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Love Your Neighbor as Yourself and as Jesus Loved Us | John Piper · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome to reformed thinking. Great to be here.
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  This is the show where we take a deep dive into sources to pull
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  out the key Nuggets for you. Helping you get that insight
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  quickly but thoroughly too, right?
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  We know you want those aha moments without getting bogged
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  down, and today we're tackling something really central.
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  Absolutely that command to love your neighbor as yourself.
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  And also how Jesus talks about loving as he loved.
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  It's fundamental to Christian life.
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  It really is. We're going to lean quite a bit
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  on some insights from John Piper's work today, which gives
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  a really helpful way to structure this.
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  Yeah, his analysis provides a good framework.
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  So our mission, if you like, is to extract those core truths,
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  maybe some surprising facts too, about Christian love, from these
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  sources, helping you grasp what really matters.
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  And it sounds simple, maybe love your neighbor, but you know it
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  throws up a lot of challenges. It does.
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  What does that actually look like when choices are tough or
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  resources are tight? Or even when we just don't agree
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  on what's genuinely good for someone else.
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  Right. These aren't easy questions.
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  And what's fascinating, looking at Jesus's approach, especially
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  this new command, it's incredibly demanding, the scope
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  of it, but it's also, well, liberating because of where it
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  comes from. It changes not just who we love,
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  but how we're even able to love. OK, let's dive into that.
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  We can start with a very familiar scene from Luke's
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  gospel chapter. 10 The Lawyer. Exactly.
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  An expert in the Law of Moses, he comes up to Jesus, but Luke
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  makes it clear his intention is to test him.
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  Not a sincere seeker at this point, no.
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  He asks teacher what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
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  And Jesus turns it back on him, doesn't he?
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  Ask him what the law says, right?
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  How do you read it? And the lawyer nails the answer,
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  intellectually at least. Beat of that great summary.
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  You shall love the Lord of God with all your heart, and with
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  all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your
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  mind, the first part, and your neighbor as yourself.
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  The second part and Jesus confirms it.
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  Yeah, you have answered correctly.
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  Do this and you will live. Simple enough, right?
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  Seems simple, but then comes the revealing part.
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  This is where Piper and Luke himself point to the real
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  motive. Luke says, But he, desiring to
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  justify himself, said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor?
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  Desiring to justify himself, that's key.
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  It wasn't about wanting clarification, it was about
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  finding a loophole. Trying to sort of cover his own
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  hypocrisy maybe, or just excuse himself.
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  Yeah, to define who counts as a neighbor to narrow the field.
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  He wanted to carve humanity up, didn't he, Into groups?
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  Who qualifies? Who doesn't?
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  So he could feel OK about not loving everyone.
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  Who do I have to love? Just people like me, People who
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  deserve it. Looking for those boundaries,
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  Piper points out. This is a really common human
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  thing. Oh definitely.
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  When faced with a high standard, we try to lower the bar or limit
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  who it applies to. We want to justify our own lack
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  of love by shrinking the definition of who deserves it.
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  Exactly. But Jesus, well, he doesn't play
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  that game. No, he really doesn't.
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  Our material notes that Jesus does not like this question,
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  this whole attempt to limit compassion.
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  To put people in boxes worthy, unworthy.
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  So instead of giving a definition a list of who
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  qualifies as a neighbor. Which is what the lawyer wanted.
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  Right, Jesus tells the story, the parable of the Good
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  Samaritan. And in doing that, he completely
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  reframes the whole issue. The sources really stress this
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  shift. It moves from what kind of
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  person is my neighbor? What kind of person am I?
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  That's the term. And it shifts from what status
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  of people are worthy of my love. How can I become the kind of
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  person whose compassion ignores status altogether?
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  So. It's not about finding a worthy
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  target for your love. No, it's about cultivating A
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  merciful heart inside yourself. A fundamental change in
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  perspective away from legalistic box ticking.
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  Towards personal transformation, becoming a different sort of
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  person. That redirection is just so
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  critical for getting the, well, the radical nature of this
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  command. OK, so let's unpack the parable
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  itself then. It paints such a vivid picture.
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  It really does. A man's traveling Jerusalem to
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  Jericho. Dangerous Rd.
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  Gets attacked by robbers, stripped, beaten, left half
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  dead. Grim situation.
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  Then come the religious figures. First, a priest.
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  Sees him, crosses to the other side of the road.
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  Then a Levite, same thing, sees him, passes by on the other
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  side. These are the guys who should
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  know better, right? Representatives of.
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  The law? You'd think so.
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  Maybe they were worried about ritual impurity, or maybe just
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  their own safety. Who knows.
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  But they didn't act. Then along comes a Samaritan.
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  And this is the shocker for the original audience.
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  Samaritans and Jews generally despised each other.
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  Outsiders. Enemies even.
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  Yet he's the one who Luke says had compassion.
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  And it wasn't just a feeling. The sources detail his actions.
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  Finding wounds, pouring on oil and wine, which were actual
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  treatments back then. Right, soothing and maybe
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  antiseptic, and he puts the injured man on his own animal.
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  Sacrificing his own comfort and means of.
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  Travel takes him to an end, takes care of him, pays the
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  innkeeper. And promises to cover any extra
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  costs on his way back. It's comprehensive care.
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  Absolutely, and notice the focus is entirely on the Samaritans
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  actions. His character, his mercy.
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  Not on the victim status or whether he deserved help.
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  That's irrelevant to the story's point.
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  It's a powerful picture of active, costly compassion.
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  So after telling this story, Jesus turns back to the lawyer.
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  And asks that reframed question. Not.
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  Was the injured guy a neighbor? No.
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  But which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to
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  the man who fell among the robbers?
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  Putting the emphasis on the action on being a neighbor.
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  And the lawyer? Well, he has to answer based on
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  the story. He gets it.
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  The one who showed him mercy. And Jesus's final word.
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  You go and do likewise. Which isn't just go do nice
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  things sometimes. No, it's much deeper, Piper
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  suggests. It means go become a new kind of
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  person. Go get a compassionate heart.
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  It's a call to internal change that results in outward action.
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  So Jesus isn't defining who your neighbor is in a limited way.
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  He's calling you to become the kind of person who acts like a
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  neighbor. By showing mercy and compassion.
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  To anyone you encounter who's in need.
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  No preconditions, no status checks.
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  It moves it from a legal definition game to a call for,
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  well, heart transformation. And that shift, that call to
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  become someone new, that's what makes this command so.
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  Radical. Yeah, the sources say it cuts to
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  the root of sin called pride. Which needs a bit of unpacking.
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  Yeah. How are the sources defining
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  pride here? Well, it's described as our
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  basic desire to be happy, our self love you could say, but
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  it's gone wrong. It's been corrupted.
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  Corrupted by two things mainly. First, the unwillingness to see
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  God as the only fountain of true and lasting joy.
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  Ah. So we look for ultimate
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  happiness in other things, created things, right ourselves.
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  Right, instead of finding it in God, who is the only infinite
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  satisfying source, we settle for lesser things that can't truly
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  deliver. OK, that's the first corruption.
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  What's the second? The second is the unwillingness
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  to see other people as designed by God to receive our joy in
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  Him. Meaning we become
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  self-contained. We don't see sharing our joy in
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  God as part of the picture. Exactly.
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  We view others as maybe rivals or burdens or just irrelevant to
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  our own happiness project. We don't see them as people God
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  intends for us to share His goodness with, expanding our own
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  joy in the process. So pride isn't just arrogance,
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  it's a deeply misdirected desire for happiness.
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  That's a good way to put it. A corruption of something
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  originally good. The desire for joy.
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  OK, so if pride is that corruption, how do Jesus's
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  commands address it? Well, think about the two great
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  commandments the lawyer cited. First, love the Lord your God
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  with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, Piper says.
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  This command focuses the passion to be happy firmly on God and
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  God alone. It directs that core desire to
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  its proper object. Telling us we're true lasting
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  satisfaction is actually found. Right, only in God.
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  Then the second command, love your neighbor as yourself.
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  How does that fit in? This one, Piper suggests, opens
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  a whole world of expanding joy in God.
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  It shows us that other people are designed to receive and
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  enlarge your joy in God. So loving others isn't opposed
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  to our joy in God, it's actually a way it grows.
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  Precisely. Loving your neighbor as yourself
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  doesn't mean denying your own desire for happiness.
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  It's not about self neglect. No, it means you want for your
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  neighbor the same ultimate good. You want for yourself that deep,
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  lasting joy found only in God. So you give them, through every
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  practical means available, what you have found for yourself and
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  God. Yes, you share the source of
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  your own deepest satisfaction. That's loving them as you love
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  yourself when yourself. Love is rightly oriented towards
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  God. That connects perfectly with the
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  golden rule in Matthew 7.12, doesn't.
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  It absolutely whatever you wish that others would do to you, do
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  also to them. For this is the law and the
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  prophets. It's the practical outflow of
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  that God centered love. You treat others the way you'd
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  want to be treated if you truly understood where ultimate joy
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  comes from. Seeing your neighbor not as an
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  obstacle, but as an opportunity for your own joy and God to
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  overflow and increase. OK, but let's be real, loving
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  like this is hard. Often very hard.
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  It is, and that's where the first command becomes so
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  foundational. Loving God first.
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  Right. Piper points out that loving God
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  sustains us through all the joy and pain and perplexity and
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  uncertainty of what loving our neighbor should be.
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  How does that work practically? Well, when the sacrifice feels
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  too big or you're just confused about the best way to help
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  someone. Which happens a lot.
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  Yeah, remembering God, relying on him, knowing his grace is
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  sufficient. That's what keeps you going.
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  It gives you the strength you don't have on your own.
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  And when you mess up, when selfishness creeps back in.
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  Remembering that God alone can satisfy pulls you back.
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  It leads to repentance, to realizing again how much you
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  depend on His mercy. So that vertical relationship
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  loving God is the power source for the horizontal 1 loving
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  neighbor. Exactly.
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  It provides the stability, the perspective, the endurance
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  needed for this radical, often costly love.
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  It's not self generated power, it's God's sustained ability.
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  Which brings us nicely to this other layer, this new
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  commandment Jesus gives. John 13, right before his.
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  Crucifixion. Yes, he says.
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  A new commandment. I give to you that you love one
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  another. This is I have loved you.
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  You also are to love one another.
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  Just as I have loved you, that's the addition and.
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  Then he gives the reason, the outcome.
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  By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you
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  have love for one another. So this specific way of loving
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  becomes the identifier, the badge of belonging to his
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  community. That's how it's presented, a
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  visible mark distinguishing his followers in the world.
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  OK, so what's new about it? We already had Leviticus 19.
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  Point a time. Love your neighbor as yourself.
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  Does the new replace the old? Good question, and the sources
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  are clear. No, it doesn't make the old
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  command obsolete or passe. It's not thrown out.
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  Not at all. Piper argues that.
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  What's new is we had never seen the old commandment of love
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  lived out for us perfectly by the Son of God.
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  The perfect example. Before Jesus, nobody could say,
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  without any qualification, love as I have loved.
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  He didn't just teach it, He embodied it.
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  Florida State. So the standard is now visible
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  concrete in him. Yes, and the newness also
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  connects to Jesus's purpose forming a specific people, a
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  community whose defining characteristic, their public
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  identity, would be this mutual love modeled on his own.
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  A community marked by a Christ like love.
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  Exactly now. This leads to an idea that
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  sounds a bit strange at first, maybe about Jesus loving
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  himself. It can seem counterintuitive,
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  can't it? Yeah, but it's crucial for
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  understanding his love for us. The material explains that Jesus
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  loved himself perfectly. How?
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  In that he desired his happiness with perfectly holy desire.
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  So not the corrupted self love of pride we talked about
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  earlier. No, this is different.
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  His happiness, his joy, was eternally found in his
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  fellowship with his Father and in being one with the Father.
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  That was his infinite perfect delight.
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  Rooted entirely in God. Entirely.
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  And here's the mind bending part, when Jesus laid down his
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  life for us on the cross. His ultimate act of love.
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  He did not deny or discard that desire for his own infinite
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  happiness in God. He expressed it.
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  He pursued it. Wait, he pursued his own
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  happiness by dying for us? How does that work?
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  Because His greatest joy was in glorifying the Father and
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  fulfilling the Father's will by dying to bring us to God, to
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  enable our joy in God. He was actually achieving his
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  own deepest, holiest desire. Yes, Piper puts it like this.
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  By dying for our joy in God, Jesus is dying to display and
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  preserve His fullest joy in God's glory.
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  Because our finding joy in God reflects God's glory back to
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  Him. Exactly.
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  Our blood bought joy in God magnifies the very glory that is
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  Jesus's own ultimate happiness. Wow.
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  OK, so his sacrifice wasn't a denial of his self love, but the
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  ultimate expression of his God centered self love.
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  Precisely, it flowed from His perfect joy in the Father.
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  Therefore, Jesus's love for us is the perfect of love, your
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  neighbor as yourself. He loved us out of the fullness
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  of His own perfectly God focused desire for happiness.
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  He enables us to share in the very joy that defined his own
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  being. That changes how you see the
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  cross, doesn't it? It really does.
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  It redefines love away from mere sentiment or even just duty,
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  rooting it in the pursuit of ultimate joy in God, for
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  ourselves and for others. So the cross is central Jesus's
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  death, and the sources highlight this dual aspect to it.
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  Two key things happening there. It's described as both guilt
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  bearing and guidance giving, meaning it forgives sin.
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  That's the guilt bearing part and it models love.
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  That's the guidance giving part. Purchase and pattern.
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  Yeah, that's another way it's put the purchase of our life
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  from perishing and the pattern for a life of love.
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  Both are happening simultaneously in his death.
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  Let's look at the purchase aspect first.
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  What does his death buy for us in terms of loving?
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  It purchases for us the very transformation that enables us
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  to love. It actually buys the ability.
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  This isn't just forgiveness then, it's enablement.
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  Right. It's the fulfillment of that Old
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  Testament promise. Like in Ezekiel 36, I will give
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  you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you.
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  The Stony heart replaced with a heart of flesh.
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  Jesus initiates this explicitly at the Last Supper, doesn't he?
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  With the New Covenant in my blood, Luke 22.
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  That language of covenant and blood points directly to the
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  cross. So when we by faith follow Jesus
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  to the cross, we see him paying for their new heart with his own
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  blood. It's a costly purchase.
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  Incredibly costly, His death purchased for sinners like us
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  everything needed for us to find our joy in God.
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  Which, as we saw, is the antidote to that corrupted self
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  love, that pride it. It deals with the root problem
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  that stops us from loving God supremely and others genuinely.
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  Without this purchase transformation, the commands to
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  love would just be impossible demands.
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  So it's not just a legal clearing of debt, it's a
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  spiritual heart transplant making love possible.
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  That's a great way to think about it.
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  It empowers us for what we couldn't do before.
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  OK, so that's the purchase. What about the pattern?
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  His death also models how we should love.
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  It sets the standard. It shows us what that love looks
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  like in its highest form. Back to John 15.13.
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  Right. Greater love has no one than
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  this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
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  Jesus didn't just say that he did it.
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  His death is the ultimate demonstration.
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  Supreme example. And in doing this, he perfectly
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  fulfilled the ancient command, Love your neighbor as yourself.
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  He showed what it truly means, lived out to the absolute limit.
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  The perfect embodiment we talked about earlier.
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  Yes, and this pattern, this ultimate self giving also
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  embodies his new commandment. Love one another just as I have
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  loved you. So his death is the definition
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  of that, as I have loved your part.
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  It is, and this kind of sacrificial, other centered love
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  becomes, as we said, the identifying badge of belonging
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  for his followers. It's the family resemblance.
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  OK, so tying her all together then?
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  It seems whether Jesus says love God and love your neighbor as
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  yourself. The summary of the old law.
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  Or he gives the new commandment. Love one another as I have loved
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  you. The mark of the new community.
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  Piper argues he's commanding essentially the same thing.
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  They aren't in conflict. Two ways of expressing the same
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  reality of God centered self giving love.
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  Right. So how do we measure this love
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  in our own lives? The sources say we must make our
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  own passion for happiness the measure of our passion for the
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  good of others. Meaning that same intentions
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  intensity with which we desire our own true God centered
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  well-being should fuel our desire for the well-being of
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  others. Not a lesser desire for them,
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  but the same deep longing for their ultimate good in God.
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  And what's the standard we aim for?
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  We are to make the measure of Jesus's suffering and the
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  perfection of his happiness in God the standard of our
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  sacrifice and the focus of the joy we pursue for ourselves and
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  others. So His cross, his suffering for
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  us, flowing from his joy in God, becomes the benchmark for our
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  own self giving. And the joy we seek for
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  ourselves and for them is that same joy in God that He
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  purchased and exemplified. It brings it all together.
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  The old command, the new command, the cross, our
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  transformation, our motivation. It's all one unified call to a
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  radical kind of love. Hashtags.
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  Hashtags Outro. Wow, Yeah, that really does tie
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  together. We've covered a lot of ground.
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  We really have from how Jesus took that lawyers limiting
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  question about neighbor and turned it into a call for a
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  compassionate heart. Yeah, focusing on being a
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  neighbor, not just identifying. One to understanding how our
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  natural desire for happiness, our self love gets corrupted by
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  pride. But can be rightly reoriented
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  towards finding ultimate joy in God alone.
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  A joy that's meant to overflow towards others, not be hoarded.
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  And then seeing Jesus's death, not just his forgiveness, but is
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  the purchase of our ability to love like.
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  That and the perfect pattern of what that self giving Love
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  Actually looks like. Both purchase and pattern.
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  It's a rich picture, isn't it? This unified command to love.
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  It really is. So here's something maybe to
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  Mull over as we finish. OK, thinking about this radical
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  command to love modeled by Jesus, enabled by his death.
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  How might that challenge you to rethink even, you know, small,
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  everyday acts of kindness? Good question.
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  How does your own joy in God actually show up in how you care
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  about people around you, especially maybe those you'd
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  normally ignore, or people whose situations make it difficult or
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  uncomfortable to help? What are those practical ways of
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  specific means you can use to offer to others that same
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  ultimate good, that joy in God that you found for yourself?
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  Just something to think about. How does this deep reality cash
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  out in everyday life? Lots to reflect on there.
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  Definitely. Well, thank you so much for
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  joining us on this deep dive. It's been great exploring this
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  to together. Until next time.
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  You've been listening to reform thinking.