Planning for 2021 - two key life goals to focus on (Part Two)

The Commandment Nobody Argues With (But Few Actually Follow)

Ask most people — Christian or not — whether loving your neighbour is a good idea, and they will agree without hesitation. It is one of those universally accepted principles that sounds wonderful in theory and proves remarkably difficult in practice.

When Jesus was asked to name the most important commandment, he gave two: love God and love your neighbour. The previous week's talk had explored the first. This one tackled the second. And it turns out that loving your neighbour is more complicated — and more costly — than most people expect.

What Jesus Actually Said

In Mark 12:31, Jesus said: "Love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these." He was quoting Leviticus 19:18, a command that had been in the Jewish scriptures for over a thousand years. But by pairing it with the command to love God, he elevated it to the highest possible status.

The two commands are not presented as alternatives. They are not ranked in order of importance where one matters more than the other. They are presented as inseparable. You cannot love God and ignore the people around you. And genuine love for others flows most naturally from a genuine relationship with God.

"Jesus said didn't he, when he was asked what's the most important command, he said love God and love others. It wasn't one or the other. It was the two together."

The speaker for this talk, James, put it in practical terms. If the first commandment — love God — was about the vertical relationship, then the second — love your neighbour — was about the horizontal. Both are essential. A faith that is entirely vertical, focused only on personal devotion, is incomplete. And a faith that is entirely horizontal, focused only on good works, has no root system.

Who Counts as My Neighbour

This is the question someone asked Jesus in Luke 10, and his answer was the parable of the Good Samaritan. A man is beaten and left for dead on the road. A priest walks past. A Levite walks past. A Samaritan — someone from a despised ethnic group — stops, tends to the man's wounds, takes him to an inn, and pays for his care.

Jesus's definition of "neighbour" was deliberately expansive. Your neighbour is not just the person who lives next door. Your neighbour is anyone you encounter who is in need — including people you might be culturally conditioned to avoid.

"I think as Christians we can be quite good at loving people who are like us. The challenge is loving people who are different from us, who disagree with us, who might not even like us."

That observation landed during a time when the world was deeply divided — politically, socially, and in many cases within families. Loving your neighbour is straightforward when your neighbour is pleasant. It becomes a genuine test of character when they are not.

Love Is a Verb

The talk emphasised that biblical love is not primarily a feeling. It is an action. The Greek word used in this commandment is agape — a love defined by choice and commitment rather than emotion.

You do not have to feel warm towards your difficult colleague to love them. You do not have to enjoy the company of the person who irritates you to treat them with kindness and respect. Love, in the biblical sense, is a decision about how you will behave towards someone regardless of how they make you feel.

"Love your neighbour as yourself. That little phrase 'as yourself' is interesting. It assumes you already look after yourself — you feed yourself, clothe yourself, take care of your needs. Now do the same for others."

That is a high bar. Most people are naturally attentive to their own needs and naturally neglectful of others'. The command to love your neighbour as yourself is essentially saying: give the same weight to someone else's wellbeing that you instinctively give to your own.

Starting Close to Home

One of the practical tensions the talk addressed was where to start. The needs of the world are overwhelming. Poverty, injustice, loneliness, illness — the scale of human suffering can feel paralysing. Where do you even begin?

The answer, James suggested, is close to home. Literally.

"I think sometimes we can get so focused on the big global issues — which matter, don't get me wrong — that we miss the person right in front of us. The neighbour who lives alone. The colleague who seems down. The family member we haven't called in months."

Loving your neighbour does not require a plane ticket or a charitable foundation. It starts with paying attention to the people already in your orbit. The check-in text. The invitation to dinner. The willingness to listen when someone needs to talk, even when it is not convenient.

During lockdown — which was the backdrop for this talk — many people discovered neighbours they had lived beside for years without knowing. The enforced proximity of a pandemic stripped away the busyness that normally keeps people insulated from each other. Some of those connections lasted. Many did not.

The Uncomfortable Bit

If loving your neighbour were easy, Jesus would not have needed to command it. The uncomfortable truth is that genuine love costs something.

It costs time. In a culture that treats time as the most valuable commodity, giving your time to someone else's needs is a significant sacrifice.

It costs comfort. Engaging with people who are struggling — really engaging, not just sending a quick message — means entering into their pain. And that is emotionally draining.

It costs pride. Sometimes loving your neighbour means apologising when you would rather be right. It means serving when you would rather be served. It means putting someone else's needs ahead of your own preferences.

"It doesn't work unless it's about others as well. It's like up to God and out to others. If you could sum up all the law, Jesus says love God and love people around you and love the world."

The Consumerism Trap

The discussion that followed the talk raised an important point about how easy it is to approach faith — and even love — as consumers.

In a consumer mindset, church exists to meet my needs. Prayer exists to get me what I want. Community exists to make me feel good. And loving my neighbour is something I do when it is convenient and makes me feel virtuous.

Jesus's model was the opposite. He washed feet. He served food. He spent time with people who could offer him nothing in return. His entire life was oriented outward, towards others, even when it cost him everything.

"It's a very self-centred thing if your faith is all about what I can get. What happens when your life's not easy? If it's just transactional — I go to church to get stuff from God — then it falls apart the moment God doesn't deliver."

The antidote to consumer faith is neighbour love. When your faith is expressed not just in what you receive but in what you give, it develops a resilience that survives difficulty. Because serving others gets your eyes off your own problems and connects you to something larger than yourself.

Small Things, Consistently

The talk closed with a challenge that was deliberately modest. Not "go and change the world" but "go and love one person this week."

Make a meal for someone. Write a note of encouragement. Offer to help with a practical task. Listen — really listen — to someone who needs to be heard. None of these require special skills or significant resources. They just require intention.

"I think the world changes one act of love at a time. Not grand gestures, but small, consistent, ordinary acts of kindness done in the name of Jesus."

That is not a headline-grabbing approach. It will not go viral on social media. But it is exactly what Jesus described when he talked about the kingdom of God — something that starts small, like a mustard seed, and grows into something far larger than anyone expected.

A Question for the Week

The two great commandments are not a to-do list. They are a way of life. And the second one — love your neighbour as yourself — is the one that most people affirm in principle and neglect in practice.

Who is your neighbour this week? Not in the abstract, global sense, but in the immediate, practical, right-in-front-of-you sense. And what would it look like to love them — not with feelings, but with action?