Man's Duty to Love His Fellow Man

If I could only have one word with which to sum up all things past, present, and future; seen and unseen; both revealed and unknown; of things up in the heavens and things here upon the earth, the only word that would even come close to being sufficient enough is “God.” In similar fashion, if I could only have one word to sum up all responsibility and duty that mankind has with reference to his behavior and conduct toward one another, of all of the English language, I can think of none more fitting or more appropriate than “love.” “Put on therefore, as God’s elect, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, longsuffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving each other, if any man have a complaint against any; even as the Lord forgave you, so also do ye: and above all these things,” says Paul, “put on love, which is the bond of perfectness” (Col. 3:12-14). What an important subject this is! “But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13). “And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, trying him: Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And he said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with al thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments the whole law hangeth, and the prophets” (Mt. 22:34-40). There is no greater commandment concerning duty toward our fellow man than to love him!

With that in mind, I’d like us to look first at Matthew 5:verses 43-48. One of the first things we might notice in this passage is that Jesus didn’t say, “It is written,” what He said was: “Ye have heard that it was said.” There is a difference between “it is written” and “ye have heard that it was said.” When Satan tempted Him in the wilderness He said, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. It is written, Thou shalt not make trial of the Lord thy God. It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Mt. 4:1-11). In chapter 11 when He taught the multitudes about John the Baptist He said, “This is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, Who shall prepare thy way before thee” (v. 10). In Matthew 21:12-13: “And Jesus entered into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of he money-changers, and the seats of them that sold the doves; and he saith unto them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer: but ye make it a den of robbers.” Speaking of Judas Iscariot, He said: “The Son of man goeth, even as it is written of him: but woe unto that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed! good were it for that man if he had not been born” (Mt. 26:24). “Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended in me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad” (Mt. 26:31). But in verses 43 and 44 of Matthew 5, Jesus did not say, “it is written,” He said, “ye have heard that it was said…” That would seem strange, certainly, if He were referring to the Scriptures, but not only did He not say “it is written,” but He could not have said “it is written” because it never was. Nowhere in the Old Testament Scriptures are the words, “hate thine enemy” found! What are found are these: “If thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again. If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his burden, thou shalt forbear to leave him, thou shalt surely release it with him” (Ex 23:4-5); “If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; And if he be thirsty, give him water to drink” (Pr 25:21). There is a whole world of difference between “it is written in the inspired Scriptures” and “you have heard that it was said.” There are a whole lot of things that man has said, but what really matters is, what is written in the Scriptures?

Those Pharisees had become so legalistic and external in their approach to the law that they seemed to have altogether forgotten the spirit of the law. “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear beautiful, but inwardly are full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but inwardly ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity” (Mt. 23:27-28). “…Ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith: but these ye ought to have done, and not to have left the other undone” (Mt. 23:23b). What Jesus seems to be doing here in Matthew 5 is bringing things back into focus that had become blurred by the leading traditions of the day, and also, He was teaching that those who would be His disciples needed to get away from that legalistic and outwardly focused mindset that was being so commonly taught, where someone could be considered holy based on his outward performance while being dead and rotten on the inside. His disciples are pure and holy in heart, at the core of their being, and when that is as it should be, then what is seen on the outside will be reflective of that which is present on the inside.

“But I say,” “I” being the Son of God, the authority on the matter. “You have heard them say, but this is what ‘I say.’ “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you.” Notice, He goes all the way over to the extreme. He didn’t say, “love those who get promoted before you do at work,” or “those who cut into line at the supermarket,” but “love your enemies”; Those that are the hardest for us to love. That same word translated “enemies” here, is the very same word used with reference to the Devil in Matthew 13:39 and death in First Corinthians 15:26, it just doesn’t get any worse than that! These would be the very hardest people for us to love that Jesus is talking about here in Matthew 5, but He says that we are to love them anyway. Even if we were to be drug out on the streets and stoned to death or left in prison to die, as long as we have breath in our lungs, we are to pray for them. Stephen did it in Acts 7, and Jesus did it as He hung there upon the cross! Well, if that is the disposition we are to have toward the very hardest to love, what does that say about all of those that are somewhere in-between? What He is saying here is not, “love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy,” but “love they neighbor, and love thine enemy also.” He took hate out and put love in its place!

“That ye may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.” Boy, if there were a greater motivation to obey Christ, I don’t know what it would be! It is a terrible thought to think of not being a child of God!  How tragic it would be to find ourselves outside of the family of God! “Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God,” said John. I sure hope we value that as much as we ought to. If we do, then we should love even our enemies so that we might be more like our heavenly Father. He doesn’t give the Sun and the rain to fall upon those who love Him only, nor does He withhold them from those who do not love Him or serve Him, but He gives them to all men. To love only those who love us requires no special effort. That is part of human nature; we are made that way as human beings. It takes no special effort for that, even those who do not believe in God, the heathen, do the same. What sort of progress is made by that? The same is true if we greet only our brethren, or our friends, who doesn’t? If we want to be complete, or whole, or perfect in our love for others as our Father is, we must do good unto all men.

The second passage that I would like for us to look at is found in Luke 10:25-37. It is about what is often called “The Parable of the Good Samaritan.” It’s one that I’m sure we’re all very familiar with, so I’m just going to mention a few things about it.

“And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and made trial of him, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (v.25). A lawyer was someone who was skilled in the law of Moses, who could interpret it and teach it. This lawyer was making “trial” of Jesus. He wasn’t asking an honest question. He was just testing Him.

“And he [Jesus] said unto him, what is written in the law? how readest thou?” (v. 26). He took the question and handed it right back to him. He knew what he was up to.

“And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself” (v. 27), from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18.

“And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live. But he, desiring to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbor?” (v. 28-29). The lawyer had just answered his own question and demonstrated to everyone present that he had just asked a question that he already knew the answer to. So, looking to justify himself, he asked Jesus another question: “who is my neighbor?”

Jesus made answer and said, A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho; and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance a certain priest was going down that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And in like manner a Levite also, when he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he was moved with compassion, and came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on them oil and wine; and he set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow he took out two shillings, and gave them to the host, and said, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, I, when I come back again, will repay thee. Which of these three, thinkest thou, proved neighbor unto him that fell among the robbers? And he said, He that showed mercy on him. And Jesus said unto him, Go, and do thou likewise. (v. 30-37)

Now, what lessons might we be able to draw from these two passages?

Our Love for Our Fellow Man Should Be Clearly Visible

Mankind is in many ways a derelict in his duty to love his fellow man. He is much of the time at war with himself—both literally and figuratively. But if people loved one another as they should, the awful kinds of things we can see on the evening news each night would not be happening. We don’t lie to, cheat, steel from, or kill those we love. “Owe no man anything, save to love one another: for he that loveth his neighbor hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not covet, and if there be any other commandment, it is summed up in this word, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: love therefore is the fulfilment of the law” (Ro. 13:8-10).

What about us? “What do we more than others?” We are the light of the world! We are supposed to stand out like lights amid the darkness, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of light to throw aside a whole lot of darkness. The darkest place I have ever been is in a cave hundreds of feet underneath the ground when the lights were turned off. I could not see a thing! There was nothing but blackness, but had someone lit a tiny little match, that one little flame could have pushed all of that thick darkness out of the way so that I could have at least seen what was around me. Even the darkest of darkness cannot smother the smallest of lights. Well, if that is true of that tiny little light, what about an entire city set on a hill? It cannot be hid! “Let your light so shine…” So shine as what? Let your light so shine as a city that is set on a hill that cannot be hid, so “that man might see your good works and glorify your Father, who is in heaven.”

If we were to have known nothing of the parable of the Good Samaritan; if for the first time we ever heard it, we heard the parable by itself (Luke 10:30-35), and someone asked us which of those three—the priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan—loved the man beaten and robed as himself, there is not a person present here tonight that would not have known the answer! It would be that obvious to us. The Samaritan was the one who loved him as himself. How would we know? It is visible in the actions of the Samaritan toward his fellow man.

When we love our fellow man as we should, it will be seen. When we do not love our fellow man as we should, that will also be seen.

We Imitate God When We Love Our Fellow Man

Well, how in the world can we imitate God? God is eternal. God is omnipotent. God is omnipresent. God is omniscient. Surely you don’t suggest that we should be any of these? No, that wouldn’t be possible. But, it is possible, even necessary that we be like God in other ways if we hope to have eternal life. How? Well, God is holy. Aren’t we also to be holy? Yes. God is gracious and kind. Shouldn’t we also be gracious and kind? Yes. God does not lie. Should we lie? No. God is merciful. Jesus said, “blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”  When it comes to morality, not only can we, but we must be like God. Yes, we are human. Yes, we are limited, but it is because we are human and made in the image of God that we have this ability to imitate Him to begin with.

Now, going back to Matthew 5:48, Jesus is talking about this very thing when He says, “Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  He didn’t say you will be like God in every way. Nor did He say you don’t have to if you don’t want to. He said, “ye shall be…” Shall be what? Perfect; complete, whole, nothing lacking in this way. What way? In our love for man. Just as God loves both the good and the evil, the just and the unjust, so too, we must love all men.

There are Some Who Seek to Avoid This Duty

                Jesus didn’t say why the priest and Levite passed by on the other side, but if asked, I’m sure they could have come up with plenty of excuses. Maybe they thought that he was already dead and was, therefore, beyond helping. Maybe they just did not want to and thought that no one else would know about it anyway. Maybe they had to be somewhere and did not have time. It seems like we can always find excuses for not doing things that we should be doing. But, we might stop and ask our selves, why did the Samaritan stop and help? It had nothing to do with the man’s skin color; it had nothing to do with his religion, his heritage, his cultural background, his political view, or anything else like that. What did it have to do with? Here was a fellow human being laying on the ground in need of help, and looking upon him, the Bible says, “he had compassion on him.” The criteria for loving another person is that he is our fellow man.

What if we were to just remind ourselves whenever our paths cross with others, no matter who they are, that they are our neighbors? The person who cuts us off in traffic is our neighbor. The person that is standing behind the counter at the grocery store is our neighbor. The homeless person is our neighbor. That one person in our life for whom the adage, “there’s always one” applies to, is still our neighbor. Do we love him? Would we be willing to help him? Are we praying for him?

Conclusion