Loving the Person Next to You Part 1 ~ Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself John 13:31-35 ~ Philippians 2:1-11 Rev. Jeff Chapman ~ February 20, 2011 ~ Faith Presbyterian Church 31 When he had gone out, Jesus said, Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. 32 If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. 33 Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so s now I say to you, Where I am going, you cannot come. 34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one o another. (John 13:31-35, NRSV) Whenever Jesus talked about the greatest commandment, he always talked both about loving God and loving others. To hear Jesus talk it s as if these two commands were always meant to be together. What we forget, or what we may never even have realized in the first place, is that these commands haven t always been so tied together. In fact, when Jesus taught on love by saying that we must love God and others together, it was actually a radical new way of looking at things for the people who first heard his message. Of course, both these commandments are found in the Old Testament. They ve both been around for a long time. And they certainly were both well known to the ancient Jews of Jesus day. The command from Deuteronomy 6 to love God with all heart, soul and strength, in fact, represents for Jews, then and now, the most sacred passage in all of scripture. As some of you know, faithful Jews have long recited these words twice daily, once first thing in the morning and once at the end of the day. Long before Jesus ever came on the scene, this command to love God was already understood to be the greatest command God had ever given. Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. The second commandment to love your neighbor as yourself, found in Leviticus 19, was also important. It was, however, not nearly as central as the first, and was not naturally connected to the first. Jesus, however, changed all that when he did two things with this commandment to love our neighbors that were revolutionary. First, he clarified it. Then, he connected it.
To begin with, Jesus clarified this commandment. You see, back then this command to love your neighbor as yourself applied, in practice, only to your neighbors who were fellow Jews. Notice in Leviticus that the command specifically refers to your own people. Which meant that Jews in Jesus day never imagined that the scriptures were asking them to love their neighbors who were not Jewish. 2 That s not to suggest, of course, that this commandment still wasn t difficult to keep. Even loving your own people can be hard. Sometimes people in our own families can be difficult to love. Still, back then it was sure a whole lot easier to love your fellow Jews than, for instance, to love gentiles! Who wants to love the Romans! Who wants to love the Samaritans! Notice, however, that when Jesus teaches on this ancient command, he drops the part about your own people. Love your neighbor as yourself, he ways. Period. Understand that when he did this it must have confused some people. Folks must have been waiting around for him to mention the part about our own people. You mean, love other Jews as we love ourselves. Right, Jesus? You re not suggesting that we should love all our neighbors are you? Are you, Jesus? In Luke 10 we even read about the time when a fancy lawyer pushed Jesus on this point and asked him, Tell me, teacher, exactly who is my neighbor? 1 Author Fredrick Buechner writes that the lawyer presumably wanted to hear Jesus respond with something on the order of: Well, a neighbor (hereinafter referred to as the party of the first part) is to be construed as meaning a person of Jewish descent whose legal residence is within a radius of no more than three statue miles from one s own legal residence unless there is another person of Jewish descent (hereinafter to be referred to as the party of the second part) living closer to the party of the first part than one is oneself, in which case the party of the second part is to be construed as neighbor to the party of the first part and one is oneself relieved of all responsibility of any sort or kind whatsoever. 2 That is not, however, how Jesus respond to the question. Instead, Jesus told the lawyer a story about a good Samaritan, a man whose racial heritage would have made him an object of intense Jewish scorn. In doing so, Jesus point seems to be that your neighbor is not so much the person who is like you but the person who is near you, particularly the person near you who is in need. Buechner wryly points out that the lawyer s response to Jesus parable is unrecorded. Apparently Jesus could even lawyers speechless! To be fair, he left plenty of preachers speechless as well. Don t miss Jesus point. Not only are we to love the people who are, in some way, like us and who are, therefore, often easier to love, but we are also to love the person who is quite unlike us but who still happens to be near us. The person who crosses your path, the person you come into contact with, you are to love that person. Even if he or she has nothing in common with you, you are to love them. For that person is your neighbor. Now I imagine that it s not that hard for every single one of us right now to think of at least one person towards which we wish this commandment did not apply. Right? And yet it does. That person who wish was not your 1 Luke 10:25-37. 2 Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, (New York: Harper, c. 1973), p. 65-66.
neighbor, Jesus has clarified, is your neighbor. And you must find a way to love that person just as you love yourself. 3 Having clarified this second commandment, Jesus then connected it. Specifically, he took this lesser known commandment to love your neighbor as yourself and connected it for all time to the great commandment to love God with all heart, soul, mind and strength. In fact, Jesus connects them so tightly that they nearly become one commandment. He even says here, There is no commandment greater than these. In other words, There is no [one] commandment greater than these [two commandments put together]. The most important commandment is this: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. Again, understand that for many Jews of that time, this was a radical idea. You see, for a long time these two commandments had been kept far apart in the Old Testament. That meant that many Jews found it possible to focus on loving God without paying much attention to loving their neighbors. They simply justified doing one without the doing the other. The two commandments had little, if anything, to do with one another. Not that things have changed all that much. Right? There are all sorts of people around today who consider themselves deeply religious and talk freely about their love for God, and yet these very same people don t act all that loving towards others they come across in life. If we re honest, all of us, to some extent, are guilty along these lines. Well, when Jesus clamped these two commandments together he made clear that such a thing is no longer possible. In Jesus view, these two commands are like two blades of a single pair of scissors. One blade apart from the other makes no sense. It s only when both blades work together that something important can happen. Put simply, if you are a person who is growing in your love for God, you will also be a person who is simultaneously growing in your love for people, all people. In fact, the main way you demonstrate your love for God is in the way you love others. Jesus himself made this clear in the passage we just read from John 13. A new command I give you, he says, that you love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my followers, if you love one another. You see, the loving relationship with have with God directly flows into the loving relationship we are to have with one another. In fact, it s this love for one another that Jesus says is the distinguishing mark of a Christian. Don t miss that! Christians are not primarily known for what we believe. Christians are not primarily known by our moral principles. Christians are not primarily known by who we do or who we do not associate with. Not that doctrine, and morality, and church affiliation aren t important. They certainly are! But according to Jesus, if we truly love and follow Christ, the thing that will most distinguish us from others is our love. Specifically, our love for others.
4 In I John 4 we read this well known words: Let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God, and knows God. Whoever does not love [others] does not know God, because God is love We love [others] because God first loved us. 3 Jesus and the other New Testament writers make clear, these two commands are now forever linked. Buy why, you might ask. Why are these two so connected? Specifically, what does loving God have to do with loving others? It s a fair question. Two things. For one, if I truly know God s love for me then I am a person who is now perfectly content and satisfied. My creator, the great judge and ruler of the universe, loves me deeply and without condition. When I discover this truth it satisfies the deep and eternal longing in my soul to be loved and to belong. And thus satisfied, I am set free. So even if you don t love me in return, I can still love you. For ultimately I need nothing from you. Every need I have has been satisfied by God s love. Because God loves me, I can love you. The second reason our love of God and others are so connected is that if you are growing in your love for God you will naturally find yourself also growing in your love for that which God loves. And the fact is that God deeply loves every single person you will ever meet. God deeply loves every single one of our neighbors in this life. It s a little bit like this. Imagine you tell me that you love me but then you also admit to me that you don t love my family and that you have no intention of even trying to love my family. Well, that creates a problem. For you see, there is nobody in this world I love more than my wife and kids. So if you don t love them, or if you don t at least try to learn to love them, I m not sure I really believe you when you tell me that you love me. When I begin to love God, to truly love God with heart, soul, mind and strength, I will not be able to help from beginning to also love those who God loves. I hope you see now that Jesus was actually doing something quite radical when he took this second commandment and, after clarifying its meaning, forever joined it together with the great commandment to love God. If we love God, we must also begin to love our neighbors. All our neighbors. Which, if we re honest, creates a problem for us. Because we each immediately want to say back to Jesus, Lord, I m sorry, but you must not know my neighbors. You should see the guy that lives next door to me. You want me to love him! And surely you know about that woman I have to share an office with every day at work! Come on, Lord. Maybe you can love her because you sort of have to love her, but there s no way I can love her a person like that as much as I love myself. In fact, isn t it fair to ask how Jesus can, in the first place, command us to love any other person who is difficult to love? I mean, can love really be commanded? I can t just decide to up and love somebody one day who is absolutely unlovable. It s not like I have this big love switch I can just turn to the on position. Love doesn t work that way. Does it? Well, actually it does. At least the sort of love Jesus is talking about here. 3 I John 4:7-8,19 (NIV).
5 Remember a few weeks ago when we talked about the fact the Bible recognizes that there are different sorts of love. Some kinds of love, romantic love for instance, are largely out of our control. Love that is rooted in our feelings and constantly shifting emotions can t be so easily turned on or off. But that s not at all the sort of love Jesus expects us to have for our neighbors. The love Jesus is talking about here is agape love. And agape love, as you may remember, is not a love of emotion. Rather, it s a love of the will, a love of decision. Agape love doesn t love because. Agape love just loves. It s unconditional. Agape love isn t a love of feelings. Instead, it s a love of action. Think about it this way. Imagine you know two people who both become critically ill and end up in the hospital. One is your good friend, a person you really enjoy and naturally care for. The other is a co-worker who, frankly, you can t stand. In fact, this person has intentionally done things in the past to make life hard for you. This is not a person you enjoy or naturally care for. Even so, it would be possible not easy, but possible - to set aside your feelings and decide to go to the hospital and visit them both. Furthermore, you could choose to pray for them both, genuinely asking God to bring healing to them both. You could show kindness to them both. You could cook and deliver the meals to them both once they got home from the hospital. You could send flowers to them both or offer to run errands for them both. Granted, the emotions going on inside would likely be quite different. On the one hand, acting lovingly towards your friend would be easy and natural. It would actually be difficult to do otherwise. On the other hand, acting lovingly towards your co-worker would not feel quite so natural. As you treat him kindly you actually might find yourself still filled with feelings of resentment and bitterness. But you could still do it, in spite of those feelings. Understand something. Jesus never once told us that we have to like our neighbors. There is no single verse in the whole Bible that tells us we must like our neighbors as we like ourselves. Not even one. Isn t that good news! Can somebody say, Amen! We don t have to like everybody! Let me tell you, that s the best news I ve heard in a long time. We do, however, have to love each other. In his classic book, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wisely points out that the reality is that we like, or are fond of, some people and not others. And he points out that this natural liking is neither a sin nor a virtue, any more than your likes or dislikes of certain foods are sins or virtues. I like bananas and I like Bob. I m not really fond of Jell-O and, you know what, I m not really all that fond of Jeff either. That s just the way it is. It s just a fact. What we do about it, however, well that s what really matters. That s what leads to either sin or virtue. 4 Lewis writes, and I ll quote him here, Do not waste time bothering whether or not you love your neighbor, act as if you did Christian love, either towards God or towards [others], is an affair of the will. 5 Listen to me. Even if I don t like you, even if we have very little in common, I can still decide to act in a way towards you which keeps your best interests in mind. Whether you are my wife, my child, my friend or my enemy, there are going to be times when I don t feel a whole lot of affection towards you. I can, however, still love you in those times as I love myself. In spite of how I feel, I can still act in your best interests. 4 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (Glasgow: Collins, c. 1942), p. 113. 5 Lewis, p. 114, 115.
Once again, this love for others, in more ways than we think, is deeply connected to our love for God. After all, do you think God always likes us? Think about it. Does he? 6 Do you think God is always filled with affection for me, always pleased with me? God loves me always, absolutely! But does God always like me? Did Jesus always seem to like all the people he came across? When Jesus spoke to the religious leaders of his day, for instance, he didn t say, There, there, everything s going to be alright. No, he said, You brood of vipers! How can you speak good when you are full of such evil! And he said that to them because, he loved them. 6 God may not always like us or like what we always do, but still God loves us unconditionally. And that s in spite of the fact that you and I are so often so unlovable. And out of his love, God always acts in our best interests. Always! The cross, if nothing else, shows us how true this is. As we come to know this love God has for us, to accept it and embrace it, we begin a living relationship with God, one in which we will, over time and with God s help, find ourselves loving God in return. Day by day we will love God with increasingly more of our heart, and soul, and mind and strength. It s what love does. As this happens, God will also help us to begin to love others around us with the same love. And not jus those who are like us, but all those who are near us. Not just those we like, but even those we don t much like at all. And by the way, as we love even people we don t much like, something funny begins to happen along the way. Writer Fredrick Buechner puts it better than I think I could. Liking may not be a part of loving, but it doesn t have to be. Sometimes, liking follows on the heels of loving. It s hard to work for somebody s wellbeing for very long without coming in the end to rather like him too. 7 Maybe people, like food, are acquired tastes. Let us pray. (This prayer is based on Philippians 2:1-11.) Lord God, help us to hear you this morning. Lord God, guide us in what we say to you this morning. We have such encouragement from what Christ has done for us. We have such comfort from his love for us, his deep and abiding love for us no matter what. And we praise you for the Holy Spirit, which walks with us, and encourages us, and reminds us, and transforms us. Thank you for you love. Thank you for your compassion. Lord, help us to bring you great joy by learning to love others in this same way you have loved us. Help us, Lord, to do no thing out of selfish ambition or conceit. You have promoted us, Father, beyond what we ever deserve. You have made us your sons and daughters. Help us give up trying to promote ourselves. Make us humble, Lord. Help us to think about others we meet better than we think about ourselves. As we look out for our own interests, Lord, help us also look out of the interests of people around us. Knowing that you will provide for us everything we need, Lord, help us be free to seek to provide for others what it is that they need. 6 Buechner, p. 54. 7 Buechner, p. 54.
In all the ways we treat others, Lord, may our model be the way Christ treated us. For though you, Jesus, were for all time God, you chose not to regard equality with God something to be exploited. Instead, you emptied yourself. For our sake you took on the form of a slave, being born as one of us. And as a man you humbled yourself and became obedient to your Father, obedient even to the point of death, obedient even to the point of death on a cross. Because of this, the Father exalted you, Lord, and gave you the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Help us, Lord Jesus, to love our neighbors not only as we love ourselves, but also how you have first loved us. We pray this in the name of Christ. Amen. The Next Step A resource for Life Groups and/or personal application ~ Carefully read again Jesus words in John 13:31-35. Remember that Jesus spoke these words the night before his death, which means that clearly they are central to his message. What most sticks out to you from what he says? ~ Why do you think that Jesus says that love will be the distinguishing mark of his disciples? Why should we as Christians be known for our love, as opposed to our beliefs, our moral behavior, or our affiliation? ~ What are Christians generally known for today in our society? Are we known primarily for love or for something else? ~ In your view, how is our love for our God connected to our love for our neighbors? ~ Is it possible to love somebody you really don t like? Can you think of an example of somebody who really don t like but love nonetheless? ~ We know that God loves us. Does that also mean that God likes us? Why or why not? ~ Read Philippians 2:1-11. What does it mean to regard others better than ourselves? How was Jesus a model for us in this? Did he really regard us as better than himself? ~ Who is one neighbor (that is, a person you are near to in life) that is very hard for you to love right now? What is one step you could take this week towards loving that person as you love yourself? Further Scripture Readings for the Week: Monday: Philippians 2:1-11 Our model in love Tuesday: Luke 10:25-37 Who is my neighbor? Wednesday: I John 3:1-24 Love one another 7
Thursday: Friday: Saturday : I John 4:7-21 Whoever loves God Matthew 7:7-12 The Golden Rule John 15:1-17 The vine & the branches 8