Articles
“The Fundamental Ethic”
And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
Luke 10:25-29
Vince Lombardi was one of the greatest football coaches of all time. He led the Green Bay Packers to five NFL Championships in seven years, winning the first two Super Bowls in 1966 and ’67. Lombardi was known to tell his players to stick to the basics. Each year, he started from scratch with his team. He would gather his players around, hold up a football and say, “Gentlemen, this is a football.”
Can you imagine saying something like that to a bunch of 200-plus pound, grizzled football veterans? It would be the equivalent of holding up a book to a librarian and saying, “This is a book. They have stories written in them.” Or holding up a piece of sheet music to a conductor and saying, “These little squiggles here are notes. You write music with them.” Or holding up a tool to a professional carpenter and saying, “This is a hammer. You hit nails with it.”
What the book is to the librarian, what music notation is to the conductor, and what the hammer is to the carpenter, the command to love one’s neighbor is to the Christian. Sometimes we behave in such a way toward others that it would be good for Jesus to walk up beside us and point to the other person and say, “This here is your neighbor. You are supposed to love him.”
Loving one another is so fundamental that if we fail to do it, we can’t say that we even know God. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” (1 Jn. 4:7-8) “No one has ever seen God…” (1 Jn. 4:12) “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (1 Jn. 4:20)
In Luke chapter 10, a lawyer asked Jesus what one must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus pointed him to the Law of Moses which said that one must love God and love his neighbor as himself. The lawyer then asked, “And who is my neighbor?” In other words, who are we required to love? Where are the limits to love? Are we required to love even disreputable people? Does this include those who hold wrong views on politics, religion and morality? The lawyer was hoping Jesus would see how difficult Leviticus 19:18 was to interpret. Just who is my neighbor? Who are we required to love?
Jesus’ answer was to tell the parable of the Good Samaritan which turns the lawyer’s question on its head. The lawyer was looking at the commandment to love from the point of view of the one giving love. Jesus told the parable from the perspective of the one in need of love. “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.” (Lk. 10:30) There is no way to identify this man, thus rendering the lawyer’s question moot. We don’t know anything about the victim except that he is needs of love. Our neighbor is our fellow man, irrespective of any labels. Out of the three examples Jesus gave, only the Samaritan, whom Jews of the time despised, had compassion and helped the man in the ditch. This unlikely hero understood the fundamentals of being human.
Jesus ends his discussion with the lawyer as he began, with the command to love one’s neighbor (Lk. 10:28, 37). In our quest as Christians living east of Eden and under the sun, let us never forget something so fundamental as “love your neighbor as yourself.”
