We have all heard it time and again, to love our neighbors. Whole conversations are recorded biblically of what that means, to love, who our neighbors are and so on. Yet the topic continue to stir mixed emotions and confusions. It continues to fall flat when we try to understand it and put it into practice. So let's begin to assess what this all means, and what we can draw from both the Brit Hadasha and the Tanakh on the topic.
This is such an important topic for us as believers to learn because this really is a core foundation to our walk with the Messiah and in Torah. Mark 12:28-31 says, One of the Torah-teachers came up and heard them engaged in this discussion. Seeing that Y'shua answered them well, he asked him, "Which is the most important mitzvah of them all?" Y'shua answered, "The most important is, 'Sh'ma Yisra'el, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad, and you are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your understanding and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'You are to love your neighbor as yourself.' There are no other mitzvah greater than these." Indeed, Y'shua also says in Matthew 7:12, "Always treat others as you would like them to treat you; that sums up the teaching of the Torah and the Prophets." So this indeed vital, yet even in that time people questioned who this meant we needed to treat so lovingly, many wanted to restrict it to within the Jewish community.
So who indeed is our neighbor? To answer this question Y'shua gave us the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37. He explained to us that everyone on this planet is our neighbor, believer and unbeliever alike, in the same neighborhood, city, or on the other side of the world. Indeed, this a theme repeated more often than any other command in the Brit Hadasha. Verses such as 1 Corinthians 10:24, No one should be looking out for his own interests, but for those of his fellow. Galatians 6:2, Bear one another's burdens - in this way you will be fulfilling the Torah's true meaning, which the Messiah upholds. Yet we find in Hebrews a clear distinction that this can not be contained to believers, our immediate community, in 13:1-2 it says, Let brotherly love continue, but don't forget to be friendly to outsiders; in doing so, some people, without knowing it, have entertained angels. Deuteronomy 10:19 shows us this extension of love beyond the believer all the way back as directly from Torah, saying, Therefore you are to love the foreigner, since you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. It could not be blunter than our Messiah himself saying in Matthew 5:43-45, You have heard that our fathers were told, Love your Neighbor, and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! Then you will become like children of your Father in heaven. For he makes the sun shine on good and bad people alike, and he sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous alike.
And what then can we say? We can see clearly that we are to show love to all people, everyone created in the image of Elohim be their believer or unbeliever. But what does this mean? Does this mean 'love' as our society teaches, tolerance, acceptance of all sins and deception? Certainly not! How loving can it be to see an unbeliever lost in sin, knowing what awaits them when they face Judgement, and not to reach out to them? What utter hatred that would be! Indeed love is defined by scripture, by Elohim himself. Not only in a poetic sense, words which are deep yet subjective, but in literal examples to show us how to show God's love.
What kind of a blog on love would this be without looking toward the Love Chapter, 1 Corinthians 13? It starts explaining all the things love is at verse 4 and beyond, listing out things such as Love is kind, patient, not jealous, not boastful, not proud, rude or selfish, not easily angered, it keeps no record of the wrongs done to us. It doesn't gloat, but delights in truth, it lifts us up and supports us, trusts, hopes, endures the hard times. Love then is a choice, not an emotion or a response, but an active action we take toward another person. All of these things are things we must cognitively put into place; when treated poorly respond with kindness and not a knee-jerk to respond in kind. To choose to speak humbly and keep our hearts humble, to keep the glory on God and not ourselves. Yet all of these can also be seen in some subjective light, how can we be kind, forgiving, and support each other?
For this elaboration we can look to the mitzvot of the Torah, God has not been restrictive in laying out a foundation for us to flourish on with what such commands are. He gave us 16 mitzvot for how we can both show our love for Him and show His love to others and 26 mitzvot for our direct relations person to person. For a complete run down on these with scriptural references you can check out my post on the Biblical Commandments. Things such as returning what was lost or stolen, helping the poor and needy, to not murder or even to cause injury to another person, to testify in court and stand for those who need defending, to tell the truth, be forgiving, not to put people to shame but to treat them with respect, to put ourselves at risk to help if we can. Even things like how we dress show our witness to the unbeliever and our love, dressing modestly helps with stumbling with lust, wearing tzitzit shows we belong to Elohim, eating and drinking properly show we care about the body God gave us and want everyone to receive the same blessings in body and spirit.
So we can do these things in knowing our immediate neighbor, or not knowing them. It can be in a kind smile, a gift or the lending of things, helping the child who fell off their bike on your street. It can be in showing Adonai's love to the person struggling to pay for their groceries, or in volunteering. In all things, we should be pointing toward His Glory, not our own lest we fall into the trap of boastfulness and pride defeating our very purpose in the mitzvah.
Or it can be as simple, yet also as difficult, as seeking past our bias to find empathy for the person we don't understand, the addict, the immigrant, the criminal. To seek to empathize and see why they are suffering, to further see how they can truly be helped beyond empty promises or handouts which feed a dependancy over healing. To open our hearts and our doors to those who we want to be angry with, to those we want to shut out. To forgive those who have wronged us, and not just forgive personally but to not hold those wrongs at all any longer, to let them go. We are called to love as the Messiah himself did, reaching out to the lost and hurting, reaching out to the outcast and despised; not just to those within our faith community, not just to our own body or immediate family.
I hope this is a subject which has touched you, and one you will pray over today. I will leave you with Galatians 5:14, For the whole of the Torah is summed up in this one sentence: "Love your neighbor as yourself"