[Great Verses] Love the Lord FullySample

Love your neighbor as yourself

And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.


Jesus was asked, “What is the greatest commandment?” He was not asked, “What are the two greatest commandments?” but it didn’t matter. Jesus gave two commandments: Love your God, love your neighbor. Loving God and loving your neighbor go together. If you love God, it will spill over to people.


What does it mean to love people? What does it look like? Love for people begins in the heart. It begins with affection for people. We’ve got to care. But it doesn’t end there. If we care about people, then we will express that care in concrete, tangible ways, in ways that people can feel, taste, and touch.


We will listen to the friend who is hurting. We will pray for the acquaintance who needs healing. We will reach out to encourage someone in our small group who is struggling with their teenage son. We might take a meal to a single mom or go to serve the homeless weekly, treating them just as respectfully as anyone else. We will use a kind and gentle tone with family members. This is what it means to love your neighbor as yourself: You focus on others more than yourself. You become more others-centered than self-centered. You become more of a giver than a taker. This kind of love, Christ’s kind of love, does not go just to those who are easy to love. Christ’s kind of love goes to people who don’t deserve it, people like us. It goes to people without expecting anything in return.


In the 1998 movie Les Misérables, Liam Neeson plays an angry ex-prisoner, Jean Valjean. Valjean assaults and robs a priest who had taken him in for the night. The next morning, Valjean is captured with the priest’s silver. When he is brought back to the priest, Valjean is undone by the priest’s love, for the priest says he gave Valjean the silver. He defends him, forgives him, and believes in him. Valjean was never the same again. This kind of love, Christ’s kind of love, sacrificial love, is love that can change the world. What if you loved people this way the rest of your life? What if every Christ follower loved people the way Christ loved people?