Love your neighbor as you love yourself? Even if they hurt you?
Question: Jesus told me to love my neighbors as I love myself. But it is difficult to love them in life. How can I love them more? And should I love others while they hurt me?
This is from Mark 12:30-31 which says:
and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Mark 12:30-31
Well, those are questions! And the answer is not easy to answer with “black” or “white”. The first thing we need to look at is: what is this love that is being spoken of? Let me explain with a small example.
I love hamburgers. I also love dogs. And I love my wife. Do you think the definition of love is the same for burgers, dogs and my wife? No, of course not.
These are different types of love, and some are conditional (for example, if my dog keeps biting me, that love will be over pretty quickly, but if he listens to me, my love for the dog will remain), some are unconditional. I love my wife for who she is, not for what she does. So no matter what she does, my love will remain the same. Unconditional. Let’s take a closer look at the difference between conditional and unconditional love.
I often hear people say, “God loves you all”, universally, to a group of people, which can include both Christians and non-Christians. But is it even biblical to say this sentence to just anyone who does listen in this generic way? When we look at the concept of God’s love in the Bible, we see historically and theologically different types of love.
For example, there is the love of God His good will, where God has a kind spirit for the whole world and His good will comes down to everyone.
To give you an earthly example: I love my wife for who she is. Not for what she does. Yes, I love it when she makes a great hamburger for me, but that’s another sort of love. A way different one. If I would only love my wife when she cooks great hamburgers and that’s it, that’s not true love for my wife. Maybe there will come a time when my wife cannot cook for me anymore because of circumstances, would my love for my wife be gone if that does happen? Perhaps my wife loves me so much, she is not going to cook hamburgers today because eating hamburgers is not that healthy if I eat them too often, would my love for my wife be gone if that does happen?
If that is so, we would have a bad marriage, a terrible one that, in due time, would crash. So, I love my wife for who she is, that is why I married her to begin with. I love her for her spirit.
Let’s take a step further… if we say we love God, do we love Him for what He did for us, or is there more? If God does not give you what you think you want, is that love gone if He does that? If so, did you really love God in this sense? No. So, we should all love God for who He is to begin with, not for what He has done for us. That is one kind of His love for us.
But there is also the way in which the Bible defines the love of God in terms of God’s benevolence; that is not just God’s good will / His spirit, but how He manifests that goodness universally to everyone. This Bible verse shows that kind of love:
So that you may prove yourselves to be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
Matthew 5:45
Not only did He (God) let us live, but even if we still don’t listen to Him today, He provides us with rain and sun. That is another form of love that God has for us.
But when we talk about the love of God in our popular language, we are usually talking about what we call God’s love through His satisfaction.
When the Bible indicates God’s love through satisfaction, it is that special love that God has for His Son, and for all who are in His Son and who are adopted into His family. And that’s a huge(!) difference. He is pleased with us if(!) we listen to Him, repent and believe what His Son has done for us. That satisfies God. If we don’t, He is not satisfied with us. Do you see the difference between the different types of love? There is an unconditional love, but also a conditional love. To receive that conditional love from Him, you have to do something. If you don’t do that, you won’t get that love either.
If we talk about God’s love through His satisfaction and explain it unconditionally, that is blasphemy and not correct. That love is subject to conditions. He does not give us the expression of that love without us meeting His conditions He has set to receive those. In this sense, God does not love everyone unconditionally. The Bible tells us that there are many ways in which God is even hostile to the world. (James 4:1-17) He hates the world, He hates those who are quick to shed blood (Proverbs 6:16-19) and on and on, and we need to take that into account.
So to say that God loves everyone unconditionally, universally, is incorrect. If He did, why would He even call us to repent, to come to the cross, to come to Christ? If we say that God loves everyone unconditionally, universally and unconditionally, then you can do whatever you want and believe whatever you think, and that is not the case.
It is incorrect to say that God loves us unconditionally in universal terms. Not Biblical. He has placed an absolute condition on that “satisfaction love” of His, by which He demands things that we must do. He not only invites people to come to His Son. No, He commands all people everywhere to repent of their sins and(!) come to Christ. And if you want to enjoy the love of His satisfaction, you must be a Christian to begin with. If we say that God loves everyone unconditionally, why do people go to hell in the first place? The answer is very clear: God hates sin (Psalm 11:5) and it is the sinner who goes to hell. Let’s be VERY clear about that. So there is a condition for us to let God love us in the sense of His satisfying love. If we don’t do what God says, He doesn’t love us in that way, and He will send us to hell because we don’t listen to Him.
So you see that there are several explanations for love from a biblical perspective. Now that we know that this ‘love’ is much more than ‘just love’, we look again at the Bible passage from Mark 12:30-31
and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Mark 12:30-31
Now that we know what God expects of us so that He can love us out of His satisfaction, let’s see what God defines as love that He expects us to do if we want to satisfy Him:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
Mark 12:30
If we don’t, we are in big trouble with God, and He warns us, through this verse, to give ourselves 100% to Him so that He can love us. With everything, 100%, we have (heart, soul, mind, strength). And then we finally come back to the part we started with:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Mark 12:31
But…. how are we supposed to love ourselves to begin with? If we know that, then, together with all the above information, we know how to love our neighbors.
Should we put ourselves above God? No. Should we love ourselves above all others? No. Should we love it when we have pride, gluttony, sloth, greed, lust, envy, pride, wrath, anger and avarice in our lives? No. So love is also conditional; otherwise it would not be true, Divine, Biblical love, then it would be worldly and not Biblical love. And that is not love.
If we go back to what God looks like, and what our love for ourselves and others should look like, we can look at the following verse:
Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant. It does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered, it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; it keeps every confidence, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
And that’s a lot. Back to the part of verse that started it all:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Mark 12:31
What kind of love are we talking about now? That’s why we should look at the whole verse and not just this one small part of these verses. The question we started with was:
Question: Jesus told me to love my neighbors as I love myself. But it is difficult to love them in life. How can I love them more? And should I love others while they hurt me?
Now that we know that God has “different kinds of love,” we can do the same. God let us live even though we did NOT deserve it (that is tremendous love), He even sends rain and sun today, but there is also a conditional love, just like God has a conditional love part. So, what are your options when people hurt you? Maybe even literally torture you? What can we do? Let’s look at one option:
And whoever does not receive you nor listen to your words, as you leave that house or city, shake the dust off your feet. Truly I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment, than for that city.
Matthew 10:14-15
That is a form of love of good will. You don’t “kill” them, you don’t slander their names in the newspaper or in church, but you move on and shake the dust off your feet. God will deal with anyone who hurts His children. (Matthew 18:1-9). But instead of you taking action, you move on and let God handle it.
Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written: “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.
Romans 12:19
Do you see that this (shake the dust off your feet, and move away from evil) can be a form of love? A great form of love even. If someone really tortured you, and you could do this! That’s great if you can do that with God by your side. And that’s just one option, if you think about it, there are many more options.
Let’s take a terrible example: let’s say your partner really, literally, tortured you. Wow..
If we look at Mark 12:30-31 very superficially, we might say that we should still (!) love that spouse as we did when we were first married, and even sleep with that spouse! Say what??!! NO!! That’s not what the verse means!
That’s why it’s so important that we study that verse, and not just one part of that verse because another kind of love could be:
Shake the dust off your feet, stay legally married, but don’t live together anymore (the Bible is clear on divorce, if and when we can do it, and we must follow those divine rules, no matter how hard it is) answer letters about the gas bill in a polite manner, behave when you see him across the street, you still provide rain and sun, you did not kill him, (although you think he deserved it), you leave that revenge to God, but if he wants to get the “satisfaction of love” back, then that is conditional.
He needs to change, and if he does, and shows that he does, you keep the door open to talk about it. If you can do that, that’s love! That’s huge! And that doesn’t mean you still have to sleep with him, that doesn’t mean you still live in the same house and are okay with the torture, that’s absolutely not(!) the case. But you can still show your goodwill love this way.
So you see, there are more godly ways to love your neighbor as yourself. Way more. If you can show benevolence or good will to the one who tortured you, that is love. And that requires God’s power… we know… a lot. Because even showing your good will and benevolence can be quite difficult.
