When Jesus was asked to identify the greatest commandment, He responded “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37-40 NLT).
Sometimes it can feel much easier to love God than it does to love people, but according to Jesus, these two things cannot be separated. As a matter of fact, He even says that our willingness to follow His commandments is a direct reflection of our love for Him: “If you love Me, obey My commandments” (John 14:15 NLT).
Let’s look more deeply into what it means to love our neighbor.
Loving your neighbor is putting your faith into action.
The book of James highlights the importance of the good deeds our faith should produce in our lives. After a much longer examination of this idea, the passage concludes by saying, “Just as the body is dead without breath, so also faith is dead without good works” (James 2:26 NLT).
This echoes what Jesus spoke of when He connected compassionate care for others to our relationship with Him. In Matthew 25:45 He says, “‘I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these My brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help Me’” (NLT). We simply cannot get around the truth that loving God moves us to love people.
Loving your neighbor doesn’t have to be complicated, extravagant, or costly.
In that same passage from Matthew, Jesus presents several examples of practical ways to love our neighbors. He mentions visiting those who are sick or in prison, clothing those in need, extending hospitality to strangers, providing food for the hungry, and even giving a cup of cold water to the thirsty. This shows us that there are simple things we can do every day to love our neighbors in the name of Jesus.
While caring for the practical needs of the people around us is a great way to follow and represent Jesus, it can also be a great way to open doors for conversations about Jesus. Selfless acts of service frequently lead those we are serving to wonder why we do the things we do. That’s when we’re able to begin to address their greatest need—the need for a savior.
The best way to love your neighbor is to point them to the love of Jesus.
Our church operates a small food bank that regularly serves dozens of families from our community. A few of those families attend our church, but most of them do not. Among those families are many people who don’t know Jesus. When those individuals visit our food bank, it becomes an opportunity for our church to share the love of Jesus with them by meeting practical needs and through prayer.
We refer to all the families we serve as our Neighbors, and as we get to know them, we discover how unique and challenging their needs and their stories are. What we’ve learned time and time again is the way our differences begin to disappear when we come to Jesus together. It’s in those moments that we’re able to help our Neighbors put their needs in the hands of our Heavenly Father, who loves them more than we could ever explain.
Loving your neighbor means loving some who act, think, and even believe differently than you.
I know this sounds uncomfortable and even difficult, but it’s important that we remember the example of sacrificial love we are given in Jesus. Romans 5:8 says, “But God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (NLT). First John 4:19 states, “We love each other because He loved us first” (NLT). Finally, 1 Corinthians 13:3 warns, “If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing” (NLT).
Meeting our neighbors with the love of Christ not only requires loving our Christian brothers and sisters, but also loving those who don’t yet know Jesus. It will often mean we have to take the first step, and it will always be necessary that we carry the truth of the Gospel with us. Along the way, it’s very likely that we will encounter needs we cannot meet and questions we cannot answer—but we should always be prepared to point our neighbors to the One who can.
A Prayer for Loving Your Neighbor
Heavenly Father, thank You for loving me and sending Your Son to die for my sin. Help me to see the needs of my neighbors and to respond with the sacrificial love of Christ. Give me wisdom and compassion to see past our differences so I can love each of them as an extension of loving You. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
