By: Daniel Shultz
Baby don’t
hurt me. A depth of information can be encapsulated in such simple a phrase. I
often wonder what exactly it means to love? Of course many today talk about
love as a feeling, but what does it mean to love? And does the Christian have
the option to determine that on their own?
The
Scriptures say a lot about love including a phrase we all know, love your
neighbor as yourself, but what does that actually mean? The truth is that many
people will isolate that verse from the text of scripture and use it as a lens
to read their own understandings into Christian ethics. If loving myself means
tolerating my own sin then I can love others by tolerating the sin of others.
If loving myself means ignoring God’s standards for our lives then I can ignore
it when people violate those standards. However the phrase “love your neighbor
as yourself” has a context in which it must be understood.
[35] And one of them, a lawyer,
asked him a question to test him. [36] “Teacher, which is the great commandment
in the Law?” [37] And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with
all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. [38] This is the
great and first commandment. [39] And a second is like it: You shall love your
neighbor as yourself. [40] On these two commandments depend all the Law and the
Prophets.” Matthew 22:35-40 (ESV)
We are so familiar with the bulk of
this passage that we miss one of the most vital portions: “On these two
commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” When studying scriptures we
must think deeply about what they are saying and not just gloss over things,
or read them in a surface level way. Instead we must spend time to understand
what exactly is being said, to whom it is being said, and why it is being said.
In Chapter 22 of the Gospel
according to Matthew Jesus is being tested by the religious leaders of his day.
First the Sadducees, who did not believe in a resurrection (V.23), ask a
question regarding the resurrection. Jesus cites the Old Testament scriptures
to prove that God has testified that He is “not God of the dead but of the
living,” (V. 32) meaning that all the Old Testament saints are, in a way, still
living, and therefore pointing to a future resurrection. After the Sadducees
have their questions answered the Pharisees get together to try to question
Jesus, this question has to do with the most important Law. (V. 36)
Once again Jesus quotes the Old
Testament in order to answer the question. This time he quotes from the book of
Leviticus. Then Jesus in V. 40 says that in “these two commandments depend all
the law and the prophets.” Here Jesus is saying that the two passages are the
summation of all the law and the prophets. Or in other words these two
statements are the broad outlines of what it means to live rightly. In V. 37 we
are told our duty before God as broad outline, “to love… with all [our]
heart…soul…and …mind.” In the rest of the law and prophets this duty to God is
explained and exposited, leading us to know exactly what it means to love God
with all our heart, soul, and mind.
The second commandment, “love your
neighbor as yourself,” likewise is explained in the law. We know what it means
to love our neighbor as our self not through our selfish desires but through
the proper conduct that God requires of us in His law. If one looks at the Ten
Commandments they can see two types of laws; the first table, or group of laws,
explains certain laws pertaining to our conduct towards God, and the second
table explains how we should conduct ourselves towards our neighbors.
So when Jesus said that we are to
love our neighbors as our self He had a certain point in mind, that all the law
and the prophets explain what exactly it means to love someone in that way.
Therefore to separate the verse from its context and utilize it to spread one’s
own ethics and morality is contrary to what Jesus intended in His words and
denies the very ethical standard Jesus upheld.
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