Love Thy Who?

Mark 12:31 says, “The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no greater commandment than these.”

Now, this can be looked at several different ways. We’ll start with, ‘Love your neighbor…’ First of all, what does neighbor mean? Like, the people that live in the house next to you? Yes and no. The way neighbor is used in the Scripture is, ‘any person in need of one’s help or kindness.’ This is interesting because everyone is in need of help or kindness. Nobody has life completely right. If we didn’t need each other, or God, then there’d be no purpose for us. I don’t think the Scripture necessarily means specific things either. We need encouragement, love, kindness and positivity from one another.

Which leads to the next part of the Scripture, ‘as yourself.’ As yourself. How do you feel about yourself? What kind of love do you have for yourself? This was a difficult lesson to learn. I didn’t even know how to love myself, how in the world could I love someone else? Let’s be real, there are a lot of people that are hard to love. But what makes them hard to love? I think it’s hard to love people that may remind us of the bad decisions we’ve made or the mistakes we’ve done. The pain we’ve caused to other people. The people that we see as hard to love, they might be our mirror. So, how hard it is to love someone that reminds us of the bad in us. We don’t love the bad things about ourselves. The mistakes we’ve made make us insecure, doubtful, afraid, inward, and sometimes resentful. All these things are arrows that Satan uses against us. He doesn’t want us to love ourselves. When we love ourselves, we forgive ourselves, we have more compassion on others and we love our neighbors. People become easier to love even with their flaws because you feel the love yourself. Your able to give love to people that need it the most. The ones who don’t know how to love themselves.

At the end of the Scripture it says, “there is no greater commandment than these.” ‘These’ referring to the prior Scripture, Mark 12:30- “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”  These two Scriptures can help you in any situation where you have trouble with love. Ask yourself, is this what I would want someone to do to me? How would I want someone to treat me in this situation?

We all go through things, and every single one of us does things that hurt other people. But we cannot let these things hold us back from our walk with God. He is not ashamed of us. He loves us. He forgives us. When you follow God and His love, you will begin to understand how to give His love to others that also need it. God loves us through our mistakes, we can also love others through there’s. People have free will and although their free will may be painful to watch, remember that God watches us cause pain to ourselves because of our choices and He never leaves us. We can be more like Christ and, not condone sin, but people need to make their own choices, and need to know that they are still loved. Just like God loves us through all of our short comings.

So, the question is, Love thy who? The answer will always be the same, love your neighbor (others in need of help or kindness) and love yourself. But above all, Love God, He will never let you down.