Jesus understands loving your neighbor because He became like his neighbor in order to save His neighbor.
Luke 23:41–43“And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.” And Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.””
It’s funny we see ourselves as “ideal” but see others in thier imperfections and justify our inability to love one another because they haven’t reached the same standard we believe we have reached.
It’s similar to weather. Everyone loves their version of a perfect day. What Jesus is commanding is that we find thanksgiving in the good and not so good days. Just like we find the ability to love folks when they are ideal and when they’re not so ideal becasue this is what Jesus did for us. Everyone won’t be easy to love, but if we are honest we aren’t always easy to love ourselves. God’s love is the ideal nature of Love. Jesus dying on the cross is the ideal nature of loving your neighbor. There’s no way we can show love to our neighbor without understanding the nature of sacrifice.
How do we do this?
To love our fellow neighbor means to love one another in a Godly way.
Love them remembering that God created them too.
Love them as redeemed by God in Christ just like ourselves.
Love one another remembering that we are all called by the same holy spirit.
Love one another as a new creature in Christ.
Understanding that loving one another is a privilege, and a privilege to share with others what God shares with us.
Ephesians 4:16 “from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.”
This only happens when love is priority. Loving our neighbor is perfection. It emcompasses our duty to God, our duty to self and our duty to others.
Loving your neighbor is a sense or an act of justice. The refusal to love your neighbor is a reflection of a selfish heart.
Why is it one of the greatest commandments?
Why is it one of the greatest commandments?
It’s the greatest commandment becasue the law of love is superior. It cannot be outdone. Hebrews 8:6 “But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises.” The better promise was built on love, love is the only tool that connects all of mankind to one another.
God is the foundation of love. When I understand the love of God I long to share it with others, I desire it for my family, friends and enemies to experience the same. The best way to show love is to share with others so they can do the same.
“For the love of our neighbor is the service of God” - John Trapp
Anyone I come in contact with
Anyone I come in contact with
My neighbor is basically anyone I come in contact with. It could be a friend, geographical neighbor, enemy or even the person next door. Loving yourself isn’t just loving the ideal version of you. It’s understanding that in spite of the sinful version, the frustrated version, the hard to deal with version God still saw fit to send Jesus. I’m humble enough to realied that I can be hard to love to therefore I love everyone because God did the same.
Ephesians 5:29 “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church.”
Who we are in Jesus is our best self, but even when we were still in sin, God loved us enough to share grace with us in hopes that we would reach a place that we live our life like we are loved by God.
Romans 5:8–11“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.”
If God can do this for us, in Him we have the power to love anyone!