We should Love Our Neighbor as Ourselves—R Fritz
We were made with love from God, it is part of us. We were given rules to abide by after Adam was forced to leave the garden of Eden. Sin took us away from God. This is a commandment or rule brought up in Leviticus 19:17-18 and says “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him. Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.” Without rules we do what we want or where our thoughts take us. It is why we needed more than a book of rules to be able to overcome sin. God knew we needed more; we needed a Savior to take care of our need to pay our price for sin. A human had to do that, one that had no sin. It could only come from one place, God.
Next the rules had to be written some place where we could see them, or we were reminded by somebody what the right or righteous and holy thing was to do. Whether we have rules written on paper or on our heart, we must be willing to abide with rules with somebody or something. Hebrews 10:14-17 says “For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified (made holy). Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” All of God’s rules were written on our heart and mind so we know right from wrong so that because of God’s rules our sins are forgotten.
We are not going to be successful in every aspect of our life without a mentor. Our mentor came in the form of the Holy Spirit. It will change our life, but we need to give up our will or our agenda. Our will wants to take command of everything in our life. We must give up something to gain something. That is how God made it for us, a trade off. The trade off is our will for God’s will. That is quite a trade, one we should be happy with but then we are not in charge. It is us not thinking about who is in charge and just going with the Holy Spirit’s lead. You should see the simplicity with God in charge. But we need to trust God and know he will look out for us.
Loving our neighbor comes from God which is unconditional love. That unconditional love must be applied to ourselves, it is the basis for that unconditional love that gets us to give it out after we understand that love first. We cannot give out something we do not know about because God’s love does not see the rights and wrongs from other people, it is handed out with no conditions given freely. To love is an action and is putting somebody ahead of us as the neighbor, somebody we might not know a lot about. We win friends because of our actions it is our actions that show people that we can be trusted. Without actions people do not know us and will not trust us.
We must understand the first thing God asked us to do was we must love God with all our heart, all thy soul and all thy mind. Mathew 22:36-38 says, and this is Jesus, speaking Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.” Jesus said this because our first thing we must do is love God with everything we got, if we cannot love him that much, we will not be able to do the other commandments. The question we need to ask ourselves is “have I not taken the time to look at myself and made sure of understanding God’s greatest commandment and loving God with everything I got.” Love is an action word in many cases. It is not a feeling in this case. Love makes us move in a direction.
This brings us to the second great commandment which is in Mathew 22:39-40, and this is Jesus, speaking “And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” The second commandment is about loving our neighbor as ourselves. We must understand who our neighbor is, it is everybody with whom we have contact. All the other commandments are included in these two commandments.
The most important thing in these two commandments was love and its ability to cover all sin. 1 Peter 4:8 says, “And above all things have fervent charity (love) among yourselves: for charity (love) shall cover the multitude (great number) of sins.” Love covers sin because God is love. If we look at the word love and put God in that sentence in place of love, we will understand God’s love. Through God we will overcome, or we can say through God’s love we will overcome. It is that love that changes everything from overcoming fear or our spiritual battles we get into.
Our power comes from God and his love. This is what we must remember when we are in spiritual battles. Satan wants us to use all our feelings to get our focus away from God’s love. Love is our most important weapon God has given us. Use our weapons given to us with wisdom. God Bless.
