“If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well.” James 2:8 (ESV)
We are by nature self-absorbed, self-centered, and self-focused. When anything happens around us our first question is: How will this affect me? In many ways, we act as though the earth really does rotate around us. The reality of our fallen nature pops up from time to time like a groundhog trying to catch a glimpse of daylight.
Jesus acknowledges the presence of our self-love. We truly love ourselves. As one of my colleagues would often say, “Sometimes you just have to be good to yourself!” We have no problem being good to ourselves do we? We value comfort. We value pleasure. We value looking good and feeling good and sleeping good.
As we begin viewing others from God’s perspective, we will begin to value others the way God values them. The resulting choice will be to love others as we love ourselves. In other words, we will begin to treat others the way we want to be treated. We will love others with the same kind of love that we desire to receive.
James identifies that we are doing right when we love others as we love ourselves. Longing to do right is not enough. Putting our faith in action by loving others brings honor to God.
Do you love others as much as you love yourself? Ouch! That’s a painful question.
Drawing Near,
Stephen Trammell
Lead Pastor
Follow me on twitter at: http://twitter.com/stephentrammell
2 replies on “Loving Your Neighbor”
Hi there tis is kin of of off topjc butt I waas wantinjg to now iff bblogs
use WYSIWYG editors or if you hve too mawnually code woth HTML.
I’m startung a blog oon bbut haave no coding experience
so I wantedd to gget guijdance from someokne witgh experience.
Anyy help would be greatly appreciated!
779170 711365Jeden Tag stellt man sich die Frage Was Koche Ich Heute?! Zerbrechen Sie sich nicht den Kopf, besuchen Sie uns am besten direkt auf unserer Webseite uns lassen Sie sich inspirieren 417777