Loving your neighbor as yourself is found eight times in the Bible. Not once. Not twice. Eight times. Loving your neighbor as yourself is so important to God that He not only repeats Himself, He makes it a command.
And not just one in a list of many commands. Jesus coupled the command to love your neighbor as yourself with loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Making it a commandment is actually to our benefit.
How is that? We have to do it on purpose, be intentional about it. Sometimes even out of our need. Too begin to love your neighbor as yourself , you need to know two things: you need to know what love is and that you are loved. You are the object of this love. God loves you. Knowing this is imperative. And not just loved in a general kind of way, but deeply loved and unconditionally loved. We tap into this when we understand that God loved us first.
God loved us even before Jesus gave Himself for us. God the Father is the source of all love. Before we can give this love we need to receive it for ourselves. To love your neighbor as yourself as commanded, you need to measure correctly. The measurement within this command is—as yourself. To love your neighbor as yourself you need to love yourself. This is something that gets misunderstood in the body of Christ often.
It gets mixed up with dying to self and denying self as if we need to destroy our self. This is not true. Jesus died for each and every one of us. If Jesus valued us enough to go through what He went through, we owe it to Him to value what He values. We need to love what He loves — us. How dare we not love what the Father loves. Learning to love ourselves prepares and helps us to love our neighbor. Knowing God is love and that this love is for you is not enough. Whether your self-love journey has just begun, or you already love yourself radically, here are some easy things to do to show yourself some love:.
In the book of Matthew, Jesus gave two commands to the Pharisees when one of them asked him what the greatest commandment of the law was.
The second was to love thy neighbor as thyself. The first commandment was to love God with all of our hearts [refer back to 1 ].
To honor this commandment, we should look to strengthen and deepen our faith. If you have yet to create a relationship with God, now is a great time to start! Some easy ways to connect to God are:. A neighbor refers to those near to us.
The commandment of loving thy neighbor as thyself includes other parts, as we mentioned above, but perhaps the most direct way we can follow this command is to do tangible things for those close to us. Caring for our neighbors is a way to inspire a cycle of giving and receiving, which creates a strong community.
Here are some ideas for ways to love your neighbors:. Jesus commanded us to love God, love ourselves, and love our neighbors. We should honor him by doing these things, because he loves us. We can use his love for us to inspire love within ourselves- for ourselves, and for those around us. These two commands are the most important. In fact, Mark tells us that this is the second greatest commandment, after the order to love God. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
Leviticus ; "Forget about the wrong things people do to you. Don't try to get even. Love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. Matthew ; "The king will answer them, 'I can guarantee this truth: Whatever you did for one of my brothers or sisters, no matter how unimportant they seemed, you did for me. Matthew ; "So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
Romans ; "Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
0コメント