Do You?
The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these. Mark 12:31 NASB
As yourself – Does the psychology of the Bible require self-love before sacrificial love? When both the Tanakh and the apostolic writings speak about loving your neighbor, the underlying condition seems to be a love that begins with yourself. The condition “as yourself” looks as if you really can’t love your neighbor if you don’t love yourself. Does that mean love begins with me, before you?
If you grew up in a religious home like I did, perhaps you were taught that sacrificial love was the most important love, in fact, it was the required kind of love. You might struggle with self-acceptance, even doubt your self-worth, but if you were going to follow God, what mattered was loving others. Period! Yes, Jesus’ commandment talked about “as yourself,” but what this really meant was that you needed to be like Him and sacrifice for others. After all, Jesus wasn’t caught up in some teenaged self-worth struggle. He knew he had to follow God’s plan and that meant giving himself up for us. He was about His father’s business like a good religious boy should be. This left me with the feeling that my needs always came second. Others mattered more than me. It took a long, long time to discover the truth in Brené Brown’s words, “To love ourselves and support each other in the process of becoming real is perhaps the greatest single act of daring greatly.”[1] Since I wasn’t really sure what was allowed or not allowed in loving myself, I discovered that I didn’t know what it meant to forgive myself either. Life was trying to balance on the spiritual see-saw—and never being very successful.
But before we get to the implications of loving ourselves, we should ask a few questions about the words in this verse. The same statement occurs in each of the Synoptics (Luke 10:27, Matthew 22:39), but not at all in John (that’s curious, don’t you think?). The citation from Leviticus 19:18 is also found in Paul’s letters (Galatians 5:14) in the James (James 2:8). All of these Jewish writers look back to the Leviticus passage. What does it say in Hebrew?
There are no surprises with the command. The verb, ʾāhēb (to love), covers a wide range of applications, but the meaning is fairly uniform, much the same way we would use this word to describe human relationships. However, when we look at rēaʿ (neighbor), some discussion becomes necessary.[2]
The breadth of usage of this word shows that when Christ quoted Lev 19:18, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” the lawyer need not have asked his famous question. The preceding verse in Lev is not so famous, but shows that the OT law was aimed at the heart as well as the action, “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart.”[3]
We see that heart attitude is incorporated in hand action. That shouldn’t surprise us. What is a bit surprising is the scope of the word “neighbor.” Some of the surprise comes in examining the Greek term for rēaʿ found in the LXX and the gospels. That word is plēsíon. Fichtner notes:
“Yet the setting shows that the laws are given specifically to Israel, so that their unequivocal application is to members of the people, with a clear extension only to resident aliens.”[4]
Ah, so “neighbor” means only those who are ethnically part of Israel or who are resident aliens in Israel. Perhaps this makes sense in antiquity. Things were tribal then. But how come my Polish-descendent mother didn’t tell me this commandment was only for Jews? The answer: because by the time we get to the gospels, rabbinic thought already expanded the idea.
Heb. rēaʿ comes from a verb meaning “to have dealings,” “to associate.” The noun reflects the range of possible dealings from the “friend” of the king to stereotyped use in a phrase like “one another.” Thus it covers the friend, lover, companion, neighbor, or fellow human being. . . The Hellenistic Jewish tradition, then, joins forces with one stream of Palestinian Judaism which on the basis of belief in the divine likeness demands respect and consideration for all people.[5]
The neighbor includes enemies as well as friends (Mt. 5:43ff.). At root, Jesus is here reversing the question. We are not to ask whom to love, for to love is to be a child of God, to be perfect as God is, and hence to love generously and spontaneously.[6]
Now, it seems, the typical Christian application is also the Jewish one. We are to love anyone who is in need. Jesus’ famous parable of the Samaritan who acts neighborly is at center stage.
The parable of the Good Samaritan aptly illustrates this reversal. What counts is to be a neighbor to those in need. The neighbor is not generalized here, either into a compatriot or a fellow human being. An element of encounter is suggested by the term. Life itself shows who the neighbor is. The real point is not to define the neighbor but to be a neighbor.[7]
But can I really be a neighbor if I don’t care about myself? Apparently not. Being a neighbor means engaging in a relationship. You cannot be a neighbor with indifference toward others. You’ll have to be involved if you’re going to be a neighbor, and that means you’ll have to express, in some way, who you are. Ultimately, neighbors are not strangers. Maybe we need to rewrite the Great Commission. “As you’re going along, make friends, be neighborly.” You might discover something amazing: when you really do care for someone else, you learn how to care for yourself.
Topical Index: neighbor, plēsíon, rēaʿ, Mark 12:31
[1] Brené Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 110.
[2] If you use Logos software for your etymological study, the link from the verse in Leviticus to TWOT is incorrect. The correct TWOT number is 2186, not 2135.
[3] Harris, R. L. (1999). 2186 רָעָה. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 853). Chicago: Moody Press.
[4] J. Fichtner in Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (p. 872). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
[5] Ibid..
[6] Ibid..
[7] Ibid..
