Loving Our Neighbor
by Dallas Willard
(This week, I would like to share a lesson from author, teacher, and scholar- Dallas Willard 1935-2013. He is best known for his book, The Divine Conspiracy. However this quote is from his final book, Living in Christ’s Presence.)
People are relational beings. That’s why the truth of the Trinity is so important for us to understand. We are not made to live alone, and we can’t actually do that. But we have to be careful that our relationships to others are places where the love of God dwells. To love God, we must love our neighbor as ourselves. To do that is to inject what is good for God into all relationships.
In a fallen world, human relationships are generally dominated by attack and withdrawal. We get busy sizing people up when we come in contact with them. We ask, “Are they going to attack us? Perhaps I had better be careful and withdraw before they have an opportunity to attack.” That makes it impossible to love our neighbors. It makes it impossible for us to come out to them in the presence of God and manifest God’s love in our relationships.
We don’t attack people in the love of God. We don’t withdraw from them. We accept them. We love them. Loving our neighbor is part of what goes into loving God. As John teaches us in his letter, you cannot love God and not love your neighbor. They don’t fit together, because God actually does love your neighbor. It seems very unlikely to many as they look at their neighbor, but God does love them.
He loves the neighbor who is your enemy, so he very naturally says, “Love your enemies.” To love your enemies means to seek what is good for them, in dependence on God. Of course the best thing that could happen to your enemies is that they would come to know God, and our blessing on our enemies is designed to help them be in a position to know the God that we know. To love our neighbor is not to help them do the bad things they want to do to us. It doesn’t mean to help them get their way, because very often the worst thing to human beings is to get their way. So we need to know how to stand in the world under God with our neighbor in an attitude of love.
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