Word of Salvation – Vol. 19 No.43 – August 1973
Love Your Neighbour
Sermon by Rev. J. Vander Reest, Th. Grad. on Matt. 22:39
SCRIPTURE READING: Matthew 22:34-40; 1John 4:7-21
PSALTER HYMNAL: 89; 38:1,2,5; 328:1,3,4 (after sermon); 373
People of God,
The passage we have just read and the text for our sermon this morning are words we all have heard before. Perhaps this passage of Scripture is the best known and most quoted of all texts.
Yet despite this, it seems impossible to find another text which is so difficult to fulfil; there seems to be hardly another text which is more difficult to put into action. What is more difficult than to love our neighbour as ourselves? And didn’t Jesus even say: love your enemies? Isn’t this what we find more difficult than anything else?
Yet this commandment, this principle, that we love our neighbour is so fundamental or basic to our Christian faith. And not only the Christian faith. There is hardly a system of thought, a philosophy or religion which does not have this commandment ‘love your neighbour’ as the fundamental principle. And it is exactly here that we find the difference between Christianity and those philosophies. That is what makes these systems of thought different from Christianity; for in the Christian faith this commandment: ‘love your neighbour’ is the second commandment of the summary of the law and therefore very closely related to the first commandment.
It is important to realize this brothers, sisters and young people, for although we concentrate this morning on the second great commandment we must not forget that we cannot disconnect this commandment from the first. In other words: we cannot love God unless we love our neighbour, nor vice versa. The apostle John says that clearly in his first letter: 1Jn.4:20f: “If any one says, “I love God” and hates his brother, he is a liar, for he who does not love his brother whom he HAS SEEN, cannot love God whom he has NOT seen. And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also.”
Realising then, Congregation that we need to keep both of these commandments and that we have to keep them together let us look at the commandment: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
This commandment is a very old one. And when Jesus gave this summary of the law, He did not give a new commandment but restated what the Old Testament prophets had taught centuries ago. God had already given this commandment to his people many ages ago.
Yet there is something puzzling about this commandment which has often been put into words by young people in the catechism class. Several times I have been asked: Doesn’t this commandment teach us something wrong? After all the commandment says that we must love our neighbour as ourselves; doesn’t this mean that we must love ourselves? And the Bible says that we should not be self-centred and egoistic, greedy and always think about ourselves.
But to love ourselves does not mean the same as thinking of ourselves as good and always correct and never wrong. Nor does it imply that we become selfish, egoistic and self-centred, as if the only one who really matters in this world is me.
To love oneself in the proper and biblical sense means that we feel right about ourselves, are able to look at ourselves, have a certain measure of self-understanding and see ourselves as a person loved by God and able to love others.
To love ourselves does not mean sick self-affection or a warped self-interest. No it means that we see ourselves as a person who is able to accept him or herself. In other words we need to feel right about ourselves.
Now, do you always feel right about yourself? Have you come to accept yourself as a person the way you are? Don’t we often hate ourselves? Reject ourselves? Yet the commandment says, by implication: love yourself.
Also in this matter it is difficult to find a balance, the golden medium. I mean this, there are many, many people, Christians who have never any problems accepting themselves, feeling right about themselves. They never question their own behaviour, their own attitudes. They never question what they do or say. They are almost never wrong. And therefore they are usually the persons who never grow in self-understanding and do not mature. There are many passages of Scripture which could be quoted to help those Christians to look at themselves, but all too often they are applied only to others. So it is no use, to quote them to these people.
But there is also another extreme; there are on the other hand many persons, many Christians, who are never satisfied with themselves in the sense that they always feel guilty about what they have done or said, or did NOT do or say but should have done or said. They are the Christians who keep accusing themselves as the person they are, with the good and bad points they have, because they always concentrate on the bad points and so much so that the good points disappear altogether. Those Christians do not love themselves. They keep running themselves down, they continually depreciate themselves.
But you ask, what is the solution to that problem? How can we be Christians that are able to have so much self-understanding that we see our failures, weaknesses and sins and yet are able to accept ourselves, love ourselves? That depends on our relationship with God! That depends largely on that first commandment! So you see we cannot do without it!
Whether we can be mature Christian persons who are able to love themselves depend on whether we have a real, honest and loving relationship with God. We need to know God so that He is real to us; we need to be honest with Him. Which means that we must confess our sins, all our failures, weaknesses and sins to Him. We must make true repentance. But it also means that we must accept His forgiveness:- the grace and the cleansing power of Christ’s work. A Christian who is able to accept the forgiveness of God, will also be able to forgive himself and after that also others and after having been forgiven we can love ourselves again.
We must love ourselves because God loves us. God loved us first. God accepts us as we are. God loves and accepts us unconditionally. God doesn’t say: ‘Now you first become someone else; you first change yourself and then I will love you!’ No, God doesn’t lay down any conditions for His love. He has loved us from the beginning; He loves us as we are, even though we are sinners and sin every day. He loves us so much that He will even help us, work with His Holy Spirit in our lives so that we can grow and change because of His love!
A Christian who accepts the love of God and also the forgiveness and cleansing power of God, will be able to accept him or herself; will be able to love him or herself.
And that is necessary; yes, that is commanded. If we do not love ourselves we cannot love others. If we reject ourselves we will automatically reject others. If we resent ourselves there will be much we resent in others. If we cannot accept ourselves with our good and bad points, how can we possibly accept others? If we cannot forgive ourselves, how can we forgive others? C. Osborne says in his book “The Art of Understanding Yourself” p.216: “Self- love does not imply narcissism, egocentricity, selfishness, or a warped self-interest. It does imply: I too, am a person, loved of God. I have as much right to love myself as to love another person. In fact, I am required to love myself. There is no virtue in despising or depreciating oneself. We are commanded to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. In fact, we will always esteem our neighbours about as much as we esteem ourselves. We are assuming here, of course, a mature, non-egocentric self-love, the loving of oneself simply as a person who is loved by God, who has needs, goals and rights. If we cannot love ourselves, how can we love others?”
But all what has been said about ourselves has a purpose. Jesus did not give us half a commandment saying: Love yourself. But He said: Love your NEIGHBOUR as yourself. The purpose of proper self-love is to love others.
And that is very important for all of us. Not just for minister, elder, deacons, doctors and nurses etc. But we all need to love our neighbour.
Why do we have to love our neighbour? Several reasons. Because God commanded it. Because God has created man after His image. To love your neighbour is to love God’s creature and creation. And also because our neighbour needs our love. Man, our neighbour, needs God’s love and we as part of His handiwork are God’s instruments to show love to our neighbour. God usually shows His love to man THROUGH us; using us as His instruments to bring love to others.
Our neighbour, not one person, needs our love, without it he will become weird, hard, callous and even deteriorate into something that is more animal than human.
Perhaps our world has become what it is because of this sin: the lack of love for our neighbour. And then we must not make our neighbour only the poor in India or the underprivileged in Indonesia, but also the person next door or the broken home with destitute children round the corner. Our neighbour is the friend or the relative without a job; and also the person with whom we work together. It is the person with whom we share the pew. It is the person with whom we share the seat in the bus or a room.
That is not easy,,.. that is not as simple as it sounds. Oh, there may be certain persons we love without too much bother. Jesus speaks of this also in the Sermon on the Mount. He said: ‘It is easy enough to love those who love us!’ No, to love the ones that are difficult, rude or ill-mannered is much more difficult. Someone has said: ‘It is easier to love God than people’. And how true!! There is always something vague and far away about God (we think); but people are all around us, and we see and hear their mistakes, failures, sins, weaknesses all the time. We feel comfortable about God, but people irritate us all the time. “It is easier to love God than people”, as Frank Laubach has pointed out. “The God we see in Jesus Christ is the most lovable Being in the universe but people are often contemptible. We must school ourselves to love people because they need love and not because they are attractive. . . The people who need us most are those whom others do not love at all. They are likely to be irritating. They are often bad-mannered and bad-tempered.
Therefore Jesus said: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” “And we need to stress that word LOVE.
But what is meant with love? We use the word so often and in so many different ways. What is meant with love in the commandment: Love your neighbour?
It is reported that Martin Luther King, the negro pacifist leader who was assassinated in 1968 has said: ‘Thank God that He did not command us to like our neighbours but that we must love them.’ Like means that we feel attracted to someone, a feeling of having something in common.
It is not commanded that we like everybody – that would be impossible too. No, it is commanded that we love our neighbour. Neither is meant the romantic, physical, sexual love, nor the feelings of affection.
The love meant here is that of proper concern and care. Love here means that there is a relationship between people, persons, Christians, in which we express acceptance and understanding. This kind of love will give support and comfort to others.
To love your neighbour means that we care about each other, are concerned about one another’s well-being, spiritually as well as materially.
To love our neighbour means trying to understand the person next to us; trying to understand why they act, behave and speak the way they do. And more – ask ourselves what there is in us, in our behaviour and in our attitudes that makes people behave as they do.
To love our neighbour means putting up with the things that irritate us and forgive the things that hurt us.
To love our neighbour means at times to be willing to suffer because of others, to bear hurt and pain.
‘LOVE’, says the apostle Paul in 1Cor.13…
“Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
And all of this we also have to teach our children.
Teach them – To love God above all!
Teach them – Love your neighbour!
Teach them – To love themselves, to accept and understand themselves.
And the best way to do this is by our proper love and care for them. By showing them how we love God, ourselves and our neighbour.
Congregation, God is as far away from us as the person we love least! We love God as much as we love our neighbour!
The way to God the Father is also through love to your neighbour.
That way was opened by Christ who in His love for you and me, suffered and died. He showed perfect love to the Father and to all His neighbours, even you and me.
Nothing less is demanded of all of us.
Amen.