Loving Your Neighbor

Photo by Derick McKinney on Unsplash

When was the last time you spoke with your neighbor? Do you remember your neighbor’s names? How have you recently expressed your love for your neighbors through your words and your actions towards them?

Jesus summed up all the law and the prophets into two things: love God and love your neighbor.

In Mark’s Gospel Jesus taught, “‘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.’ and ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Jesus said, “There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:30-31, ESV).

Jesus put loving our neighbor right beside loving God. Jesus expressed the essential importance of loving our neighbor in this way.

The Apostle Paul exhorted the Corinthian church with this same truth when he wrote, “Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.” (1 Corinthians 10:24, ESV).

We cannot truly love our neighbor while solely seeking our own good. We must look outside of ourselves and our own concerns if we are going to love our neighbor well.

The Apostle Peter gave us some very practical insights into how we can love our neighbor. Peter writes, “All of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.” (1 Peter 3:8, ESV).

Peter describes how we can love our neighbor well by doing the following:

If we are to love our neighbor well, we must…

1. See our human connection with our brothers and sisters and have unity with them.

2. We have to be sympathetic with our neighbor, and have empathy for them and show compassion for them.

3. We need to have love for our neighbor and to be loving towards our neighbor in what we say and in what we do.

4. We must be soft hearted—tender hearted towards our neighbor.

5. And we must have humility towards our neighbor and consider our neighbor’s needs as being as important, or even more important than our own needs.

We cannot love our neighbor well if we do not know our neighbor. We should reach out to our neighbor and get to know them in love, care, and concern. And as we come to know our neighbor, we can do as Jesus said and ‘love our neighbor as ourselves.’

May we love our neighbor well, as we are called by God to love our neighbor. As Jesus’ beloved disciple, John, exclaimed, “For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” (1 John 3:11, ESV).

In Christ alone, Robbie

A Prayer In Times Of Social Conflict Or Unrest: “Increase, O God, the spirit of neighborliness among us, that in peril we may uphold one another, in suffering tend to one another, and in homelessness, loneliness, or exile befriend one another. Grant us brave and enduring hearts that we may strengthen one another, until the disciplines and testing of these days are ended, and you again give peace in our time; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” (#44, Book Of Common Prayer, 2019).

Photo by Derick McKinney on Unsplash