Who is Your Neighbor?

One day, a lawyer decided to test Jesus. He asked Him, “What is the most important commandment?” Jesus replied with, “What do you think is the most important commandment?”
The lawyer said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, strength and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27) Then Jesus said, “You are right. That is a very wise answer. If you do that, you will find salvation.”
Love is like a triangle. God is at the top, we’re on one side, and our neighbor is on the other. Why aren’t we or our neighbors at the top? Because if we don’t love God above everything else, we don’t love ourselves, and if we don’t love ourselves, we don’t love our neighbors either.
Love is a principle. When we place God above all things, we are people of integrity. We aren’t ruled by passions or feelings, but by principles. Here’s an example: Your teenager comes to you and asks you to let them take the car and you say no. Does that mean you don’t love your child? Quite the contrary, you’re following a principle of love. When you love, you say no for the benefit of the person who receives it. You say no with your mouth, but you say yes with your heart. However, if your child asks you to drive the car and you say yes, you are saying yes with your mouth, but no with your heart. When you say no to someone, it doesn’t mean you don’t love them, just that you’re placing your principles above your emotions. Therefore, saying no can be an expression of love.
Since we and our neighbors are at the bottom of the triangle, we need to love everyone equally, with no preferences or exceptions. We don’t prioritize people and we don’t engage in profiling. Everyone is special and unique. We don’t reject people because of their culture, origin, or skin color.
We need to love people like we love ourselves. Maybe we think that if we love people, we can’t love ourselves. We think that we can’t have both. However, we can’t love people and hate ourselves at the same time. People are like a mirror. We see ourselves reflected in them. If we accuse ourselves, we also accuse them. If we put ourselves down, we put them down. If we don’t accept our mistakes, we can’t accept their mistakes either. If there is a war going on inside us, there’ll be a war going on outside us. If we’re unhappy, we’re going to treat them with the same lack of respect we have for ourselves.
In order to love people, we need to forgive ourselves for hurting them. If we condemn, judge, and punish ourselves for having mistreated people, we will also condemn, judge, and punish people for having mistreated us. We do to them as we do unto ourselves. If we want to forgive people for what they do to us, we need to start forgiving ourselves for what we do to them.
We need to get to the bottom of the problem and accept ourselves as we are. We need to respect ourselves, be patient with our shortcomings, and forgive our mistakes. When we’re kind to ourselves, we’ll have the same consideration for others.
If you have done something to someone and carried the memory with you throughout your whole life, let it go. Learn to forgive yourself and then you will forgive others.
When we love, we are people of integrity. We usually think that when people hurt us and do things to us, we have an excuse to get even and hold a grudge. We refuse to let it go and proudly keep the hurt inside. We need to forgive and forget.
The Greek had two words for love; agape and filein. Agape is the love we have for the whole universe, for everyone, even those we don’t know. Filein is the love we have for those who are close to us, such as our family, relatives, and friends. The word feeling comes from the Greek filein.
The love that is above all love is agape. It isn’t a feeling but a rational love. This is the love Jesus had for his enemies whilst they betrayed, insulted and killed him.
You might ask, “How can I love someone who treats me so badly? How can I love the spouse that betrayed me? How can I love the man who killed my wife? How can I love the criminal that raped my daughter?”
You can’t have a passionate love for them, but you can have an agape love by placing agape above filein. You need to surrender your feelings to your principles.
Many marriages end because people are not ruled by principles. They are ruled by their feelings. If they feel like loving, they love. If they feel like hating, they hate. So they go from one emotion to another. This love isn’t stable.
Some people marry at the peak of passion. They have that strong feeling and they lose self-control. However, after two years, on the average, that feeling goes away and their emotions switch from love to hate. They wonder how they could possibly have loved that person and search for another person to express their passion with and start the cycle all over again. They know it’s wrong. They know it’s against the principle, but they start making excuses. There is no excuse for hating.
Jesus showed us that there is no excuse. If He could love the people that treated Him so badly, we can love as well. We can love by principle, and not by feeling. We can love people who mistreat us if we have the love of God in our heart.
In our story today, the man asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” By making this question he was suggesting that there are people who aren’t our neighbors. That’s how the doctors of law in Christ’s time got out of obeying the Scriptures. They interpreted it according to their desires and changed the real meaning of it. When God said, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself,” he meant to say that we need to love everyone, even those who don’t love us.
Jesus told him the story about the man who was going from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way, a gang of thieves robed and beat him so badly that he almost died. He couldn’t walk. He was lying by the road, expecting to die.
A priest came walking by and saw him, but didn’t stop to help him because he thought he was already dead. He knew that if he touched a dead man, he wouldn’t be able to do the service at the temple, and if he stopped to help him, he would be late.
A Levite walked right past him.
Both the priest and the Levite were hypocrites. They were going to church, to perform their religious rituals, but they didn’t have the love of God in their hearts. Sometimes, we deceive ourselves by thinking that because we keep the commandments and are church members, we are true Christians.
There was a time when I confronted myself with the question, “Am I a hypocrite?” One Friday night, an elder called me, complaining about my work. He told me I wasn’t organized and I didn’t have a work plan. He was so rude that he upset me. The next day, Sabbath, I preached about love. When I preached, I made it my main concern to attack that elder. I said things like, “Some people in the church are so inconsiderate and mean, all the way thinking they are true Christians. They accuse, bad-mouth, and fight for God, thinking that this is what God expects them to do.”
When I look back at that Saturday morning, and think about my preaching, I realize I was a hypocrite. I didn’t love that elder. I couldn’t accept his harshness and I couldn’t forgive him. I was the opposite of Jesus when he said to those who mistreated him, “Father, forgive them because they don’t know what they do.”
If you are a Christian and you hold grudges in your heart, thoughts of jealousy, or revenge, you aren’t a true Christian. You need to be able to love and accept people as they are, even when they mistreat you. You can do it.
In my list of goals, I wrote, “I will not engage in revenge.” Shoot me if you wish, I won’t try to get back at you. No matter you do to me, I will always love you.
It’s very easy for me to hate you now and then forgive you later. However, I need to love you while you hurt me. You might say, “That is impossible. That is too much.” When Jesus said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” was he mad at them? No, He did love them at the very moment they were hurting Him. My friends, it’s possible and we need to have this goal in our lives if we want to be true Christians. Don’t settle for less.
The priest and the Levite were busy. They had to go to church. They had to preach and perform their rituals. They put church first. The church was more important than man.
This is our problem. We place commandments and church rules above people. We judge, criticize, reject, condemn, and punish those who don’t fit the image we have of Christians. We use the Bible as a weapon against people. We hate them and think we’re Christians. When we do this, we’re nothing but a lie. We have a cover of Christianity, but we’re empty inside. We aren’t true Christians because we place church and rules above people. We don’t realize that the church and the commandments were created for the benefit of people and not the other way around.
We might get so occupied in doing things for our church that we don’t have time to help people. We think people are impeding us from serving God. We don’t realize that by serving people, we are serving God. Like the priest and the Levite, we let the weak, the poor, and the dejected suffer and go to church, thinking that we’re true Christians.
Why were we created? We were created to serve and to love. If our lives aren’t lives of service, there is no real purpose in our lives. Many people are despondent, convinced they’re victims. They always think of what other people are doing to them. They think that everything in life revolves around them. All their plans and dreams are self-centered. Friends, we need to learn to live for people. We need to center our lives around people and do everything to bless them. Sometimes that means that “One person is more important than the ninety nine.” In the parable of the shepherd and the lost sheep, Jesus talked about the man who left ninety nine sheep to search for the lost one.
The priest and the Levite were more concerned about what other people would think of them. They left the man to die, because they were more concerned with the approval and opinion of other people. At that moment, that one man was more important than the whole church.
I want to invite you to have the true love, the agape love, the love that places principles above feelings, the love that put people first. I want to ask you to not be a liar or a hypocrite. I want to invite you to be a true Christian, to love your neighbor like you love yourself, to not be prejudiced and to not make exceptions. I want to ask you to not use the commandments as an excuse for not loving those who don’t meet your standards. If there is a law you need to follow, if there is a commandment you need to obey, it is to love everyone unconditionally. Without this, all your knowledge of the Bible and all your righteousness means nothing. This love isn’t far beyond your reach. You just need to believe it’s possible and receive it right now by your faith. Everything is possible through God. He has the power to make you a true Christian.
© 2007 Claudio Vargas Silva