Love Thy Neighbour

Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord. LEVITICUS 19:18

Two sermons in the first series belong together: Love Thy Neighbour and Love Thine Enemy. In them MacDonald turned from the soul’s dealings with God to its dealings with other people, and he found that they were, in the end, the same thing. To love God and to love one’s neighbour are not two duties but one life.

More than law

MacDonald began with a question about the relationship between love and law. Paul says that love is the fulfilling of the law. Does it follow that keeping the law is love? MacDonald thought not. A man who loves his neighbour will keep the law towards him; but a man may keep every rule and not love at all. And in fact, MacDonald argued, no one can keep the law towards his neighbour without love, because the law reaches into every delicate corner of how we treat one another, and only love can follow it there. “We are not made for law, but for love.”

Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. ROMANS 13:10

The neighbour God sends

Who, then, is my neighbour? MacDonald’s answer was the answer of the parable of the good Samaritan, put in his own plain terms. We do not get to choose. “A man must not choose his neighbour; he must take the neighbour that God sends him.” The neighbour is simply whoever is next to us at the moment — the person on the train, the colleague at work, the stranger at the door. In each of them, MacDonald believed, there is hidden a brother or sister made in the image of God.

Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise. LUKE 10:36–37

He saw the love of neighbour as a way of escape. Left to ourselves, we live shut up in our own concerns, breathing our own air. “This love of our neighbour is the only door out of the dungeon of self.”

Even the enemy

The second sermon goes further. Jesus did not only say Love your neighbour; He said Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven. MacDonald did not pretend this was easy. He asked whether it was reasonable even to expect it, and answered with a sentence that cuts through every objection: “Is it then reasonable to love our enemies? God does; therefore it must be the highest reason.”

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven. MATTHEW 5:44–45

How can we love someone who is cruel, unjust and contemptuous towards us? MacDonald was honest: we cannot love the cruelty, the injustice or the contempt. Nobody can, and the best people hate them most. But those things are not the person. Beneath them lies a human being whom God made and loves, and it is that person we are called to love — the person God means him to become, and is still working to make him. To love an enemy is to want for him what God wants for him.

The Father’s way

For MacDonald, the love of enemies was simply the way of the Father. God sends His sun and rain on the evil and the good alike. He loved us when we were His enemies. A child of such a Father cannot hate the people his Father loves. To learn to love our enemies is to grow into the likeness of our Father in heaven.

Weighing it

These sermons are a fine exposition of one of the hardest commands of Christ, and their teaching is deeply biblical. MacDonald’s distinction between keeping the law and loving, his refusal to let us choose our neighbours, and his insistence that we love our enemies because God does are all true to the Lord’s words.

If there is a caution, it is a small one. MacDonald’s confidence in the hidden goodness of every person sometimes led him to speak as though the divine nature were already present in everyone, waiting to be uncovered. Scripture speaks of the image of God in every person, which is a real ground of their dignity and of our love; but it also speaks of a heart that is deceitful above all things, and of a new birth that is needed before a person can share the divine nature. We love our enemies not because they are secretly good, but because God loves sinners, and because Christ died for the ungodly.

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. ROMANS 5:8

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Who is the neighbour God has sent you this week? Do one concrete thing for that person.

2. Think of someone whose company you avoid. Pray for that person by name, and ask God to show you how to love him or her.

3. Name an enemy, or someone who has wronged you. Separate the wrong from the person, and pray for the person’s good.

4. Read Luke 10:25–37 and ask where you have passed by on the other side.

5. Read Romans 5:6–11 and give thanks that God loved you when you were His enemy.

A PRAYER

Father, You make Your sun rise on the evil and on the good, and You loved me when I was Your enemy.

Forgive me for choosing my neighbours, and for passing by the ones You sent me.

Give me grace to love those who have hurt me, to bless those who curse me, and to pray for those who use me badly.

Bring me out of the dungeon of self into the freedom of Your love, that I may be Your child indeed, through Jesus Christ. Amen.