And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. (Matthew 22:39-40)
In addition to loving God, a disciple loves others. The ironic thing is that for most of us, this is harder than loving God. I wonder if it doesn’t have something to do with the fact that God is spirit and we can’t really see him and we don’t really feel like we interact with him. There is a part of God that almost seems like something way off in the distance that we never really come into contact with; it’s easy to love and obey someone you never shake hands with.
But our neighbors…that’s a different story. We see them pulling out of their driveways in the morning, we throw their kids balls back over the fence, we listen to their dog bark incessantly at 3 AM. We have to be careful with our neighbors because they live next door; pissing them off will just make our life even more unbearable. We don’t have to like them, we just have to be nice to them.
And usually, being nice to them means staying out of their business and ignoring them.
Jesus loved people. In addition to obedience to the Father’s will, his love for people was the reason he died on the cross. And he loved all people. He recognized that everyone bore God’s image. He went out of his way to interact with and love on the “untouchables” of his day (Samaritans, Gentiles, Romans, etc.). And he treated every single group with perfect equality and fairness.
The struggle so many of us face is in showing favoritism to certain people or groups of people. It’s human nature to develop biases against some. And so for those who desire to become a disciple of Jesus, there is a constant struggle to resist the natural urges.
Filed under: Bible Study, Christian Living, Discipleship, Ministry, Original Languages, Theology
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