Do You Love Others as You Love Yourself?
Not Easy Is It?
How would loving others look if we did it the way we are commanded to love by the Lord Jesus in Matthew 22:37-39? Much of the love we would and do give to others is based on their needs. Don’t you think? Wouldn’t loving others come down to “knowing them well enough to know what they need then sacrificially giving to meet those needs even if it meant being deprived of some of our own resources”?
For instance, when we see someone lacking basic life resources, and we know it is legitimate (if we loved them), wouldn’t we give to meet those needs? That’s what Jesus did for us and does for us daily. He gives of His resources(“every good and perfect gift”) to meet our needs – food, shelter, air, water, clothing, etc. Do you see why many Christians are involved in supplying basic life necessities for others in places where the resources to meet those needs are lacking.
Love meets physical needs sacrificially. You have done it for years for your own family. Your family would not have survived or thrived if you had not sacrificially met needs from your own resources.
In another way we show love by meeting the needs of the heart. At the end of the 52 Week Plan for the last year or so, I have supplied a link for the study of the Top Ten Relational Needs. Carol and I have discovered that many of these needs go unmet in children and adults around the world. It is assumed that basic relational needs are met, but we have seen what a lack of these needs does to the human soul. Loving others should include the meeting of the needs of the heart/soul as well as the body. When you love others and give your time and attention to accept, appreciate, approve, pay attention, comfort, encourage, value, provide safely and support, you are loving others on a level that goes beyond the physical and into the heart of the matter.
Surely it is vital to meet the physical needs of others so they can live, but loving them by connecting to their heart gives them a basic human relationship we call friendship. Loving this way creates a healthy environment for them to grow relationally and helps them establish lasting, loving relationships with others in their future. Jesus loves us by supplying our physical needs, and He gives us His love to let us know we are wanted and not alone. He is with us and lives in us by faith.
Last but not least, we are to love others by telling them the Good News of Jesus Christ and in this way to love them spiritually. We love by making sure they know how to find a lasting love relationship with God through believing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God uses us to share the resources He provides with others in need. We can’t make them take the food we offer, the help we seek to render, or the Gospel we believe, but we are not responsible for their reaction or the outcome. We are responsible to speak truth in love, to return good for evil, and to love others as Jesus does.