Thursday: Love Your Neighbor
Read: Mark 12:30-31, Galatians 5:14-17
SOAP: Galatians 5:14
For the whole law can be summed up in a single commandment, namely, “You must love your neighbor as yourself.”
Devotion:
There are a lot of laws in the Old Testament, and they paint a picture for us of how God’s people were supposed to live. Some of them seem strange or unnecessary to us, but they provided boundaries for God’s people, showing them how to live in community in a way that glorified Him. All those laws that outlined specifically how this community should work and live can be summed up in this one important law: love your neighbor as yourself.
This is how our love for God is evidenced: by loving the most vulnerable and unlovable among us, just as He did. When Jesus referenced this law in the story of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:25-37), He intended to show the expert in the law that his thinking was too small. You should not try to limit the definition of your neighbor; you should willingly expand it to include whoever God puts in your path. The same is true for us: rather than quibble over what obligations we have to which people, we can freely offer our love and service to the more vulnerable around us.
Prayer:
God, show me how to love like You did. Show me who my neighbor is, and how I can serve them. Thank You for loving me when I do not deserve it. Amen.