How to Love Your Neighbor as Yourself (part 14)
Review
We have seen that what we love when we love God includes loving our own selves, made by Him, and our lives as directed by His hand. We love ourselves within our love for God. We must love ourselves, finally, in order to truly love all God is and has done.
“By the grace of God, I am what I am.” (1Cor 15:10)
And so, to learn to love ourselves as from God, with Him, and for His glory, involves two things: a new perspective and new practices. The perspective is that we are His and life, even our life, is grace. The practices are those by which our heart, soul, mind, and strength come to overflow with love for God—“Love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” That command is not simply a demand to do something, but rather a calling to do all that is necessary to be brought into this condition.
“May the LORD direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.” (2Thes 3:5)
“Keep yourselves in the love of God.” (Jude 1:21)
Our hearts were given to us, to be stewarded by us toward God. Our souls and minds and strength, given to us to be stewarded by us toward God. That we might adore His loveliness with our whole being.
“Therefore my heart is glad and my whole being rejoices.” (Psa 16:9)
Loving Others
Loving others well will involve a new perspective on them and new practices in our relationship.
We must see them differently.
Not as they are to us, but as they are to Him—as they truly are. We must see that they are from God—He made them and they are His, His creation, His in the most elemental and fundamental way possible. They are from God and they must be treated as such, for His sake.
We must see that they are with God. He did not make them and release them; He continues to watch over them. He is not absent from their lives—even if they might be acting like it, or even if they believe that’s “their” truth. God is with them, and if you are beside them, then surely He is at work in their lives. God is with them and they must be treated with this in mind.
We must see that they are for God. They exist—as do all things—for His glory. They may be wandering, they may be lost, but God wants them found and brought home. They will be restless, it is true, until they find their rest in Him. But He has made them for Himself, for the refraction of His glories through their light, that others might come, in them, to know Him better. They exist to glorify God, and this must remain before us as we interact with them.
We must also treat them differently.
We must love them. And we can, within our love for God, as we love ourselves. As we love ourselves, so we desire to steward their hearts, souls, minds, and strengths toward delight in God.
They are not just minds to be argued with. They are not just strengths to be defeated or recruited. They are not just hearts to be tugged or changed. They are not just souls to be emptied or filled. They are all these (and all that is between them).
So let us love their minds with respect. Let us listen well, ask good question. What do they think? Why? Let us steward their minds with good questions, humility and awe.
And let us love their hearts with attention. Again, let us learn to listen better. What do they love? Fear? Hope for? Why? Let us steward their hearts with wonder, wonderful stories and a shoulder to cry on.
Let us love their souls well with freedom and adventure. Where do they come alive? What burdens are they under? Let us steward their souls—that great expanse—with hope and mercy.
Let us love their strength with dignity and honor. What direction are they traveling? Where do they see the LORD? How is His glory woven through their lives?
It takes a friend to find these things out, to endure this journey, to steward these relationships. It takes a friend who knows how to be loved to love like this.
Have you been so loved? Indeed. Verily, verily. Behold.
“Behold what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God: and so we are.” (1John 3:1)
PRAYER
Lord God, we want to be loved and to love. We want to be good friends; we want good friends. Take these strands of our selves and weave them into Your Great Love, in the Life of Jesus Christ, within the Work of Holy Spirit. That we may find ourselves, beloved, in You. And so we may discover Your love, within us, as our own, for… them. For Your glory. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Photo by Sergey Shmidt on Unsplash