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Transcript 175A — How Do We Love Our Neighbour as Ourselves
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Yes. You know the verse that says that we should love our neighbour as ourselves?
HC: Yes.
CALLER: What does it mean? How should we love ourselves?
HC: Jesus said, "Love your neighbour as yourself," because within the heart of man God has put a self-love. Man intuitively wants to preserve his own life. He wants the very best for himself. Now he may be careless with his life, and he may do things that are destructive to his life. But he's doing this because he has been deceived into thinking some sin of his is actually beneficial to him. Pleasure is superimposed over what is best for him. But still, the ultimate package is that he is doing what is best for him. Man by nature is designed this way.
Now God has declared that we are to love our neighbour with that same care with which we love ourselves. We want the very best for them also. And God actually told us how we can love our neighbour in I John 5:2: "By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey His commandments."
Now you see, if we love our neighbour then we would never, for example, want to commit adultery, just to use this as an illustration. Anyone at all who says, "Oh, we love each other so much that we can't help it that we live immorally together," well, that's utter nonsense. That's not love. That's lust. That's just selfish desire, because to live immorally with someone else is to incur the wrath of God against that person. So how can that be love for that person? That is simply selfish lust.
The same thing is true if we do anything against our neighbour. If we hate our neighbour, that's the equivalent of murder. If we covet what they have, so that we begin to get ideas as to how we might obtain that which doesn't belong to us, this is showing that we do not love our neighbour.
But if we are trying to live by God's rules in relationship to our neighbour, we won't covet, we won't kill, we won't commit adultery. We won't have these sins in our life, and this will really show that we love our neighbour.
CALLER: I don't want to have selfish love. But since you said God gave us love for ourselves, is it to preserve our life? Is that what you mean, that kind of love?
HC: Yes, to preserve our life. And actually, that love can be misguided altogether, so that it becomes selfish love. And we really think that we're on the throne of our life. We have to, if we truly love our life, look at ourselves very honestly in the light of God's rules, which comes back again to keeping His commandments. And in the Bible we read that we're sinners, that we're under the wrath of God and subject to hell, we begin to cry out to God for mercy. We don't deserve His mercy but we cry out to God for mercy. And we come to Him with a broken and contrite heart, and desire the salvation that He tells us about in His Word.
CALLER: I listen to Dr. Adams and to Dr. Narramore. And Dr. Narramore always seems to talk about what happened in our early childhood, that that's what probably caused our problems. But Dr. Adams doesn't seem to speak that way. He seems to say that we don't fulfil our responsibilities. He doesn't blame it on our childhood. Which is right? I know we're sinners, but . . .
HC: I personally believe that a lot of psychology today is seeking for a scapegoat, a reason for why we are, without really getting at the heart of the matter, which is that we are sinners, that we have a sinful nature. And so we alibi and say, "Well, my mother brought me up this way," or "My daddy did this to me, and therefore I am the way that I am." Well, they may have done those things, but we are the way we are because we're sinners. And wonderfully, the love of God is such, and the grace of God is such, that regardless of what the outward circumstances are that may have helped to form our character (and certainly outward circumstances, our environment, has made an impact upon our character), nevertheless, regardless of what those may be, once we turn our life over to Christ, once we are born again, then it's unimportant what finally formed our character, why we are the way we are.
Really, to try to dig back, dig back, to what happened when you were a child, what's so big about that? All I know is, I'm a sinner. I'm under the wrath of God, and I'm in trouble with God, and "Oh Lord, have mercy on me." And once I'm a born again believer, then all of the sins of my childhood and the sins of my parents, as they may have related to me, are not at all.
CALLER: Thank you for your patience.
HC: Thank you so much for calling and sharing. Good night.