WWUTT 212 Love Your Neighbor As Yourself?

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Jesus repeated Leviticus 19 .18 when he said you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
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That verse does not mean that you are supposed to love yourself, rather as you are inclined to love yourself, instead show that love to others when we understand the text.
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You are listening to When We Understand The Text, an online Bible ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty.
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Find videos and more at our website www .tt .com. Now here's our host,
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Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. Happy birthday to our son Zij, who is a big number five today.
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Born on the first day of summer 2010, June 21st. In a non -leap year, the first day of summer falls on the 21st.
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This is a leap year, so it fell on the 20th. We call him Zij. That was not planned, actually.
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We started calling him that two hours after he was born. His name is Zachary Joseph. We thought about calling him
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ZJ, but just when I was holding him in the delivery room, I started calling him Zij, and Becky said,
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I like that. And so it stuck ever since. We call him Zij, or Zigi guy, or Zachary.
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Never call him Zach. We've never called him that, but Zij, Zij is the name that has stuck.
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So happy number five today, buddy. We're back in Romans chapter 13. If you would join with me, verses 8 through 10.
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Romans 13, starting in verse 8, owe no one anything except to love each other.
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For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment are summed up in this word.
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You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.
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We come back to verse 8. Owe no one anything except to love each other. It is the debt that we can never fully repay, to constantly be loving one another.
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Peter had asked Jesus about forgiveness. How often do I forgive my brother?
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Seven times? 70 times? And Jesus said, no, I say to you, 70 times seven.
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And in saying that, he wasn't saying that we only forgive 490 times, so keep track of that, and when you hit 490, you don't have to forgive anymore, but rather that we just keep on forgiving.
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And we never run out of forgiveness because the forgiveness that God has shown to us is unending and immeasurable.
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And so, we must extend that same kind of forgiveness to one another in that same way we love each other with a debt that we can never fully repay.
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For God's love is endless and boundless. As we read this in Ephesians 3,
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Paul praying for the Ephesian people that they might be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the height and the depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
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That's Ephesians 3, verses 18 and 19. And so, with that same immeasurable love of Christ, we love one another.
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Love each other without end, without limit, without expectation, without qualifications.
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Okay, nobody has to give you anything or extend to you a certain measure of love for you to just keep on loving one another.
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For the one who loves another fulfilled the law. As we talked about yesterday, it's not just that we abstain from murdering or committing adultery or stealing or coveting, but rather the active pursuit is that we love one another.
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The active thing that we are to do as children of God is not to just abstain from certain things, but rather we actively pursue one another with the love of God for he actively pursued us.
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You understand that? That we were not seeking after God. If we understand the doctrine that has been laid out for us in Romans, back in Romans 3, we were reading that no one seeks
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God. We were not actively pursuing God, but he actively pursued us by sending his son
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Jesus to die on the cross for our sins. He did not leave us in our sin to perish under his wrath burning against all unrighteousness, but he made payment for our sins so that we would be made to stand righteous before God.
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We do that through Christ, whose blood has paid for our sins, whose righteousness we wear, and now we stand before God as justified.
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Because God was actively pursuing us in this way, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
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God showed his love for us in this way. So we are to actively pursue one another with the love of God.
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When we were reading back in Romans chapter 12, and we read that we need to contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.
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To be told to seek to show hospitality means that we don't just leave our doors of our home open for anybody who might come by, but rather we are actively looking for people to welcome into our homes and show brotherly love to.
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We are seeking to show that kind of hospitality, that kind of welcomeness in the body of Christ.
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Because again, God actively pursued us to show his love to us and welcome us into his family.
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So we should actively be in pursuit of others to share the gospel with them so that they might be welcomed into the family of God and we show the brotherly love of Christ to them all the more.
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First John 4 .10, in this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.
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Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. We show that love to the world by sharing the gospel of Christ, that they might repent of their sins and know
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Christ who is the propitiation for our sins. Simply meaning that by the sacrifice of Christ, he atoned for our sins and satisfied the wrath of God.
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A person is only saved by knowing Christ. And so we must share this gospel with the world.
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And that is loving. That is the loving thing to do. With the same love that God showed to us that we might hear the gospel and live.
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So we must, with the love of Christ, share that message with the world. So coming back to this here is
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Paul is listing these commandments. He says for the commandments, you shall not commit adultery. You shall not murder.
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You shall not steal. You shall not covet and any other commandment. Of course, he's listing 10 commandments, right?
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From the Decalogue is the other word for it. What we know is the 10 commandments and the 10 commandments themselves are split into what is called the first and second tables of the law.
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The first table of the law are vertical commandments. The first four commandments, all vertical, they address our relationship with God.
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Commandment number one, I am the Lord, your God, you will have no other gods before me. Commandment number two, don't raise up any graven image and worship that.
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Commandment number three, don't disrespect my name. Commandment number four, do not even disrespect my day.
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So those are all the first four commandments vertical dealing with our relationship with God.
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That's the first table of the law. The second table of the law are all horizontal commandments. They are about our relationship with one another.
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And the first of those horizontal commandments is you will honor your father and your mother. The second commandment is you shall not murder.
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The next of these horizontal commands is don't commit adultery. The next is do not steal.
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The next is do not bear false witness or do not lie. And then the last is do not covet. And yes,
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I can do all of those off the top of my head. It is very important for you as you are learning and understanding the scriptures and the basics of the
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Bible that you memorize and understand the Ten Commandments. So among those horizontal commandments, specifically what
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Paul is talking about here, the summary of that is to love your neighbor as yourself.
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You are fulfilling the second table of the law when you love your neighbor as yourself.
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So the first table of the law essentially is this. You will love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
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First four commandments summarized. The second table of the law is essentially this.
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You will love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.
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Now I want to address one more thing before we bounce off of this section and move on tomorrow to verses 11 through 14.
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The phrase you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is a way that this verse, this command as given in Leviticus 19, 18, as Jesus repeats as being the second greatest command, there is a way that this phrase gets very abused.
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And you probably know where I'm going with this before I explain it in our me centered culture and our selfish, everybody look at me society.
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You shall love your neighbor as yourself means that you should love yourself.
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And in fact, you have to love yourself first before you can love anyone else.
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This verse is directly saying that we need to love ourselves. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
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That is not what that means. And here's the what video that we did about that.
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Jesus said to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind and love your neighbor is yourself. Now, there are some who have taken that command to mean that you're supposed to love yourself
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In fact, they'll say you can't love others unless you love yourself. And you can't love if you don't love yourself.
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The best way to understand this command is to look at the context by which it is originally given in Leviticus 19.
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You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
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I am the Lord. A few verses later, when a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.
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You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you and you shall love him as yourself. For you are strangers in the land of Egypt.
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I am the Lord your God. God says to his children, just as I have loved you as my own, so you love others as if they were your own, as if they were yourself.
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The apostle Paul wrote, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
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If you think that in order to do that, you first have to love yourself, well, that would be selfish, wouldn't it? If you don't love yourself, it is impossible for you to love anyone else.
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It's just not possible. You know why? Because you can't give away what you don't have. Well, if you don't have it, then how can you give it to yourself?
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Your worth is not in how you love yourself. It's in Christ who demonstrated his love on the cross, dying in our place for our sins.
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If you love God, you will love others, not with the selfish love of you, but the selfless love of Jesus.
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When we understand the text. The song that was heard in that video was from Natalie Grant entitled
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Better Hands. The false teacher that you heard there was Joyce Meyer. Nobody needs to be told how to love themselves.
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We already love ourselves just fine. It is inherent within each and every human being to love themselves.
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What the Lord's command is, is to love your neighbor as yourself. That love that you generally have for yourself, focus it outward on others instead.
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As you already love yourself, love others instead. That's really what the command is. Love your neighbor as yourself.
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As you already love yourself, as you already understand that selfish love, that selfish looking out for yourself, look out for others instead.
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Put others needs ahead of your own. That's what it means to be told you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
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Not that you need to love yourself first. You already do that just fine. You are fixed on your own experiences.
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All you know is your own thoughts, your own emotions. You can't possibly conceive of what another person thinks or feels.
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It is not possible. So how is it that we are putting another person's needs ahead of our own?
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How is it that it is possible for us to empathize, to truly empathize with another person?
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To weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice as we were told earlier in Romans chapter 12.
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How is it that we are able to be of one mind with another person?
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The answer is Christ. As Paul said in Ephesians 2 .5, have this mind in you which is also in Christ Jesus.
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In fact, I'm going to go to that and read that beginning at the first verse of the chapter. Philippians 2 .1,
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so if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, and we know that there is, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.
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And how do we do that? We have the mind of Christ. That's what Paul is going to get to here. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
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Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Now understand, we look to our own interests.
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We also look to the interests of others, but this is right after being told. Count others more significant than yourselves.
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Have this mind in you. Let me repeat that again, Philippians 2 .5,
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have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
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Therefore God is highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth.
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And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the father.
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Jesus is the ultimate example of loving the Lord, our God, with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and loving our neighbor as ourself.
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As it says here that Jesus emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
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He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he took on flesh and became a servant.
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He loved his neighbor, all right? He showed love your neighbor as yourself.
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He also showed love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. When it says that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is
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Lord to the glory of God, the father, everything that Jesus did was ultimately to the glory of God, the father.
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So he loved the father with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength, setting us an example of how to do that very thing and love our neighbor as ourself.
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So there it is, and that is the fulfilling of the law in Jesus Christ, our
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Lord, who fulfilled all the law and the prophets. Our great God, we thank you for sending your son,
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Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for our sins, setting for us also an example of how to obey the law when we could not do this before.
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There was nothing in our ability that could have kept the law in a way that was pleasing to God, but because of Christ fulfilling the law and the prophets and giving us his spirit, we are able to obey the law of God in a way that is pleasing to God.
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We can keep your commandments, and we are being grown and shaped more in the image of Christ as we do this.
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And so Lord, keep us faithful, keep us steadfast. When we stumble and we falter, let us come to your throne again and seek the forgiveness of God every single day, desiring to have our minds renewed and our hearts refreshed.
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And we have been promised that if we ask forgiveness for our sins, you will forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
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Wash us by your spirit, God. Daily may we come to you and then help us to stir one another to love and good works.
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In the name of Jesus, we pray, amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the
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Text. Pastor Gabe is the author of the book, 40 of the Most Popular Bible Verses and What They Really Mean.
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Available in paperback or for your Kindle, found at our website at www .tt .com.