Appendix 5. Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

Jesus told us to love our neighbor as ourselves. How can I love my neighbor as myself? To love my neighbor as myself, I must throw away the greed and cravings inside me. People who look only at themselves can never obey the word of God. Some people make excuses: I have no money right now, I am sick, I am too poor. Or they say: I am better educated than that person, I hold a high position the world respects, so I should be treated with respect at church too, and I am too busy to have time to look into my neighbor’s pain. Of course life in the world may be so exhausting that you cannot take care of a neighbor who is struggling even more than you are. People in the burning fire of hell, too, are in such terrible pain themselves that they cannot pay attention to the people beside them being tormented by Satan and crying out in the burning fire. Then what difference is there between us, who care nothing for our neighbors now, and the people in the fire of hell? What difference is there between saying we have no time to love our neighbors because we look only at our own pain and our own greed, and looking only at your own pain in the fire of hell? To care for our neighbors with the love of Jesus, we must die on the cross. Only then will the dead body stop being greedy, and only then will the reborn soul have the room to look into its neighbor’s pain.

Jesus said that devotion in loving your neighbor is itself the evidence that you have not fallen into hell. That is why he said not to look only at your own pain like those who are in hell, but to love your neighbor as yourself, like one who is alive and has life. Everyone is made to love only themselves. To overcome that evil human nature, we must learn suffering, sacrifice, service and love through Jesus Christ, and go further still and be born again through Christ. It is because we are still living in a way no different at all from those in hell that our own pain feels bigger and sharper. Jesus gladly gave his own life for sinners, yet we cannot even share the bread the Lord put in our hands.

Everyone wants to live a rich life in the world. But because we know the Lord’s sacrifice, we overcome our sinful nature and put the word into practice. Only when I let go of what is mine can I love someone else. People who clutch what is theirs have no hands free to hold anyone, so they cannot care for others or hold them. God’s work is not something done by special people. Praying for the powerless and sharing what is mine with my neighbor are not things done by special people either. People who cannot love God can never love their neighbor in the Lord. For in God’s sight, everything that happens under the sun, good or evil, happens in darkness. Unless you hold up the light that overcomes the darkness, however loudly you shout in the dirty and ugly darkness that you are good, you are in the end still in the darkness. Coming out of that darkness into the light is being born again, and taking your neighbor’s hand and coming out of the darkness together is loving your neighbor.

The church is the body of Jesus, and that means the church is myself. When I do not move for the church, which is myself, that church dies. That is why we are told to work together for good. The thought that even if I do not do it someone else will do God’s work and the church will grow is giving up on being a member of God’s body. The kingdom of God will grow only when each one of you moves. As you move, the body of Jesus will become healthy, and the souls that are saved will be offered to God as the fruit of your reward. Where are you standing now as you look to the Lord? And what devotion are you offering to God right now? I hope you will grow healthy through the word and show your faith by what you do.