Love Your Neighbor
In Matthew 22:36-40 Jesus teaches us how to read the 10 Commandments. The 10 Commandments were given to Israel by God at Mount Sinai. This occurred after God delivered and rescued Israel from slavery to Egypt to live as his chosen people, his special possession. With the 10 Commandments, God taught Israel how to live according to their newly given freedom. Jesus explains that the 10 Commandments, and all the Law and Prophets generally, should be read like this: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. A second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
The first four commands address the vertical aspect of Israel’s new life, which is their relationship with God. They must love him entirely and supremely. Commands five through ten respond to the horizontal implications of Israel’s newly given status, which is their human relationships. God expected Israel to honor their parents, to not murder, to not commit adultery, to not steal, to not lie, and to not covet their neighbor’s things. Jesus explains that a single command holds these commands together which is, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus’s reading provokes a question.
In response to Jesus, we sinners, often ask, “Who is my neighbor” (Luke 10:25-29)? We raise this question attempting to justify ourselves. We think and live under the fallen assumption that some people are less than a neighbor and, therefore, fall outside of Jesus’s ethic of love. This thought is worth further reflection, but not here. There is another question that Jesus’s reading invites: “Who am I?”
Jesus’s reading of the 10 Commandments presses into the logic of grace that permeates all of Scripture. Before God revealed the Ten to Israel, he reminded them, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” God’s love, revealed in the Exodus event, changed how Israel was to live. Because God lovingly delivered them from Egypt, Israel must love God and love others. This principal is at the heart of Jesus’s good news.
Loved people love others. Out of the overflow of his love God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to be our neighbor. As our neighbor, Jesus died on the cross for our sins and was raised again on the third day delivering us from slavery to sin and death. More than that, he brought us into the Father’s steadfast and unfailing love. Because we are the Father’s beloved sons and daughters in Jesus Christ, we can truly love our neighbors. In the words of 1 John 4:9-11, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
Therefore, the proper response to Jesus’s reading of the 10 Commandments is to receive and rest in the Father’s love. As we do so day by day, we will be like a well planted tree. Living in the Father’s love will produce in us the fruit of neighbor love, a love that is patient, kind, content, humble, gentle, forgiving, hopeful, and unfailing.
