by Rita Kimbro

Created on: August 21, 2009   Last Updated: September 01, 2009

"Love your neighbor as yourself"

The commandment to "Love your neighbor as yourself" was restated many times in the bible, I found that Romans 13:9 states it most direct when it says that all the other commandments can be summed up by this one. Self preservation is a basic instinct in man and most animals as well, it is very unusual for a person to deliberately and soberly harm themselves. And that is why this is such a powerful statement. We find it in the Old Testament in verses like Leviticus 19:18 and Zechariah 8:17 as well as many New Testament verses.

Jesus was asked in Luke 10:29, "who is my neighbor?" His reply was a parable familiar to most Christians about a man who was attacked and robbed and the response of the people who came upon him afterward. The term "Good Samaritan" is based on this parable. When we think about our neighbor we often think in terms of people we know and interact with daily. But I believe the point Jesus was making in this parable is everyone is our neighbor. The injured man in the story was overlooked by a priest and a fellow Jew but a Samaritan who normally would not interact with a Jew; was the one who stopped and helped him. In the parable he was the person who reacted as a true neighbor not the two people who passed the injured man by.

So if everyone is our neighbor and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, it is truly the summation of the commandments to "Love your neighbor as yourself". I remember when I watched in horror as the planes flew into the towers and they fell. I was blessed not to have anyone I knew personally in that tragedy, but I cried and grieved because I knew that there were parents, husbands, wives, and children who were lost that day. These were my neighbors and harm had come to them. Whenever we see tragedy happen we should not see strangers or foreigners we should see neighbors. If we see everyone as our neighbor and treat them as we would want to be treated we can not hate, harm or mistreat them.

I have always found it interesting that when Jesus was teaching he often used this commandment to conclude or sum up how we should treat others. In Paul's letter to the Ephesians 5:28 and 29, when he spoke of how a husband should treat his wife his admonition was to love their wives as their own bodies and he goes on to say no man ever yet hated his own flesh. This is the same principle that God is using when he commanded us to Love our neighbor as ourselves. If we love others with the same zeal as we love ourselves we will fulfill this very important commandment from God.

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