You may feel that you stack up pretty well in this department. Most of us believe ourselves to be loving people. When I preach a “love one another” sermon, I never get the idea that people think I’m stepping on their toes. The first generation of Christians in the early church probably felt the same way. Yet Paul challenged them to increase and perfect their love for one another. To the Philippians he wrote: “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more” (Philippians 1:9). He wrote a similar message to the Christ-followers of Thessalonica: “You yourselves are taught by God to love one another… But we urge you, brethren, that you increase more and more” (1 Thessalonians 4:9–10).

Alexander Maclaren, one of the great preachers of nineteenth-century England, described what happened when the followers of Jesus began to live out His commandment to love one another. Maclaren’s oft-quoted words have been called the most eloquent portrayal of Christian love found outside Scripture itself. He first described the terrible gulfs of language, nationality, gender, and philosophy that separated people in the ancient world. It was a world of unveiled hostility. Then Jesus came and told us to love one another:

Barbarian, Scythian, bond and free, male and female, Jew and Greek, learned and ignorant clasped hands and sat down at one table, and felt themselves all one in Christ Jesus. They were ready to break all other bonds, and to yield to the uniting forces that streamed out from His Cross. There never had been anything like it. No wonder that the world began to babble about sorcery, and conspiracies, and complicity in unnamable vices. It was only that the disciples were obeying the new commandment, and a new thing had come into the world—a community held together by love and not by geographical accidents or linguistic affinities, or the iron fetters of the conqueror… The new commandment made a new thing, and the world wondered.”9

Because God Loves Us, We Can Love Our Neighbor

Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”

—MATTHEW 22:37–39

I’m confident that every believer knows that we Christians are commanded to love our neighbor. And most understand that this does not mean just the family next door. Who does it include? When Jesus was asked that question, He answered by telling the parable of the good Samaritan. Your neighbor is anyone you encounter who has a need that you can fulfill.