Loving Your Neighbour

Submitted by: Naorem Martin Singh

“And he (Jesus) said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and the first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the Prophets.’” – (Matt 22:37-40 ESV)

So, the great commandment commands on loving our neighbor. But the question, which needs to be answered clearly and properly, is, “Do you know who your neighbor is?” (Mother Teresa).

The answer is very obvious, isn’t it? As accepted and thought immediately by almost everyone, a neighbor is the person next door. So, we are to love them as we love ourselves, do to them in what we, in certain situations, would do to ourselves. In doing so we must keep in mind that everyone, not just us, is created in His image and that He also care and love for them, as we believe He does for us. This is when we look from a narrower perspective, which is at the same level of importance as the other perspective, which is the wider perspective as Mother Teresa wrote, “We must love those who are nearest to us…” The narrower perspective is more like a starting point for ‘It is easy to love those who are far away. It is not easy to love those who live right next to us.’

Coming to the wider perspective, it would not be wrong to say that a neighbor is not just the one next door. It means much more than that. The account of Luke on parable of the Good Samaritan again gives the perfect explanation on this. In the parable, Jesus’ concluding question was, “Which of these three, do you think proved to be neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” (Luke 10:36 ESV). The lawyer replied, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said, “You go and do likewise.”(Luke 10:37 ESV). Simply put, whoever may need us is a neighbor. Mother Teresa’s life is a clear manifestation and a living proof of this. So, loving our neighbor is not just a thing that happens between persons next door but a thing that can happen anywhere no matter where we are, no matter which group we belong to.

One last remark from Martin Luther King Jr. that would encourage and give us more light on this: “The first question which the Priest and the Levite asked was, ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But the Good Samaritan reverse the question, ‘If I do not help this man what will happen to him?’”