What does the commandment of Christ “Love your neighbor as yourself” mean?

What Scripture Says

No one can show love for God except through love for other people. Repeatedly during the earthly life of Jesus Christ, different people approached Him and asked questions in order to convict and accuse. The lawyer did not turn to Him with good intentions, asking what he should do to receive eternal life, but to find a reason to take him at his word and accuse Christ. After all, the questioner had a good knowledge of the law.

No one can show love for God except through love for other people

The Lord, seeing the slyness of the question, answered with reference to the law itself, which speaks of love for God and neighbor. Indeed, how can a person demonstrate and prove love for God? Only through love for people, every person - the beloved creation and image of God. All faith rests on the commandments of love. By cultivating love for people, it is easy to fulfill the remaining commandments, because if you sincerely love a person, it is impossible to harm him, condemn him, ridicule him, rob him, or kill him. All other commandments are a kind of continuation of the commandment “Love one another.”

What does it mean: “love your neighbor”

Imagine: on the street you saw how someone became ill or, let’s say, he was being accosted by scoundrels, but you walked past as if nothing had happened - and then suddenly it turns out that it was your relative or close person, which you simply did not recognize at that moment. How embarrassing it will be then! The essence of this example is that we must treat others as if they were people close to us.

Andersen's fairy tale "The Little Match Girl" tells the story of a girl who tried to keep herself warm by lighting matches one after another.
And with each flash, amazing pictures appeared in her childhood imagination: a warm oven with shiny copper balls and dampers, a fat New Year's goose that rises from a plate and goes to her, a New Year's tree with toys, a deceased grandmother - so until the moment she didn't freeze. She just needed to warm up, but no one came to help. By the way, Dostoevsky has a very similar story - “The Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree”: the child froze because the human world is cold. But these two literary characters are a reflection of our realities, of the cruel attitude towards others that is born in a selfish and merciless heart. People are still capable of heroism and selfless help in exceptional circumstances. I remember how, together with a close priest, Father Sergius, and his three children, we went to the holy spring in Malinniki. On the way back, crossing the railroad tracks, the priest’s car stalled, and the barrier immediately closed, ringing the bell of an approaching train. The car categorically refused to start; there was not much time left for rescue. Near the barrier there were two more cars, from which people immediately got out and helped us take the car out of the tracks.

If only we were as attentive to each other in our everyday lives! Actually, Christianity is called to transform our everyday life, and Christ preached the Gospel so that it would be realized not somewhere in extreme situations or in war, where not all of us are able to get into, but in our everyday life, in everyday communication with our neighbors.

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, so let you also love one another” (John 13:34) - these are the words of the Savior. Of course, in the Old Testament, the Lord commanded to love our neighbors (see: Lev. 19: 18, 34). And our conscience itself, given to us by God, always testifies to the need for love. Nevertheless, having come to earth, the Lord found this commandment completely forgotten. We forget it too. For us, this commandment is always new.

The love brought into the world by Christ has a truly new, more sublime meaning - it is love following the example of Christ Himself, laying down one’s life for one’s neighbors.

We all, of course, want other people to treat us well: to be kind, welcoming and helpful to us. This is exactly what the Savior calls us to do with other people: “In everything that you want people to do to you, do so to them” (Matthew 7:12). Therefore, before every action you take, you should think: I want to do this and that for another person, but would it be nice if someone did this to me? If your heart tells you “yes”, then you should do it; if “no”, you should abstain.

Do you want to determine whether you have love for your neighbor? If you have something that you really need, and when your neighbor needs it, you gladly offer it to him without expecting anything in return, then you love your neighbor. Moreover, this applies not only to any object, but also to time itself, which everyone is so lacking and which, of course, you will always sacrifice for the sake of the one you love.

The “Memorable Tales” tells how one day the monks, in the presence of Abba Joseph, began a conversation about love. The elder said: “We do not know what love is. Here is an example of love: Abba Agathon had a knife that he needed for needlework. His brother came to him and, seeing the knife, praised this thing. Abba Agathon immediately began to beg his brother to accept the knife as a gift, and did not allow his brother to leave his cell until he persuaded him to accept the thing he liked.”

“What's special about this? - a modern person will say. “Just think, donate a knife... We could at least give away hundreds of such knives!” But we must take into account that the monks of the 4th–5th centuries were deprived of financial supplies and any benefits of civilization; they lived in a deserted place far from human settlements, where a knife was one of the main tools of labor, and it was extremely difficult to acquire a new tool. This is the same as a modern person giving away the main instrument of his livelihood - for example, giving a car to a driver, and donating a bank to a banker. By giving to your neighbor what is vitally necessary for you, you, of course, show love.

Here is a story from the lives of people I know. Svetlana N., a kind, sympathetic woman, worked as a head teacher in a prestigious educational center. Her brother, carried away by the ideals of the golden calf, made serious miscalculations, did not calculate his commercial opportunities and went bankrupt. In addition, he took out a foreign car at a fabulous price on credit. Having missed the deadline stipulated in the contract, he increased his debt exorbitantly and found himself in bondage. Svetlana recently quit her job due to her health; she had no means to earn money, and in order to save her brother, she sold her own apartment. Her brother’s debts were covered, but Svetlana herself was already forced to live in extremely cramped conditions.

Of course, I would like to see that the Lord rewards such sacrifices with prosperity in external life. But from the perspective of the spiritual world, it is not external life that has primary value. At the very least, it is absolutely true that selfless people carry torment within themselves, and God gives consolation to sacrificial people, and consolation much greater than a foreign car taken on a bonded loan.

True love for one's neighbor is recognized by the inner pain that appears in the heart when we learn about the sorrow of our neighbor. The absence of love manifests itself in indifference - this silence of a dark pool that absorbs living and pure feelings. If your neighbor fell ill and you felt grief as for yourself, then you love your neighbor. If you found out that another person was in trouble and immediately thought about what to
do to help him, then you are not devoid of Christian feelings. But if, having heard about the trouble that happened, you thought: “It’s good that I wasn’t there at that moment to bear his burdens,” then you are far from love.

At the same time, love is not only when you have compassion for someone who is grieving, but also when you rejoice at someone else’s joy. Alas, there are people who are ready to worry when they hear about the misfortune of their neighbor: “Oh, how hard it is for you, and how I feel sorry for you.” But as soon as they hear about his well-being, their faces turn pale and their hearts fill with indignation: “So that’s what you are like.” Popular wisdom on this matter has created an aphorism: it is difficult to forgive other people's shortcomings, but even more difficult to forgive other people's virtues.

Let’s say, if I hear that someone has been given a literary prize, and I think with annoyance: “Why not me?”, then this is selfishness. If, having heard from a writer close to me that he had won an international competition, I was happy for him, then, thank God, I am not deprived of a grain of love, albeit a small one. “Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15), said the holy Apostle Paul.

Observe yourself and you will accurately diagnose your own inner feelings. The essence of what has been said is this: joy in the joy of others is a sure sign of love for our neighbor.

How else can you notice a Christian attitude towards your neighbors in yourself? If you rejoiced about your neighbor that, unlike you, say, his salary was significantly increased, that he had success in life, while you were in trouble, and you glorified God for your neighbor, then these, one might say, are the first shoots Christian love in your soul.

On the contrary, the lack of love for neighbors is very well determined by the presence of envy in the soul. Envy is always an internal rebellion: why did someone else get what I don’t have? Envy is the most obvious, visual expression of selfishness: everything is only for me, and nothing for others. This is how the first angel sinned, possessing the highest power and glory, but envied the glory of the Creator and because of this lost everything. This is how people constantly sin, thinking that someone is better off than they are. Ultimately, envy is self-destruction, for envy is dissatisfaction with God’s care for you and protest against the real place in which the Lord has placed you in your life. Therefore, among the ten commandments, the last one is directed precisely against envy: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, and you shall not covet your neighbor’s house, nor his field, nor his male servant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that he has.” your neighbor" (Deut. 5:21). So, envy is the most obvious opposite of love.

Without love for one's neighbor, it is impossible to love God, “for he who does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God whom he does not see?” (1 John 4:20). And without love for God, salvation is impossible.

So, whoever does not love his neighbors is a lost person?

Let's not despair. At least if there is no love, it can be cultivated. How? The Monk Abba Dorotheos explains this: “The Savior says: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). Do not pay attention to how far you are from this virtue, lest you begin to be horrified and say: “How can you love your neighbor as yourself? Can I take care of his sorrows as if they were my own, and especially those hidden in his heart, which I do not see and do not know, as if they were my own?” Do not get carried away by such thoughts and do not think that virtue exceeds your strength and is impossible to fulfill. But start with faith in God, show Him your will and diligence - then you will see the help that He will give you to practice virtue. Imagine two staircases: one leads up to Heaven, the other leads down to hell, and you stand on the ground between them. Don’t think or say: “How can I fly up from the earth and suddenly find myself in Heaven?..” This, of course, is impossible, and God does not require this from you, but be careful not to go down. Do not do evil to your neighbor, do not upset him, do not slander, do not slander, do not humiliate, do not reproach. And later, little by little, you will begin to do good to your brother, comforting him with words, being compassionate to him, or giving him what he needs. And so, rising from one step to another, you will reach, with God’s help, the top of the ladder. For little by little, by helping your neighbor, you will reach the point where you will begin to desire his benefit as your own, and his success as your own. This means loving your neighbor as yourself
(Matthew 22:39).”

Actually, the path of Christian life leads to this, and the author has seen more than once how people who were previously cold, hard-hearted and unprincipled, when they became church members, even changed in face - goodness and love appeared in their eyes. And the Monk Macarius the Great explained it this way: “Just as a bee, unnoticed by people, builds a honeycomb in a hive, so grace secretly creates its love in the human heart, changing bitterness into sweetness, and a cruel heart into kindness. And just as a silversmith, carving a dish, gradually covers it with patterns and only after finishing his work shows his work in all its beauty - so the true Artist - the Lord - decorates our hearts with carvings and mysteriously renews them until we move from our body, and then the beauty of our soul will be revealed.”

That is why asceticism and internal work on oneself are so important in the life of each of us. God looks, first of all, at the human heart, and that means it is important to pay attention to internal cleansing, so that pride, self-will, and hard-heartedness do not lurk in the depths of our soul, and so that evil, unclean thoughts, like angry dogs, do not gnaw at our own heart. In appearance, we are all respectable and hardly look like outright criminals, but in his true essence, a person is what he is, first of all, in his heart. Therefore, we must honestly peer into the depths of our own soul in order to see those inner Cerberus who turn our soul into a gloomy Hades. And these Cerberus manifest themselves in us when we communicate with our neighbors.

Freeing the soul from the shackles of passions, we make room in our hearts for love. A pure heart also treats others purely. When self-love is overcome, only then is love for others possible.

Who is a person's neighbor?

In response to the Lord’s words about the need to love God and one’s neighbors, the lawyer, trying to justify himself by saying that he did not understand the meaning of the words of the commandment, asked: “Who is my neighbor?” Christ answered this not directly, but with a parable. It is important for every Orthodox person to understand the meaning of this story in order to understand who from our many surroundings are neighbors.

There was a certain traveler who was heading to Jericho from Jerusalem. The large city of Jericho at that time was located more than 20 km from Jerusalem. The road passed through deserted places where wild animals lived and there were robbers who robbed travelers. This is what happened to the wanderer: the robbers wounded him and left him to die. A priest and a Levite passed by - people designated by law to serve in the temple. It would be more logical for the servants of God to fulfill the law known to them and show mercy. But they went their own way, even though they saw the victim.

The meaning of the phrase “Who is your neighbor?”

Only the Samaritan took pity on the victim. The Samaritans were also Jews by nationality, but due to certain differences in ritual law, the Jews believed that it was unacceptable to communicate with them. The Samaritan treated the traveler's wounds with oil and wine - anesthetics and wound healing agents of those times. He brought him to the hotel, paid all expenses and showed his willingness to pay possible additional expenses for the care of the patient.

Judging by the content and conclusion of the parable, it is clear that there is no direct answer to the lawyer’s question; the story does not name a specific person who needs to be loved. He shows how and which of the three described persons became close to the wounded wanderer. This is how the Lord teaches the lawyer and each of us how to treat other people, that is, not to make a difference between what is near and far. We should provide all possible assistance to everyone who meets on our life path.

Who is the neighbor? Parable of the Good Samaritan

But how can I understand who my neighbor is? Every day we are surrounded by a large number of people - relatives, friends, acquaintances, and just random strangers. Which one should we love? The answer is again given to us by the Gospel in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).

A certain wanderer was walking along the road and was attacked by robbers. They beat him, robbed him, stripped him and left the unfortunate man to die on the side of the road. People passed by - priests, Levites, and other travelers, but no one stopped and helped the suffering man.

A Samaritan helps a man who was beaten and robbed by robbers

But a Samaritan was walking along the same path; he saw a bloodied man and took pity on him. He washed his wounds, loaded him onto his donkey, took him to the nearest hotel and, having paid the owner, asked him to take care of the unfortunate man. Moreover, on the way back, he promised to reimburse all expenses that the hotel owner would incur in excess of what was paid.

Who turned out to be close to the wounded man? Obviously, the one who showed him mercy and did not leave him to die on the side of the road. “Go and do likewise,” said Christ.

What is especially noteworthy in this parable is that during the earthly life of Christ the Samaritans were at enmity with the Jews and could not have any communication with them. The Jews deeply despised the Samaritans, considered them worse than the pagans; it was a shame not only to communicate with them, but even to drink water from the same vessel.

Nevertheless, neither a Jewish priest related in faith nor a Levite helped the beaten wanderer. But only a Samaritan, who knew about the attitude of the Jews towards himself, but abandoned all thoughts of enmity in the face of a suffering person.

With this parable, Christ shows us the whole essence of mercy - it can and should be shown to any person, regardless of nationality, religion or other differences.

Important! It is the manifestation of mercy, compassion, readiness to come to the rescue in difficult times that is the basis of the love for one’s neighbor that Jesus Christ commanded us.

What should Christian love for oneself and one's neighbor be like?

The lawyer wanted to know more precisely who his neighbor was, as if he was afraid that he might love someone who did not need to be loved. The Lord answered: become a neighbor to the person who needs you and your help, and do not try to find out who he is to you. There is no need to monitor those around you, you should be attentive to yourself, so as not to allow anger or indifference towards people, but to show mercy, like the Samaritan.

Everyone we help becomes our neighbor. Every person on earth at one time or another needs help and support. This means that we all must become close to each other.

Love for people should be expressed in mercy, help, support, in fulfilling the words of the Holy Apostle “bear one another’s burdens.” But you cannot proceed to indulging the passions of another person, because the most valuable thing is his soul and its eternal destiny, and not worldly pleasures. Therefore, along with mercy, one must have severity and firmness in order, if necessary, with humility to protect a person from all sin and passion. For example, one cannot justify oneself by love and not resist his deviation into heresy or schism, and not try to reason with him.

Love for people should be expressed in mercy, help, support

Self-love in the form of self-indulgence is dangerous and soul-destroying. St. John Chrysostom teaches: “The best way to cleanse the soul is to constantly bless yourself.” We will show healing love for ourselves if we fight passions and sins, work on ourselves, and fulfill the commandments of the Lord.

By observing the commandment of love for others, a person can easily follow all the other commandments. After all, there will be no place in his heart for anger towards the people around him.

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About self-love

Christ, speaking about our neighbor, invited us to love him as ourselves. It turns out that a good attitude towards other people is impossible until we have learned to treat ourselves correctly. In modern consciousness, self-love implies permissiveness, indulgence of passions, maximum comfort and pleasure. Is this the kind of attitude Christ is talking about? Obviously not.

Christian love is the basis of the gospel law

Christian self-love presupposes, first of all, concern for the salvation of one’s soul. A person who treats himself carefully and attentively heals his soul with repentance, fights passions, and strives for God. As he grows spiritually, he discovers the joy and happiness of being with God, which is not even close to comparable with worldly pleasures and benefits.

In such an attitude towards oneself, there is no place for indulging passions that lead the soul to destruction and cause torment already here, in earthly life. One has only to look at people who are susceptible to any kind of addiction - alcohol, drugs, gambling - can they be called happy people? Of course not. In a similar way, all other passions make us unhappy - pride, laziness, excessive craving for money, and envy. It’s just that these sins are not so noticeable to others, but they torment a person’s soul no less.

Interpretation of the Gospel for every day of the year. February 13

Then one of the scribes came to Jesus, having heard the Sadducees arguing with Him, and seeing that Jesus answered them well, he approached and asked Him: What is the first of all the commandments? Jesus answered him: The first of all commandments: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength—this is the first commandment! The second is similar to it: love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other greater commandment than these. The scribe said to Him: good, Teacher! You have spoken the truth, that there is only God and there is no other besides Him; and to love Him with all your heart and with all your mind, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself, is greater than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. Jesus, seeing that he answered wisely, said to him: You are not far from the Kingdom of God. After that, no one dared to ask Him anymore. Continuing to teach in the temple, Jesus said: How do the scribes say that Christ is the Son of David? For David himself said by the Holy Spirit, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at My right hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool. So, David himself calls Him Lord: how then is He His Son? And a multitude of people listened to Him with delight.

How to love yourself?

On the 15th week after Pentecost - Matthew 22:35-46.

And one of them, a lawyer, tempting Him, asked, saying: Teacher! What is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind: this is the first and greatest commandment; the second is similar to it: love your neighbor as yourself; All the law and the prophets are based on these two commandments. When the Pharisees had gathered, Jesus asked them: What do you think about Christ? whose son is he? They say to Him: David. He said to them: How then does David, by inspiration, call Him Lord, when he says: The Lord said to my Lord: Sit on My right hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool? So if David calls Him Lord, how can He be his son? And no one could answer Him a word; and from that day no one dared to ask Him.

The Lord sets the measure of love for one’s neighbor as a person’s love for himself. Therefore, in order to fulfill the Savior’s commandment, we must first understand: how can we love ourselves? At first glance, it’s simple: do whatever you want. And if you can’t immediately do everything you want, then you need to strive to create conditions for such a life. Money gives the opportunity to freely satisfy all desires. Therefore, you need to try to earn a lot of money as quickly as possible, and then live without worries for your own pleasure. Logical? Still would! This is exactly how most of our contemporaries build or try to build their lives.

However, despite all the logic and naturalness of such a life plan, conscience and common sense tell us that it is unlikely that the Savior had in mind precisely this kind of self-love. If our life were limited to a few dozen years spent on this earth, then, probably, nothing better could be imagined. But if we hope to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, then obviously we will have to shift our emphasis.

To love yourself means, during your earthly life, to create the prerequisites for our life to extend into eternity, so that both here and there we can be with God. How to do it? The entire Gospel is about this, the apostolic epistles are about this, the writings of the holy fathers are about this. And in short, the answer is given in today's reading: first of all, we must love God - love Him with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind. If the desire for God will be the defining beginning of our life, if approaching God will become our goal, and moving away from Him will be perceived as a semblance of death, then we will understand what is important and what is of secondary importance, what serves our benefit and what harms, where we show self-love, and where we cowardly give in to our passions.

Therefore, living as you want is not self-love, but something the opposite. Actually, this belief was formulated a long time ago in the Russian proverb: “Live not as you want, but as God commands.” We know God's commands; all that remains is to put them into practice.

Okay, let's say we now know how to love ourselves. But how can we love our neighbors? My father got sick - we say: “Everything is God’s will!” – and we don’t move. The wife says: “Darling, we haven’t been to the movies for a hundred years,” and the husband replies: “Come on, this is all demonic, let’s better read the akathist.” The daughter asks: “Mom, I need new jeans,” and the mother responds: “Put on a skirt, shameless girl, and don’t forget to put a scarf on your head!” Something is wrong here, you must agree. But what? I think we will understand this if we re-read the words of the Savior. The first commandment is to love God. The second is to love your neighbor as yourself. Have we really loved God with all our souls - or is this just dreams and proud exaltation over our neighbors? If we truly love God, then we become like Him, we become capable of empathy, patience, and forbearance.

A person who truly loves God will see the image of God in every person and will strive to actively serve his neighbor. He who loves God with all his heart will find words to move his neighbor to heights of spirit. The one for whom God comes first puts himself in last place, and everyone else above himself, and therefore will not cut from the shoulder and teach from above, but will be friendly and bright with everyone who comes to him.

If we cannot testify to ourselves that we loved God with all our hearts, if we have not renounced this mortal world, then we need to be simpler and more modest with our neighbors. Do we wish ourselves health? This way we will help other people preserve it. Do we need rest and non-moral entertainment? Let us not deny this to our neighbors. Maybe, having parted with our blooming youth, we have become indifferent to clothes? But let's try to understand that not all people are like us, and that at a certain age such things may seem more important than anything else.

Interpretation of the Church.

Blazh. Theophylact of Bulgaria:

He who loves his neighbor fulfills all the commandments; he who keeps the commandments loves God, so that these two commandments (“love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and “thou shalt love your neighbor as yourself”) are united, support each other and contain everything other commandments. Who, loving God and neighbor, will steal, commit evil, kill, commit adultery or commit fornication? This lawyer first came with the goal of tempting, and then, as a result of Christ’s answer, he came to his senses and received the praise of Christ as a saint.

Source

“Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39)

How do our contemporaries understand this phrase?

Daria Terekhova , 37 years old, children's Sunday school teacher:

Vladislav Kozachok , 30 years old, sexton:

- Love thy neighbour? As I understand it, this means not only those who surround us - family, children, but all the people who need us. Any heartfelt response from us to a person is love for one’s neighbor!

Evelina Karavay , 38 years old, lawyer:

-Love your neighbor as yourself? It seems to be a familiar and understandable phrase, but for everyone it contains its own deep meaning. What does it mean to love your neighbor? Firstly, it means not doing to others what you would not wish for yourself. Secondly, if someone close to me is a brother or sister, then I treat him/her with the same love, with the same sacrifice as I treat myself. But there is a small but significant “but”. And if I treat myself poorly, then how can I treat my neighbor well?! So you need to start with yourself. You need to cleanse your heart and soul. And then in our neighbor we will see not a competitor, not a rival, not an enemy, but a brother or sister, the Image of God. For as St. Seraphim of Sarov said: “Save yourself, and thousands around you will be saved”!

Marina Gornaya , 28 years old, engineer:

Sergey Dudka , 38 years old, auditor:

St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov)

The second is similar to it: love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other greater commandment than these

It is obvious: in order to love your neighbor as yourself, you must first love yourself correctly.

He who loves himself correctly can love his neighbor in a godly manner. The sons of the world, sick with pride and enslaved to it, express love for their neighbor by indiscriminately fulfilling all the wishes of their neighbor. Disciples of the Gospel express love for their neighbor by fulfilling the all-holy commandments of their Lord regarding him; They recognize satisfaction with human wishes and whims as soul-destroying human-pleasing and fear it as much as they fear and run away from self-love. Self-love is a distortion of love in relation to oneself, man-pleasing is a distortion of love in relation to one's neighbor. A self-lover destroys himself, and a people-pleaser destroys both himself and his neighbor. Self-love is woeful self-delusion; man-pleasing intensifies and makes one’s neighbor an accomplice of this self-delusion.

Ascetic sermon.

St. John Chrysostom

The second is similar to it: love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no other commandment greater than these . This is the crown of all virtues, this is the basis of all God’s commandments: love for God, combined with love for one’s neighbor (cf. Matt. 22:39, Luke 10:27). For the one who loves God does not neglect his brother and does not prefer money to his neighbor, but shows great generosity towards him, remembering what was said: As you did to one of the least of My brothers, you did it to Me (Matthew 25:40) . Realizing that the Lord of all considers that which is done out of concern for a fellow man to be done as if for Himself, he works with great zeal and generously gives alms, and, looking at the poor, he sees not the insignificance of his outer appearance, but the greatness of Him who commanded to love neighbor (cf. Matt. 25:31-46).

Homilies on the book of Genesis.

Sschmch. Clement of Rome

The second is similar to it: love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other greater commandment than these

Brothers, let us confess Christ in these things: loving one another (cf. John 13:35, 15:12, 1 John 3:11), not committing adultery (cf. Exodus 20:14, Gal. 5:19), not to blaspheme one another (cf. Prov. 10:18) and not to be envious (cf. Prov. 6:34), but to be self-controlled, merciful, kind (cf. Eph. 4:32, 1 Pet. 3:8). We should have compassion for each other and not indulge in the love of money. Let us confess Him in these matters, and not in their opposites. And we should not fear people, but God.

Second Epistle to the Corinthians.

Interpretation of the phrase “Love your neighbor as yourself”

The phrase “Love your neighbor as yourself” was Jesus’ answer to a Jewish lawyer (a person who studies the Law of God) who wanted to test the Lord by asking about the most significant commandment. Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love God, and the second, similar to it, is to love one's neighbor. When the Lord was asked who could be considered a neighbor, He told a parable that made it clear that every person is the creation of the Lord, and therefore is our neighbor.

If a person loves his neighbor, then to some extent he shows this same love for the Creator, as well as for himself. This means that in order to fulfill the commandment of Jesus, you first need to figure out how to love yourself, after which you can begin to treat others with love. Loving yourself does not mean doing everything you want and desire, creating ideal conditions and accumulating material wealth. Loving yourself does not mean earning a lot of money and spending it all for your own pleasure, although such actions for a modern person are logical and correct.

True self-love, which allows you to love your neighbor and the Lord, lies in the following points:

If a person makes the Lord’s life the center of his life, it means he loves himself, because he wants to save his soul, and he can also love his neighbor, understanding that this is the Will of God and this will help to be saved.

Living for the pleasure of physical and sinful entertainment is an extreme degree of dislike and disrespect for oneself. Since man is the creation of the Lord, he can show love for himself and his neighbor only when he takes care of his soul and fulfills God’s Will.