Luke 10:27 - Homiletics

The love of the neighbor.

Fixing, then, on Christ's definition of the sphere of neighborhood, we are called to give a length and a breadth to his rule, which make it equivalent to the assertion, "Your neighbor is, not your blood-relation only, not the circle of your acquaintance only, not your countryman or co-religionist only; but he or she whom you can help in any way whatsoever—the wretched tatterdemalion from the slightest contact with whom you shrink; the besotted and degraded; even your enemy, who hates you and despitefully uses you; him, her, mankind, you are to love." "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." A very searching word indeed. God help us! how far are we from realizing it? Here some may will to justify themselves, and assume the defensive in some such manner as this: "It is impossible. We may cherish a feeling of benevolence towards all men in virtue of their common humanity; but how can we love them? Love requires the perception of what is lovable; it requires, too, that there shall be some link connecting one personally with another. But to summon us to love the neighbor, in Christ's sense of the phrase, is to insist on love before the discovery of any such link, or notwithstanding the discovery that such a link is wholly wanting." Or, again, "This is a commandment to love. Now, we cannot love by commandment; we cannot go beyond the prompting of our own natures. Some we can embrace with affection, but from others we turn away. We have tried the law that is announced on a limited scale, and the result of the trial was this—So long as we thought of the world in a general, ideal way, we felt, in a measure, ardent; but as regards the persons actually crossing our path as neighbors, before the selfishness and greediness and ugliness which confronted us, we were forced to retreat, and to confess that we cannot love because we are told to love our neighbor as ourselves." Now, let it be acknowledged that these and similar difficulties are real difficulties. But, in the mean time, see whether Christ, in commanding, has not indicated the way of assistance; whether a more spiritual exposition of his teaching may not lead us into a region of thought in which the solution of the difficulties lies. Such a region seems to be opened up in the sentence reported by St. Matthew, "The second commandment is like to the first." To the first, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind," we must look for the full truth of the love enjoined in the second, and for the significance of the measure which the second proposes, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

I. For, to show that the love enjoined in the two commandments is really one grace, WHAT DO WE MEAN WHEN WE SPEAK OF LOVING GOD ? Surely we mean a delight in God for what he is; for his righteousness, his goodness, his holy and loving will; we mean that surrender of ourselves to him in which our spirits respond to the Father of spirits. Now, in the first moment of such self-surrender, is it not the longing of the mind that he be glorified? Such a longing necessarily takes beyond self. It embraces the desire that the Eternal Name be hallowed, the eternal will be done in earth as it is in heaven, and the eternal kingdom of the Father come; that God be honored in all, and all find their true life in God. The pulse of this longing beats in friendship like that of Mr. Erskine of Linlathen. To his friend, the cold, astute lawyer, Rutherford, Mr. Erskine writes, "I love you. I could die for you to bring you to your true Centre, God." In the love of God, his love for his friend had been quickened and intensified. Yes; when Christ revealed God as our Father, he gave us men as our brethren; when the Spirit of the Son is sent into the heart, the spirit of the brother is formed in the heart. However we may distinguish in speech, in the working of the eternal life, there is no distinction between the love of God and the love of man. Each is implied in the other. They are the two sides of the one grace, the one life—love. And in this we have the solution of the difficulty already referred to. If there is no higher prospect than the neighbor, it is not to be wondered at that persons cry out, "Impossible! where the special links fail, there love must stop." But, observe, when we have gained the second commandment through the first; when the love of the neighbor proceeds out of the love whose first and greatest is God; such links are always at hand; there are interests and sympathies which serve as points of approach to all, to any one. Our love is God's love extending through us. All sorts and conditions of men are within the reach, before the vision, of God's love. Even beneath the hateful we can discern that which, to the Creator who is also the Redeemer, is immeasurably precious.

"… who loves the Lord aright,

No soul of man can worthless find;

All will be precious in his sight,

Since Christ on all hath shined."

We are, then, partners in the Divine interest in man. We clothe the neighbor with this interest. "Thy Father is my Father; my Savior is thy Savior too, and thou art precious in his sight. As he loves, so would I love thee—as myself.'"

II. BUT WHAT OF THE MEASURE , " AS THYSELF "? Let it be answered, "Thyself, after the first and great commandment has been fulfilled in thee—thyself loving the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and soul, and strength, and mind." There is a true self-love, and what the true self-love is is thus defined. Recollect, Christ's phrase is, "as thyself." In his teaching there is no place found for the pretentious altruism which strives

"… to wind itself too high

For mortal man beneath the sky,"

which insists that the love of man shall swallow up, shall annihilate, all self-feeling; that it shall involve the renunciation of all that is individual for the sake of a universal good, of humanity. The teaching of Jesus is too practical, has too keen a sight of" what is in man," for this humanitarianism. He recognizes a love of self as right and natural; but it is the self when truly consecrated to God. "There is no need," says one, "of a heart of supernatural texture in order to the love of our brother. What is needed is only the heart of flesh instead of the heart of stone." Yes; but this heart of flesh is a new heart. It is described in the Scriptures as the gift of God. It is "a heart of supernatural texture"—part of that new ordering of the life which is realized when the wayward will is offered to the consuming fire of God, and the inner man is born from above. See, then, what this pure self-love, which is the measure of love to the neighbor, represents. It represents a power of sacrifice. "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." Not only so; the principle which illustrates the direction of the love of our neighbor exhibits that which is to be sought for in it. He who prays that his self shall be in harmony with God's thoughts and ways, loving his brother with the same love, will discriminate between that which only serves the flesh, and that which tends to promote the righteousness which God reckons the permanent well-being; he will strive against the things in internal life and external condition which hinder this well-being; he will study the ways through which the greatest good may be realized for the neighbor. Thus, given the love of God poured out in the heart, the love of self, instead of separating, unites the man to his world. It is the dynamic of a holy and enlightened philanthropy.

Let the two commandments, then, be kept in the order which our Lord has marked—the first, as the first and greatest; and the second, as the second which is like to the first. Let them, in this order, abide in us; and, though the keeping of them may be to the flesh a cross, possible only through the slaying of that in the flesh which objects, the external nature of the commandments will gradually disappear; from laws outside us they wilt be changed into states of life, each finding its congenial nourishment in the other. The love of God will be fed by the love of the neighbor; the love of the neighbor will be fed by the love of God. So thought, so wrote St. John, in his own profound yet simple manner, "Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God." "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also."