You
shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly
with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not
take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but
you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD. (Vayikra /
Leviticus 19:17,18; ESV)
The Messiah was
asked the question, "What is the greatest commandment?" (See
Matthew 22:35-40; Mark 12:28-34; Luke 10:25-37). It was popular among
Jewish religious leaders to attempt to summarize the Torah. Here is
Yeshua's answer:
The most
important is, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
And 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." The
second is this: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
There is no other commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:29-31; ESV)
Some people take
this to mean that unlike the people living under the Old Covenant,
followers of Yeshua have only these minimal requirements to follow. But
that completely misses the point. Yeshua's summary statement is intended
as a perspective by which to view God's requirements, not a recipe by
which to ignore them. Yeshua was reminding a people who had become
obsessed with the Torah as an end in itself that its directives were
intended as the means of loving God and other people. Losing sight of
these primary commands results in the failure to properly keep the
others. Loving God and loving people is what God's commands are all
about.
Hearing Yeshua
highlight "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," should
draw us to the context of what he was quoting, some of which we read at
the beginning. Loving our neighbor is not a vague sentimental concept
based on emotion. It has very practical and far reaching implications.
For example we read, "You shall not hate your brother in your
heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur
sin because of him." This tells us first that when difficulties
arise with someone with whom we have relationship, we are not to hate
them. Hate is not simply negative and angry thoughts toward another
person. It is the tendency to disregard them or not care about them.
This may occur with very little emotion. God instructs us that instead
of ignoring issues we have with others we need to deal with them through
open and honest discussion and thereby avoid even greater issues arising
between one other. This is what "love your neighbor" is all
about or it is at least one example.
It could be that
"but you shall love your neighbor as yourself" sums up a
larger Torah section (see Vayikra / Leviticus 19:9-18) that includes
being mindful of the poor among us, not stealing, having fair business
dealings, not lying to others, not using God's name to justify wrong,
not oppressing others or robbing them, paying wages on time, showing
respect toward the physically handicapped, demonstrating justice in
court without partiality, not slandering, and not taking vengeance or
bearing grudges against others. This is not a complete list, though it
makes it clear that loving our neighbor is far more and much deeper than
what we may normally think it is.
Loving our neighbor
is not just having warm affection toward others or showing kindness to
them, though it may include those things. God's version of loving others
involves a deep understanding of his ways and how they relate to how we
are to treat others. To love is to be true to our God-given
responsibilities towards those with whom we have personal and work
relationships, business and legal dealings, as well as the needy and
vulnerable around us. Let's not cheapen God's Word by reducing it to
anything less.
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