What Does It Mean To Love Your Neighbour As Much As You Love Yourself?

Jesus commanded us to love God and to love our neighbour as much as we love ourselves (Luke 10:27). The first part appears easy, as we can love God who loves us unconditionally. Only God and I know about this. However, the second part is where the real test of our love is. How do we love our offensive neighbour? God says we must love our enemies. How can we love our enemies when we find it difficult to love our friends? This is why man can’t do this in his own strength. What God commands us to do we can only do through His strength.

God saved us from our sin nature and gave us a new nature. We are a new creation in Him. Now we can operate in our new nature. Our spirit is renewed, and He comes and resides in us through His Holy Spirit. Now, when we operate in the Spirit, we can love like He does. This is a supernatural love. We can only love ourselves when we see ourselves as He sees us: complete in Him. In our depraved state, it is impossible to love ourselves. We only see our sinfulness and hate ourselves. However, in Him a transformation takes place, and we see ourselves as whole. Through His eyes, now we can see our enemies as He sees them, lost and depraved. Now we can love them because He loves us.

Some of His ways are difficult to follow because we want to do it in our strength rather than His. God made a way for us through Jesus to do it through us. His Holy Spirit gives us the strength and the ability to do what is impossible for us. This is why we need to be filled with His Spirit and to walk in His Spirit. He has made it easy for us, but we make it difficult by disobedience and unbelief. We fail to see the salvation wrought for us on Calvary through His sacrifice. We fail to surrender all to Him. To love God is to surrender to Him our all. To love our neighbour as ourselves is only possible when we surrender all to Him. The key to fulfilling His commandment to love God and love your neighbour is only possible through total surrender.