Counting
college and seminary residences along with the homes my wife and I have had, I
have experienced a diversity of neighbors. Young and old, outgoing and hermits,
complainers and pollyannas, neighbors come in a wide range of forms. Some were
easy to tolerate. Others took an effort to maintain a “speaking terms”
relationship.
Those
neighbors who share a common property line or apartment wall are easy to
define. You see them on a regular basis. You know what vehicle they drive. You
know something about their daily life. You see them change as time passes.
Depending upon how much you have in common, your relationship with your
neighbor will be vary from family like to being on speaking terms with the
occasional conversation to an awareness someone is living there but yet you
know nothing about the person’s life.
Jesus,
however, made this neighbor thing a little more involved and a little more
expansive. He basically said if you share the same planet, you have the responsibility
to act like a neighbor and act in love.
Mat
22:36-40 "Teacher," he asked, "which is the greatest commandment
in the Law?" Jesus answered, "'Love the Lord your God with all your
heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and
the most important commandment. The second most important commandment is like
it: 'Love your neighbor as you love yourself.' The whole Law of Moses and the
teachings of the prophets depend on these two commandments."
With all of
our rules, laws, and guidelines, the one great power to keep us civilized is
love. Laws never made neighbors get along. Laws never made us respect each
other. Love, however, born out of a relationship with God through Jesus Christ,
opens our eyes to the value of others unlike any other influence.
To love God
first with all that we are is to allow our love for others to be shaped by that
love. Love for God with our total being becomes self-sacrificial,
other-focused, and containing a long range perspective. God’s love for us, which
came first, dictates how this is all lived out. In the Old Testament we find a
beautiful example in the life of Hosea and his relationship with his unfaithful
wife Gomer. In the New Testament Jesus reveals a father’s love in the story
called the Prodigal Son or Loving Father (Luke 15). The Apostle Paul describes
this kind of love in his First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13.
In none of
these biblical examples is God’s love revealed as a recipient-controlled love.
The giver offers this special love. The recipient chooses to accept it or
reject it as a freely made decision. God says here is my love. I freely offer
it, but I will not change its nature to get you to accept it.
This led the
Apostle Paul to say we can only do so much to get along with our neighbor.
Hosea couldn’t force Gomer to be faithful. In the parable of the Prodigal Son,
the loving father could not force his wayward son to come home. Paul in his
letter to the church in Rome plainly says you can only do so much in seeking to
show love to your neighbor. Then it is up to them to respond appropriately.
Rom
12:18 Do everything possible on your part to live in peace with everybody.
A follower
of Jesus Christ is to express love to God and from that relationship express an
influential love for neighbors. In the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10),
Jesus says the concept of neighbor can never be restricted to geography. Being
a neighbor is a response to need. Being a neighbor is seeing the world through
eyes of love, God’s kind of love.
So loving
your neighbor is not easy. It means being sensitive to needs in the life of the
other. It means relating in a self-giving, compassionate way. It means to do
what you can to show God’s kind of love flowing into and through life to others
without compromise or judgmentalism.
No, loving
your neighbor is not easy, just Christlike.
