Love Your Neighbor As Yourself

The Law of Leviticus boils down to this, and Jesus’ explanation and interpretation of the new covenant also has it at its core: Love your neighbor as yourself. This command in the 19th chapter of Leviticus is cited in three of the four Gospels as Jesus reiterates to the Jews the most important commandment - for it sums up the Law. But what I find interesting is that Jesus doesn’t seem to be telling the Jews anything that they don’t already know.

In Luke 10:25, a lawyer asks Jesus what he should do to inherit eternal life. Jesus responds to his question with another question: “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”
And then the Jewish lawyer himself condenses the Law to this: “You shall 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 you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” He quotes Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 as the epitome of the Old Testament, and Jesus affirms his summary.

This principle was understood by the Hebrew people of the day. The seemingly endless instructions of the Law point Israel to loving one another the same way that Jesus points us to love one another in the New Testament. From our viewpoint in current Western society, we cannot fathom returning a neighbor’s ox, picking our vineyards bare, dismantling a diseased house, or calling out “Unclean!” to those around us when we have a contagious illness. But all these ordinances showed Israel what it was in their own context to love your neighbor as yourself. They could see clearly that this was the point. And in Deuteronomy 6, they found the critical extension and underlying prerequisite to this Leviticus command:

Love the Lord your God with everything you have.

These two commandments are THE takeaway.

They are so simple, but not so easy.

Anyone who is honest with themself knows - we cannot fulfill either of these commandments. But Christ, the bridge between the Old and New Testament, the point of the whole of Scripture, the Light of the World, shows us in flesh what it means to live out the Law unhindered by legalism. He shows us what it means to extend love toward God and toward man. He was well aware of the Law. He did not come to abolish it, but to fulfill it.

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