What happens when the WHAT of loving my neighbor replaces the WHY of loving them?
That’s right: idol worship!
So this commandment, born out of the last six of the original Ten Commandments found in Exodus 20, makes me ask two questions:
What is love?
The LOVE spoken of here is the same love with which the Lord loves us: Agape Love. It is unconditional in nature and does not ask for anything in return. When we love ANYONE in this way, we are glorifying the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit because that is how God loves us.
Who is my neighbor?
A neighbor is anyone God puts in my path to love with God’s love.
In Luke 10:30-37, Jesus gives us the answer in the story of the Good Samaritan. Reader’s Digest version: a Jewish businessman gets mugged and left for dead beside the road. Two different religious men, who were also Jewish, saw the man and passed by, unwilling to help him for religious reasons. But a Samaritan man, on a journey to who knows where, saw him, felt compassion, and helped him.
The Good Samaritan helped his neighbor because:
a. He felt compassion (God’s heart).
b. He stopped because that was who he was, who he BE in his soul.
c. He had a plan to help the injured man, which means he used his MIND to think through what needed to be accomplished.
d. He used what God had given him to help, so he used his God-given STRENGTH to help the man.
The Samaritan had a bent toward recognizing a neighbor in need and then acting upon that bent. He did not allow the act of service, the WHAT, to overtake the WHY of service.
So you may be asking, “How can a relationship become an idol?”
Relationships become idols when they become more important than God Himself. They become idols when we offer our love or friendship while expecting something in return. They become idols when we believe people can fulfill a longing, need, or provision that only God Himself can fulfill and has promised to fulfill. (Read the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7.)
People become idols when we place burdens on them that they are incapable of carrying. When we do that, we end up crushing them under the weight of our expectations.
God calls us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. We are called to love our neighbor with the unconditional Agape Love of Christ. And guess what? We are called to love ourselves with that same love.
I am going to finish this week with a reminder of how the Holy Spirit describes love through the pen of Paul the Apostle in his letter to the Corinthians:
1 Corinthians 13:4-8a: “Love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails…
Do you love this way? Or are you an idol worshipper?
As I have studied for this week’s Digging Deeper, I have been cut to the quick as my own sin has been revealed through God’s gentle Word. I write not as a man who has all of this figured out, but as a man who echoes Paul in Romans 7 when he says, “Wretched man that I am! Who will free me from this body of death?” (v. 24).
I struggle with idol worship.
So I ask the Lord each morning to guard my heart, soul, mind, and abilities so that they may be used for His glory and His glory alone.
Then I ask this simple question: “Who will it be today, Lord? Who is my neighbor today?”
Perhaps today, it is you.
I love you so much forever!
