“And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” (Matt. 22:39)
I am going to place something here before you in this short letter that I once again have no firm answer for, let the Words of God speak for themselves, and decide how you should live your life by them.
Many of you may have been taught the correct response is “to love less than” when encountering Luke 14:26.
“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”
And in one respect this could be a truth, if your mother, brother or daughter and son are born-again as well, for our love for the Lord Jesus Christ is to be superseded by nothing, no one is to stand beside the Almighty when we profess our love for Him, your own children are to be placed second behind Him when it comes to your love for Him.
It is the definition of that word “hate” that we try to work around, and because of our love for them and others that we hold dear in our hearts, we have chosen the terminology of “love less than.”
When it comes to loving our neighbor though this does not infer those you hold dear, but all mankind, even the vilest of them, for we know their end if they do not repent, and if we, in love, do not speak the truths of the Word of God to them, telling them of His love, of their need to repent and call upon Him for the salvation of their soul, then we have not loved our neighbor as ourself, and in part, have not fulfilled Philippians 2:3.
“Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.”
Your emotions, the hatred of their despicable actions, their lifestyle, the path of self and rebellion against the Most High, must not be agreed with, but that does not preclude us from doing what we have been sent to do, reveal the truth of eternal life or eternal damnation to all that will listen, they are our neighbors because we all come from Adam.
But I bring before you this verse for your contemplation, the one in relation to loving our neighbor as ourselves and leave it to you to search for truth in it.
“He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.” (John 12:25)
How am I to love my neighbor as myself when I am commanded, expected to hate my own life? Shall we say, “hate your neighbor as thyself?” Love your neighbor as you hate yourself, seeing within them the vileness of their lives? By esteeming others better than ourselves, by hating our own lives, are we loving them?
There are no contradictions in the Scriptures, but there are many places where Spiritual discernment of them if hidden from some of us, and these are those we should place in a portion, a section of our mind to contemplate and pray about, leaving the answer to them up to the Holy Spirit for the proper time to reveal the truths of them to us.
I have a large category of them in my mind’s file cabinet, so to speak, why did the Lord Jesus Christ need to ask the name of Legion, why did He need to heal that man’s eyes twice who first saw men walking as trees, the doctrine of election, the list is long. And so, I wait patiently for answers that may or may not arrive in this life, and perhaps not in the life to come. That is His decision.
I am to hate my life yet love my neighbor as myself.
“And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” (Jer. 29:13)
We will always have questions my friends, do not let them perplex you, stay on the path He has chosen for you, ask the questions, store them in your mind’s file cabinet, and while you wait patiently for an answer, remain at the tasks He has set before you.
