Love Your Neighbor

February 18, 2021

God has called each of us to love Him, love ourselves, and to love our neighbor. But who is our neighbor? Our neighbor means much more than those who live next door to us. Our neighbor is everyone we come across in life, no matter where we are. Believer or unbeliever, if they like us or not, we are called to love them. There are no exceptions to this commandment. We are to love everyone, plain and simple.

In Matthew 22:39, Jesus says, “A second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself” (NLT). Every day, we ensure our own needs are met. We strive to take care of ourselves because we have a vested interest in our health. We desire to move forward in our goals because we care about our future. We mourn when we go through difficult times and when we fall short of where we know we should be.

Loving your neighbor as yourself means showing this same level of concern and care for everyone. If you meet anyone in life that has a need that you have the power to meet, God calls you to serve them. It doesn’t matter if that need is physical, emotional, spiritual, or whatever: if God has equipped you to help, you’ve got to see it through.

This command to love your neighbor is so important to Jesus that in Matthew 22:39, He calls it “equally important” to the command of loving God. That is because you can’t truly love God and not love others. God is perfect, unconditional love for all. Obeying His will in our lives means being the embodiment of that love to everyone we meet. It means that we must strive for nothing less than everyone in every home loved. Ask God to show you how to do your part in making that happen today.

Ryan Heathco

Ryan Heathco is the Lead Pastor of Ben Davis Christian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana.
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