The +1: Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

The scribe asked Jesus for one commandment. Jesus gave him two.

“The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 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 12:29-31)

He didn’t have to add the second one. But He wouldn’t let the first stand alone.

This is the last part of a series on the Greatest Commandment. We’ve looked at loving God with heart, soul, mind, and strength. In Agōn we call this last piece the “+1”: verse 30 is the 12:30, and verse 31 is the plus one.

You can’t split them

So why does Jesus tie these two together? I think it’s because love for God that never reaches people isn’t really love for God.

John says it about as bluntly as anyone in Scripture:

“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.” (1 John 4:20-21)

That’s a hard word for disciplined men. You can read your Bible and pray and keep your thoughts clean and hit the gym, and still be cold and short and wrapped up in yourself with the people right in front of you. The first four can turn inward. The +1 makes you turn outward.

Paul goes so far as to say the second command sums up the rest of the law: “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 5:14). And “love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10).

“As yourself”

Some people read “love your neighbor as yourself” as a command to love yourself first. But Jesus assumes you already love yourself. When you’re hungry, you feed yourself. You look after your own interests without anybody telling you to. You give yourself the benefit of the doubt.

The command is to give your neighbor that same instinctive care, and to want his good the way you naturally want your own.

Who is my neighbor?

In Luke’s account of this story, a lawyer asked the follow-up question “desiring to justify himself” (Luke 10:29): “And who is my neighbor?”

Jesus answered with the story of the Good Samaritan. A man is beaten and left for dead. A priest and a Levite, the religious professionals, pass by on the other side. A Samaritan, an outsider and an enemy, stops, bandages him, carries him to an inn, and pays for his care.

Then Jesus turns the question around: “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” The lawyer said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said, “You go, and do likewise” (Luke 10:36-37).

The lawyer wanted a boundary. Who do I have to love? Jesus gave him a mission instead, which was to go be a neighbor to whoever’s in the ditch.

At The Garage, we’ve learned that the car is never just the car. Behind every broken-down vehicle there’s a single mom who can’t get to work, or a family that’s about to fall through the cracks. Loving your neighbor means seeing the person behind the problem.

Love that starts close

Jesus also gave His disciples a “new” version of this command: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).

Now the bar is “as I have loved you,” which is a lot higher than “as yourself.” This is a love that washes feet and goes to the cross.

It usually starts with the people closest to you, the ones you’re most tempted to take for granted. Your wife. Your kids. The brother who keeps calling. The coworker who drives you crazy.

C. S. Lewis wrote in The Weight of Glory: “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” Every person you pass this week is going to live forever. That ought to change how you treat the guy at the counter.

Ten ways to love your neighbor

1. Listen first. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in Life Together, “The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them.” Put the phone face down. Ask a second question. Don’t plan your answer while they’re talking.

2. Learn your actual neighbors’ names. The people on your street. Write them down if you have to. Pray for them by name, and look for a reason to knock on a door.

3. Do one hidden act of service each week. Something nobody will thank you for. Take out the trash before you’re asked, fix the neighbor’s mailbox, pay for the coffee behind you.

4. Invest in one younger man. Find someone a step or two behind you and walk with him. Meet once a month for coffee and ask how he’s really doing. That’s how faith gets passed on.

5. Show up when it’s inconvenient. Hospital visits, funerals, moving days, the 10 p.m. phone call. Being there matters more than having the right words.

6. Serve on a regular team. Join a ministry at your church or a local nonprofit, and stick with it. Love that’s on the calendar outlasts love that waits around for inspiration.

7. Practice hospitality. Have people over. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Burgers on the grill with a family from church or a neighbor who just moved in. You’ll build something around a table that a handshake never will.

8. Give generously to someone in need. I mean a person, not just an organization. Cover a car repair, a grocery bill, a utility payment. And don’t make a show of it.

9. Make things right. If someone has something against you, go to them. Apologize without “but.” Forgive the way you’ve been forgiven.

10. Love your wife and kids first. Your closest neighbors are under your roof. Date your wife. Get on the floor with your kids. Ask your family, “How can I love you better this week?” Then do what they say.

Loved, so we love

None of this will earn God’s favor. The whole series has rested on the same basic principle: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

Jesus is the only one who ever kept both great commandments perfectly. He loved His Father with everything, and He loved His neighbors, including His enemies, all the way to the cross. When you trust Him, His record becomes yours, and His Spirit starts to grow the same love in you.

So the +1 isn’t the hardest of the five. It’s the overflow. A man who’s being filled with God’s love in his heart, soul, mind, and strength is going to start spilling it on the people around him.

Pick one. If you’re in Agōn, it might be your +1 for this season. Then go find somebody in the ditch.