A Supplement to Luke 12:28-34 - Response to a Question: Why is "Love your neighbor as yourself" called the second important commandment?
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself” is found first in Leviticus 19:18, among other Old Testament laws and commands. Strict Jewish rabbis often combined it with the first commandment about love for God. They also added, “Hate your enemies.” That is why Jesus has the comment in His sermon on the mount that you can read in Matthew 5:43ff. He does not agree that we should hate our enemies. He wishes us to try to care for and respect the people God places around us (that’s what the word “neighbor” means). We should try to want for them what we would want for ourselves. See the context of the Leviticus passage in Leviticus 19:17-19 and also 19:32-34.
That does not mean that we must like or agree with what others think and do. But we are to try to “love” them in a caring and sacrificial way. Love for the neighbor thus becomes a summary of the commandments that have to do with our relationships with other people - the 4th-10th of the 10 Commandments.
The first listed is to honor our father and mother. Again, it does not means that we approve of or “like” them and “like” all they do. But it does call us to try to care for and respect them. The commandments that follow tell us how such “love” looks, in what we don’t do to others - not killing, committing adultery, stealing, bearing false witness, and coveting. If you look at Martin Luther’s explanation of these commandments, in the catechism, he also adds positive things we can do for others, in care for them.
Three of the four Gospels tell us that Jesus emphasized love of God and love of neighbor as a summary of the law. See Matthew 22:34-40, Mark 12:28-34, and Luke 12:25-37 (where Jesus also calls us to be a caring “neighbor." Again, a neighbor is not simply someone who lives near us, but the people God places around us and whom we meet, too.) John’s Gospel quotes Jesus as speaking of such love for others also. See John 13:34-35, for example. See also what some people call the Golden Rule of Jesus, in Matthew 7:12.
Paul also speaks of love of our neighbor in Romans 13:8-10. He specifically calls this command a summary of many others. He also speaks of this in Galatians 5:13-15. James also quotes this command in James 2:8. James points out that we are all sinners, because none of us keeps the law perfectly (2:9-11). We cannot be saved by keeping these laws, because none of us do, all the time. Therefore, we have hope only through God’s grace and love and forgiveness for us, in Jesus.
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