Love Your Neighbor.
“He [Jesus] answered, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Luke 10:27).
Why does God want us to love our neighbor as if he or she was me? If you sat down and wrote a list of all the reasons why we are to love our neighbor, you might have an index of thoughts that are as follows:
The world would be a better place if I love my neighbor as myself.
Maybe others would copy my example.
That might make my neighbor less cranky and more friendly.
I would make a friend.
Kindness attracts attention . . . in a good way.
Etc.
I have no doubt that your list would be full of all kinds of good reasons to show love. 1 John 4:19 tells us that we do love ONLY because love first comes from God; “We love because He first loved us.” This means that the ability to love and the example of loving others comes from God. God is Love. This is His nature. When we are loving our neighbor as we love ourselves, then we are reflecting a part of God’s image to the world.
God’s love is not necessarily hidden but its credit is often plagiarized. When a mother loves her child, we are impressed and usually tend to give credit to the mother. But 1 John 4:19 says the credit for this loving act goes back to God who is the author of love. When your boss shows a coworker generosity or grace for being late, that act of kindness (love) has its source from God.
Since God is a God of love, we can look at a very culturally sensitive topic and address it with a lens into the heart of God. Heaven and Hell are delicate terms that may generate odd looks from modern intellectuals in our culture. Especially that concept of Hell: it can be viewed as passe or old fashioned.
If God is a God of Love, how could Hell even exist? To answer this question let’s first look to the Love of God and His concern for every soul who has ever been conceived in the mother’s womb: “For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:3-4). In this verse is a display of God’s heart and God’s desire toward every man, woman and child who has ever lived. God’s love wants all to be saved. God’s love desires to bring everyone to heaven.
But then where do we fit that idea of hell into this equation? The simple answer is two-fold: God will not force Himself on anyone; if you don’t want to be with God [in heaven] He will honor your request and you can be eternally removed from His presence. That, by definition, is Hell. The second part of that answer is God’s justice. God is a perfect God and is perfect in all of His attributes. He is perfect in love, He is perfect in wisdom, He is perfect in justice, etc.
Since He is perfect in justice, He must punish every sin. Every human has sin and God wants to remove that sin so that they are not punished. That is why Jesus is such a perfect answer to God’s love and God’s justice. Jesus endured the weight of all the world’s unhealthy behaviors, broken promises, outright lies, perjury, abuse, and more. Jesus already paid the price, in Love, so that all people could be saved and come to this knowledge of the truth. But again, God will not force this solution of His justice raining down on Jesus’ shoulders, shedding His precious blood for all mankind and dying under the weight of our guilt. God will allow, in love, for a person to choose to stand on their own merit; the problem is “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). So there is no merit on which any human being, even the Pope, can stand. All have sinned.
God will let people choose that self-centered stance if that is what they want. As hard as that truth is to swallow, it does reflect His love, His justice, and His wisdom. But this is why we are called to be God’s ambassadors. We can let the world know that our brokenness has earned us Hell. But God’s love opened up our understanding and we are now relieved of the sin penalty because of the blood of Jesus Christ the Lamb of God.
So why does God want us to love our neighbor? A big part of that is so we can establish a relationship with them in order to tell them about the love of God in Christ. . . so that they also can be saved. May God bless you as you take one more step to love your neighbor as yourself!