LOVING YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF

Our God and Father Yehovah sees every person you encounter as an extension of yourself, When you give to a person, you will receive back because he is as yourself. If you hold something back you will lose it because you have not given it to yourself in the other person.

We need to think as God thinks because His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. God sees the other person as being me. If I don't forgive, I won't be forgiven. If I forgive, I will be forgiven.

Giving is a way of gaining treasure in heaven. [Luke 18:22] What you give is registered in heaven. In giving to others, you are giving to yourself. What you keep on earth, you will eventually have to leave behind.

SPIRITUAL EQUATIONS

When we understand that what we do to others is what we are doing to ourselves, our thinking will be reversed, and barriers will be torn down.

Consider these three statements:

1. You shall love Yehovah your God with all your heart, mind, being, and strength.

2. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

3. Jesus tells us: "love one another as I have loved you."

Notice: Loving your neighbor is to love him with all your heart. The third statement, "as I have loved you" brings the Messiah Jesus into the picture and raises the standard for "love one another" and "love your neighbor". Now we see a link between, "as I have loved you" and "with all your heart" and "as yourself," since all these express total self-giving love.

The first statement, "you shall love Yehovah your God," is seen in the fact that what you do to your neighbor, you do to yourself and above all to God who is hidden in your neighbor who expresses His image.

Another equation is that our God and Father Yehovah loves us as Himself. This remarkable principle is found in Deuteronomy 32: 9-10: 

For Yehovah's portion is His people; Jacob is the line of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; He led him about, He instructed him, He kept him as the apple [pupil] of His eye.

Yehovah found Israel in the wilderness and cared for him, even protecting him as He would protect the pupil of His eye. Just as our body reacts to a hurt finger. so Yehovah regards Israel as the pupil of His eye, the most sensitive part of the body, the part that one protects at all cost. This shows the extent of Yehovah's care for you: You are as valuable to Him as the pupil of His eye. 

We see this in Psalms 17:8: "Guard me as the pupil [apple] of your eye,"  and Zechariah 2:8: "He who touches you, touches the pupil [apple] of His eye." Yehovah's love for us is seen in His deep sensitivity to what happens to us. Whatever happens to us happens to Yehovah in a profound way. He cares about our needs and sufferings, for in all the afflictions of His people, Yehovah is afflicted: Isaiah 63:9:

In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them: in His love and in His pity He redeemed them, and he bore them and carried them all the days of old.

What "as I have loved you" means to us: four points!

The first point: When Jesus says, "love one another as I have loved you" [John 15:12], he is speaking as one who has done the very things he tells us to do. As a sin-offering sacrifice of himself, he himself fulfilled the law summed up in loving your neighbor as yourself.

Second point: "as I have loved you" sets a high standard for how we are to love one another. The words, "as I have loved you" bring out a love that is total and self-giving, and exemplifies how Jesus loved us and gave himself for us. Galatians 2:20:

I am crucified with the Messiah: nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but the Messiah lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

Third point: "as I have loved you" brings out the truth that Jesus loves me every moment of every day, his love for me is ongoing! Because I am in the Messiah Jesus and united to him by his Spirit, I live in the confidence of his love for me every moment of every day.

Forth point: "as I have loved you" expresses Jesus' total identification with us. This identification is seen in other statements such as, "He who receives you receives me" [Matthew 10:40]. "and "He who rejects you rejects me" [Luke 10:16]. The identification extends even to the least of brethren [Matthew 25-46], the parable of the sheep and the goats.

How Yehovah and His son Jesus identify with us: Five points

1. The image of God What I do to my neighbor is done to God because my neighbor bears the image of God by reason of creation and redemption

Genesis 1:27: And God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female He created them.

James 3:9: Therewith bless we God the father, and therewith curse we men which are made after the [image] similitude of God.

God's image in man has not been eradicated but is seen in man in its full glory 1 Corinthians 11:7: For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God,

2. What we do or fail to do to the least of our brethren we fail to do to Jesus himself Matthew 25:31--46, the parable of the sheep and the goats. When Paul was persecuting Christians he was persecuting the Messiah himself [Acts 9:45]. What you do to a believer you do to the Messiah, for the neighbor identified with the Messiah. The identification is so strong as to bring out this representation: "he who receives you receives me" [Matthew 10:40] and "he who rejects you rejects me" [Luke 10:16].

3. This is total identification with the Messiah because we are in the Messiah:

2 Corinthians 5:17: Therefore if any man is in the Messiah, he has become is a new creation. Old things are passed away, behold all things have become new.

Romans 12:5: so we, though many, are one body in the Messiah, and individually members of one another.

What we do to someone who is in the Messiah, we do to the Messiah himself.

4. The Messiah identifies with us because we are members of his body the called-out Assembly:

1 Corinthians 12:27: Now you are the body of the Messiah and members in particular.

Colossians 1:18, 24: And he is the head of the body, the called-out Assembly: who is the beginning, the firstborn from among the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.

Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of the Messiah in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the called-out Assembly. We have been baptized by the Spirit of God into the body [the called-out Assembly] of the Messiah 1 Corinthian 12:13:-14:

For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we are Jews or Gentiles, whether we are bond [slaves] or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many.

Continue: uniting us with him and with one another Romans 6:3-5:

Remember you not that all we who are baptized in the name of the Messiah Jesu, are baptized to die with him? We are buried with him by baptism for to die [to self]: That as the Messiah was raised up from death by the glory of the Father: even so we also should walk in a new life. For if we are grafted into death, like unto him: even so we will be in the resurrection.

Our union in the Messiah is seen also in the fact that we are betrothed to him. 2 Corinthians 11:2:

For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to the Messiah.

5. The believer's body is a Temple; a dwelling place of Yehovah. What we so to a believer is done to Yehovah's dwelling place and to Yehovah Himself. 1 Corinthians 3:16-17:

Are you not ware that you are the temple of God, and how that the spirit of God dwells in you? If any man defiles the temple of God, he shall God destroy. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20: What? know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own [you are bought and paid for by the blood of the Messiah Jesus]? For you are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which is God’s.

Therefore we must honor the sanctity of the body. Harming one's own body by drug use or gluttony is an action against Yehovah and His dwelling place. 

In this article, we have seen how much our God and Father Yehovah and His son the Messiah Jesus love us. The Father and His son have given us their all and we should give our all in a loving response! Yehovah's Spirit continues to work in us. But on our part we cannot be passive; we need to strive to enter by the narrow gate. When we determine to follow Yehovah with a full obedient faithful commitment He will give us the strength to enable us to be totally committed to Him! What amazing grace and love!

Most of what I have written are not my words but words taken from chapter 14 of Eric Chang`s book Totally Committed. I highly recommend that you study Totally Committed reading it for what it is a spiritual instruction manual on how to live the Christina life as new creations in the Lord Messiah Jesus. 

Totally Committed:

 https://christiandiscipleschurch.org/sites/default/files/bookstore/books/Totally_Committed.pdf