God's Message for Each Day
Copyright © 2004 by Eugene H. Peterson.

LOVING OTHERS

“Love others as well as you love yourself.”
MATTHEW 22:40, THE MESSAGE

The Bible knows nothing of a religion defined by what a person does inwardly in the privacy of thought or feeling, or apart from others on lonely retreat. When Jesus was asked what the great commandment was, he said, “Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.” Then immediately, before anyone could go off and make a private religion out of it (“I come to the garden alone”), riveted it to another: “There is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’”