LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF (Santamaria)

“Love thy neighbor as thyself” is one of those lines that sounds simple until you actually stare at it long enough for it to stare back.

It shows up first in the Holiness Code of Leviticus:

Hebrew (Lev. 19:18): וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ אֲנִי יְהוָה
Transliteration: wə’āhavtā lərē‘ăkā kāmōkā, ’ănī YHWH
Literal sense: “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am YHWH.”

Right away, the verse refuses to float in abstraction. It lands in a very specific moral neighborhood: the rejection of revenge, the refusal to nurse grudges, and the call to active goodwill.

The preceding Hebrew phrases matter because they’re the floorboards under the command. Leviticus 19:18 begins (in Hebrew) with:

לֹא־תִקֹּם (lō-tiqqōm) — “You shall not take vengeance.”
וְלֹא־תִטֹּר (wə-lō-tittōr) — “And you shall not keep/guard (a grudge).”

That second verb is vivid. The root נָטַר (nāṭar) can carry the idea of “keeping” something like you’d keep a prized object locked away. You can “guard” wrath like a relic. Moses says: Don’t curate your bitterness.

Then comes the positive command: wə’āhavtā—“and you shall love.” Grammatically it’s a perfect form with a prefixed waw that often functions like an imperative in Hebrew legal material: not “you loved,” but “you must love.” The love demanded here isn’t mainly a mood. It’s covenantal action: the opposite of vengeance, the opposite of grudge-keeping, the active pursuit of another’s good.

Now, slide into Greek, because the New Testament quotes this command repeatedly.

Greek (LXX and NT, e.g., Matt. 22:39): ἀγαπήσεις τὸν πλησίον σου ὡς σεαυτόν
Transliteration: agapēseis ton plēsion sou hōs seauton
Literal: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

The verb ἀγαπήσεις (agapēseis) is future indicative in form, but like much biblical law (and like the Decalogue in Greek), it carries imperative force: “you shall” in the covenant sense, not “you will” as a prediction. The noun πλησίον (plēsion) literally relates to “the one near.” “Neighbor” isn’t first a category; it’s the person Providence puts in front of you.

That already starts dismantling a common dodge: people want “neighbor” to mean “my people,” “my tribe,” “people I like,” “people who agree with my theology,” or (the pious version) “people I intend to help someday when life calms down.” Scripture is less sentimental and more concrete: your neighbor is often the inconvenient human standing inside your radius right now.

But Scripture also refuses to let “neighbor” become a merely local word. Leviticus itself expands the circle: “the stranger/sojourner”—Hebrew גֵּר (gēr)—is to be loved too: “you shall love him as yourself” (Lev. 19:34). Israel is told to remember their own vulnerability as strangers in Egypt. In other words, love is not permission to become tribal; love is a war against tribal dehumanization.

When Jesus is asked about the greatest commandment (Matt. 22:37–40; Mark 12:29–31), He binds Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 together like two beams holding up a single roof.

Greek (Matt. 22:37): ἀγαπήσεις κύριον τὸν θεόν σου…
Transliteration: agapēseis kyrion ton theon sou…
Meaning: “You shall love the Lord your God…”

Then immediately:

Greek (Matt. 22:39): δευτέρα ὁμοία αὐτῇ… ἀγαπήσεις τὸν πλησίον σου ὡς σεαυτόν
Meaning: “The second is like it… You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

And Jesus concludes: “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” That is not poetic garnish. It’s a claim about the whole architecture of God’s moral revelation: love is not a side dish; it’s the summary principle.

Now, here’s where we need to think like adults: if love is the summary of the law, then “love” cannot mean “whatever feels kind to me.” It must mean what the law means. Biblical love is morally shaped. It has a spine.

Paul says it plainly in Romans 13:8–10: love is the fulfilling of the law, and love works no ill to its neighbor. Love is not lawless. Love is what the law was always aiming at when understood spiritually rather than mechanically.

That takes us to the hardest part: what does “ask yourself” mean?

Greek: ὡς σεαυτόν (hōs seauton) — “as yourself.”
Hebrew: כָּמוֹךָ (kāmōkā) — “like you / as you.”

This is not a command to admire yourself, hype yourself, or build an ideology of self-esteem. Scripture assumes that human beings already care for themselves in practical ways. Paul even uses that assumption in Ephesians 5:29: “no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it.” That doesn’t mean humans never self-destruct. It means that, at the level of instinct and preference, we treat our own well-being as weighty. We feed ourselves. We make excuses for ourselves. We interpret our own motives generously. We want patience for our own failures.

“As yourself” is God saying: apply that same seriousness, patience, and practical goodwill to the other person. Don’t make yourself the only real human in the room.

In that sense, “love your neighbor as yourself” is a command against moral solipsism—the delusion that only “me” is vivid and everyone else is a cardboard cutout.

And it is explicitly a command against private vengeance. Leviticus doesn’t introduce love as a warm feeling; it introduces love as the alternative to revenge and the cure for grudge-keeping. The command is a divine refusal to let Israel become a community held together by cycles of payback. God is basically saying: you don’t get to play deity with your neighbor’s throat.

That’s why Jesus pushes it further: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you…” (Matt. 5:44). If neighbor-love were only for friends, it would be too easy to counterfeit. Anyone can “love” the people who mirror them. Enemy-love exposes whether we’re operating by the natural man or by the Spirit of Christ.

Now bring in the Old School Baptists you asked for—Trott and Beebe—because they were allergic to fake piety and equally allergic to moralistic religion that tries to use commands as ladders into heaven.

Samuel Trott, reflecting on the law’s holiness and purpose, explicitly ties the law’s moral demand to these two loves—love to God and love to neighbor—and he makes the point razor-clear: the law is holy because it demands a total orientation away from selfishness and toward the true good. Trott writes that God shows no selfishness in His works, and therefore the law requires perfect love: love to God and love to neighbor “as ourselves,” with an active desire to do others good.

But Trott does not treat this as a flattering mirror for fallen man. He treats it as an exposure. If the law demands perfect love—without partiality, without self-centered distortion—then the law reveals what we are not by nature. It unmasks sin as a failure of love, not merely a failure of etiquette. Trott goes even further: he argues that if man could have obeyed the law by himself, it would have produced harmony and peace, yet it would also have been a “constant restraint” upon selfishness—meaning the law stands as a holy curb against what the fallen will wants to do.

That’s classic Old School Baptist realism: the law is good, but the flesh is not. The commandment is righteous; we are crooked. So the law, handled honestly, does not produce self-salvation—it produces condemnation, and therefore it presses the sinner toward Christ, the only One who actually loved God with all His heart and loved His neighbor without defect.

And this is where the gospel becomes the only real hope for actual love. The New Testament never treats love as a mere human achievement. It roots love in regeneration and union with Christ. “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). And: “Everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God” (1 John 4:7). Not perfectly, not without conflict, but truly—because a new principle has been planted.

Trott, in the same stretch of thought, ties the possibility of holiness and real love in the saints to the “heavenly birth,” the new life derived from Christ. The law demands love; the gospel provides life.

Now Gilbert Beebe, as you’d expect, takes aim at a different but related danger: knowledge without love, doctrine without charity, correct talk that becomes an excuse for spiritual pride or careless liberty.

In one editorial section, Beebe warns that knowledge “puffeth up” unless it is “tempered with charity.” He explicitly identifies charity (love) as what makes knowledge profitable rather than poisonous. And he applies it in a strikingly practical way: even if something is “lawful,” love asks whether it is “expedient,” whether it harms a weak brother, whether it becomes a stumbling-block. That is neighbor-love in church clothes: not abstract benevolence, but active restraint for another’s spiritual good. (Sovereign Redeemer Books)

Beebe also insists that one mark of Christ’s people is visible love among themselves—“Behold how they love one another”—and he presses the saints toward unity, patience, burden-bearing, and unfeigned love. (Sovereign Redeemer Books) That’s not a detour from “love thy neighbor.” It’s the command applied where it becomes hardest: among believers who can actually hurt each other with words, suspicions, and party spirit.

It’s easy to “love humanity.” Humanity never interrupts you mid-sentence. It’s harder to love the brother who misreads you, the sister who annoys you, the church member who is slow to learn, the neighbor who votes wrong, the coworker who takes credit, the family member who reopens old wounds. Scripture doesn’t let us outsource love to the imaginary masses. Love is measured in inches, not miles.

At this point, we need to face a theological tension that people either flatten or weaponize.

On one hand, Jesus says love fulfills the law and summarizes it. On the other hand, Paul is adamant that we are not justified by the works of the law (Galatians, Romans). So what gives?

The resolution is not complicated, but it is humiliating: the law tells you what love is; the gospel tells you where love comes from.

If you try to use “love thy neighbor” as a stairway into God’s favor, you will either become a liar (pretending you’ve done it) or a despairer (knowing you haven’t). The law’s demand is total: love God with all; love neighbor as self. Trott explicitly frames it as a demand that overcomes selfish individuality—a demand that man cannot meet without a distinct principle of holiness from God.

But if you treat the gospel as permission to ignore the law’s moral meaning, you will drift into a kind of religious anesthesia: a Christianity of slogans where nothing actually changes except the vocabulary. Beebe’s warnings about knowledge without charity land right here. If you can defend doctrine like a lawyer but cannot bear with a weak brother, you’ve learned the notes and missed the music. (Sovereign Redeemer Books)

Old School Baptists typically insisted on both truths at once: salvation is of the Lord, entirely of grace in Christ; and grace produces fruit, including love, in those whom God has made alive. Not as a condition for God to love them, but as the evidence that God has loved them.

So “love thy neighbor as thyself” functions in multiple biblical ways at once.

First, it functions as a revelation of God’s moral will. God is telling you what holiness looks like in human relationships: no revenge, no grudges, active goodwill, practical mercy.

Second, it functions as conviction. If you hear it honestly, you immediately realize your love is partial and self-serving. You may love your neighbor when it’s convenient, when you get applause, when the neighbor is “your kind of person.” But love that resembles God’s love—holy, costly, steady—exposes us. The law is a flashlight, not a flattering filter.

Third, it functions as a guide for the regenerate life. The Spirit writes God’s law on the heart (Jer. 31:33; Heb. 8:10). Beebe leans into this when he urges the saints toward unity, love without dissimulation, and real burden-bearing: the “law of Christ” is not a theoretical category; it’s lived in the daily friction of the church and the world. (Sovereign Redeemer Books)

Now, some necessary clarifications, because this command is often misused.

“Love your neighbor” does not mean “approve of everything your neighbor does.” Scripture doesn’t confuse love with moral surrender. Love “rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth” (1 Cor. 13:6). If you enable someone’s destruction, you’re not loving them; you’re helping sin eat them alive.

“Love” also doesn’t mean you eliminate all boundaries. Even God, who is love, judges evil. The New Testament includes separation from false teachers, church discipline, and warnings. Love sometimes says “no,” sometimes rebukes, sometimes refuses partnership in sin. But love does all that without vengeance and without hatred. The motive matters. The spirit matters. The goal is restoration and good, not domination.

And “neighbor” doesn’t mean you pretend harm isn’t harm. Loving an enemy doesn’t mean calling cruelty “nice.” It means refusing the satanic logic of retaliation: you will not be shaped into the image of the offense. You will not let another person’s sin become your excuse to sin.

This is where the Hebrew context of Leviticus 19 becomes strangely modern. The world runs on outrage. Grudges are currency. Vengeance is entertainment. God’s command is an interruption: you don’t get to keep wrath like a treasure. You don’t get to nurse injuries into identity.

Instead, you are called to a love grounded in the character of God: “I am YHWH.” That final phrase is not decorative. It’s the reason. God is saying: this command is not merely social advice; it’s an expression of who I am and what my people must reflect.

And when Jesus brings this command into the center of His teaching, He doesn’t soften it—He intensifies it. He makes love the measure of true neighborliness (Luke 10’s Good Samaritan), the evidence of discipleship (“By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another,” John 13:35), and the shape of holiness (“Be ye therefore perfect,” Matt. 5:48, in the context of enemy-love).

So if we ask, “How do I actually obey ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’?” the Bible’s answer is not, “Try harder.” It’s: come to Christ, and then walk in Him.

Come to Christ, because only He fulfills the law’s love without remainder. Only He loves God with an undivided heart. Only He loves neighbor to the uttermost—touching lepers, eating with the despised, forgiving enemies, praying for murderers, laying down His life for the unworthy.

Walk in Him, because love is fruit, not a factory product. The Spirit produces love (Gal. 5:22). That doesn’t make obedience optional. It makes obedience possible—real, imperfect, growing, sometimes painfully slow, but genuine.

Beebe’s application is especially sober: even correct doctrine can become useless—or worse—if it inflates pride and neglects charity. Charity makes knowledge “profitable,” and it restrains liberty for the sake of another’s spiritual wellbeing. (Sovereign Redeemer Books) That’s neighbor-love with a backbone: I will not use my freedom to wound you.

Trott’s angle is equally bracing: the law’s demand for love exposes selfishness, and only a communicated holiness—new life from Christ—enables saints to move beyond isolated self-will into a love that seeks the good of others.

Put the two together, and you get a very biblical picture: love is demanded by the law, revealed by Christ, poured into the heart by the Spirit, and exercised in gritty, daily self-denial.

Which means the command is not a sentimental plaque for the wall. It’s a cross for the will.

Love your neighbor as yourself means: interpret your neighbor with the generosity you reserve for yourself. Pray for your neighbor with the seriousness with which you pray for yourself. Feed your neighbor’s need the way you feed your own hunger. Refuse vengeance even when it feels “justified.” Refuse to keep wrath as a pet. Seek your neighbor’s good—especially when there’s nothing to gain.

And when you fail—and you will—don’t turn the command into despair. Let it do what God designed it to do: drive you back to Christ, the only perfectly loving Man, and the only Savior for unloving people.

Because the weird miracle at the center of Christianity is this: the God who commands love also gives love. The law says, “Love.” The gospel says, “God has loved you in His Son.” And out of that love, the Spirit teaches the redeemed to begin doing the impossible-looking thing: loving neighbors, even enemies, not to become God’s people, but because they already are—by mercy.