Bible Verses of The Day: Sunday, January 18, 2026

Today’s Focus: What It Really Means to Love Your Neighbor

The Command That’s Easier Said Than Done

Sunday arrives with familiar command that’s become so commonplace we’ve stopped hearing how radical it actually is: love your neighbor.

You’ve heard it countless times. It’s printed on church bulletins. It’s quoted in sermons. It’s referenced in discussions about Christian living. “Love your neighbor as yourself” has become Christian cliché that sounds beautiful in theory but gets complicated quickly in practice.

Because your actual neighbors aren’t theoretical concepts. They’re real people. The ones who let their dog bark at 6am every morning. The coworker who takes credit for your ideas. The family member who says hurtful things then acts like nothing happened. The person on social media posting opinions that make your blood boil. The driver who cut you off in traffic. The cashier who was rude for no apparent reason.

Loving people who are easy to love requires no command. You naturally love people who love you back, who treat you well, who share your values, who make your life better. The command to love your neighbor becomes challenging precisely because some neighbors are difficult, annoying, hurtful, or actively working against you.

And here’s what makes it harder: you’re probably not entirely sure what “love your neighbor” actually means beyond vague sense that you should be nice to people. Does it mean you have to like everyone? Does it require you to agree with them? Does it mean letting people take advantage of you? Does it mean ignoring your own needs to serve theirs?

Today we’re going to explore what Jesus actually meant when He said “love your neighbor as yourself” and what it looks like to practice this command in real life with real people who are sometimes really difficult.

What Jesus Actually Said About Loving Your Neighbor

The Context You Might Have Forgotten

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Matthew 22:37-40 (ESV)

The Question That Started It All

A lawyer was testing Jesus, asking which commandment was greatest. Jesus answered with two: love God completely, love your neighbor as yourself. Then He added something crucial: “On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Everything in Scripture hangs on these two commands. Every other law. Every prophetic word. Every instruction about how to live. All of it flows from loving God and loving neighbor.

This means loving your neighbor isn’t optional add-on to Christianity. It’s not bonus level for super spiritual people. It’s foundational to what it means to follow Jesus. You can’t claim to love God while refusing to love people.

The Connection Between the Two Commands

Notice Jesus says the second command is “like” the first. Loving your neighbor is intimately connected to loving God. How you treat people reveals what you actually believe about God.

When you love your neighbor, you’re acknowledging they’re made in God’s image. When you serve your neighbor, you’re serving God through them. When you forgive your neighbor, you’re extending the grace God gave you.

You can’t separate loving God from loving people. The two are woven together so tightly that claiming one while ignoring the other is hypocrisy.

Foundation Truth: Loving your neighbor isn’t separate from loving God. It’s how you demonstrate you actually love God.

Who Exactly Is Your Neighbor?

“But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’ Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers…'”

Luke 10:29-30 (ESV)

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

The lawyer asked “who is my neighbor?” hoping to narrow the definition. To create boundaries. To determine who deserves love and who doesn’t.

Jesus responded with story of man beaten and left for dead. Religious leaders passed by without helping. A Samaritan (someone Jews considered enemy) stopped, cared for the wounded man, paid for his recovery.

Then Jesus asked who was neighbor to the wounded man. The answer? The one who showed mercy. The one who helped despite cultural, religious, and ethnic barriers that said he shouldn’t.

The Uncomfortable Answer

Your neighbor isn’t just people who look like you, think like you, vote like you, worship like you, or live near you. Your neighbor is anyone God puts in your path who needs something you can give.

This includes people you naturally like and people you find difficult. People who are grateful and people who take advantage. People who deserve help and people who arguably don’t. People from your community and people from communities you’ve been taught to avoid.

The Samaritan helped someone who would have considered him enemy. That’s the standard Jesus set. Your neighbor includes people who wouldn’t help you back. Who don’t like you. Who actively oppose you.

Challenging Question: Who are you excluding from “neighbor” category to avoid having to love them?

What Love Actually Looks Like in Practice

Love Is Action, Not Just Emotion

“Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”

1 John 3:18 (ESV)

The Difference Between Saying and Doing

John writes to believers who are apparently talking about love without demonstrating it. He says stop loving with words only. Start loving with deeds and truth.

Love as Jesus described it is verb, not feeling. It’s something you do, not just something you feel. You can love your neighbor without liking them. You can show love through actions even when warm emotions are absent.

This is actually freeing. You don’t have to manufacture feelings you don’t have. You don’t have to pretend to enjoy someone’s company when you don’t. You just have to choose actions that demonstrate love regardless of your feelings.

What Loving Actions Look Like

Loving your neighbor means:

• Listening when they talk instead of waiting for your turn to speak
• Helping when they have need you can meet
• Speaking truth kindly even when easier to stay silent
• Forgiving when they hurt you instead of holding grudges
• Praying for their good even when they’ve wronged you
• Serving their needs when you’re able regardless of whether they deserve it
• Treating them with dignity even when they’re treating you poorly

Notice none of these require feeling warm fuzzy emotions. They’re choices. Actions. Things you can do even when you don’t feel like it.

Today’s Practice: Identify one person who’s difficult to love. Choose one action that demonstrates love toward them this week.

Love Includes Boundaries, Not Just Sacrifice

The Misunderstanding That Creates Resentment

Many people think loving your neighbor means saying yes to every request, tolerating all behavior, and sacrificing yourself completely for others’ needs. This creates resentful martyrdom, not loving service.

Jesus said “love your neighbor as yourself.” As yourself. Not more than yourself. Not instead of yourself. As yourself.

This means loving your neighbor includes appropriate care for your own needs. It means boundaries that protect your capacity to actually help instead of depleting yourself until you have nothing left to give.

What Healthy Boundaries Look Like

You can love your neighbor while:

• Saying no to requests that exceed your capacity
• Refusing to enable destructive behavior
• Protecting yourself from abuse or manipulation
• Setting limits on your time, energy, and resources
• Not allowing others’ emergencies to become your constant crisis

Boundaries aren’t selfishness. They’re stewardship. You’re stewarding finite resources (time, energy, emotional capacity) that God gave you. Using them wisely honors God. Letting others deplete them through poor boundaries doesn’t serve anyone.

Important Distinction: Loving your neighbor doesn’t require you to be their doormat. You can love people and still have boundaries.

Love Sometimes Means Difficult Conversations

“Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.”

Galatians 6:1 (ESV)

When Love Requires Truth-Telling

Sometimes loving your neighbor means having hard conversation they don’t want to hear. Addressing sin they’re ignoring. Speaking truth they’re avoiding. Confronting behavior that’s hurting them or others.

This isn’t about being judgmental. It’s about loving someone enough to help them see what they can’t or won’t see themselves. It’s about restoring, not condemning.

Paul says do this “in a spirit of gentleness” while watching yourself. The goal is restoration, not superiority. You’re helping fellow struggler, not judging from position of moral high ground.

How to Have Loving Difficult Conversations

Before you speak:

• Examine your own motives. Are you trying to help or punish?
• Check your own life. Are you guilty of same or similar sin?
• Pray for wisdom, gentleness, and God’s timing

When you speak:

• Focus on specific behavior, not character attack
• Use “I” statements. “I’m concerned about…” not “You’re always…”
• Listen as much as you talk
• Offer help, not just criticism
• Be willing to hear their perspective

After you speak:

• Give them space to process
• Continue loving them regardless of their response
• Trust God with the outcome

Wisdom Check: Is this hard conversation necessary and am I the right person to have it? Or am I speaking from hurt, anger, or desire to control?

The Hardest Neighbors to Love

The Neighbor Who Hurt You

“But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.”

Matthew 5:44-45 (ESV)

When Your Neighbor Is Your Enemy

Jesus takes “love your neighbor” to most difficult level: love your enemies. Pray for those persecuting you. This seems impossible, even unreasonable.

But Jesus isn’t suggesting this because enemies deserve love. He’s commanding it because you need to give it. Because harboring hatred poisons you. Because refusing to love your enemies makes you like them.

Loving your enemy doesn’t mean trusting them again immediately. Doesn’t mean allowing continued abuse. Doesn’t mean pretending they didn’t hurt you. It means choosing their good even when they’ve chosen your harm.

What This Looks Like Practically

Pray for them. Not “God, please punish them.” But genuine prayer for their wellbeing. This is excruciatingly hard but it changes your heart toward them.

Refuse to gossip about them. Don’t rehearse their offenses to everyone who will listen. Don’t build alliance against them.

Help them if you can do so safely. If they have genuine need you can meet without enabling destructive behavior or putting yourself at risk, consider meeting it.

Forgive them. Not because they deserve it but because you need freedom from unforgiveness. (See Friday’s post on forgiveness.)

Hard Truth: Loving your enemy is hardest form of love, which is exactly why Jesus commanded it. It proves love is choice, not feeling.

The Neighbor Who’s Different From You

We naturally gravitate toward people like us. Same background. Same beliefs. Same values. Same culture. Loving neighbors who are similar is relatively easy.

Loving neighbors who are radically different requires intentionality. Crossing cultural barriers. Listening to perspectives you don’t share. Serving people whose worldview contradicts yours.

The Samaritan in Jesus’s parable crossed massive cultural divide to help someone from group that despised Samaritans. That’s the example Jesus held up as what neighbor love looks like.

Challenge: Who is different from you that God might be calling you to love? Different politically? Culturally? Religiously? Economically?

The Neighbor Who Takes Advantage

Some people will take advantage of your generosity. Will exploit your kindness. Will take everything you give and demand more.

This doesn’t mean stop loving. It means love wisely. Set boundaries. Give what you can sustainly give, not what depletes you. Help in ways that serve them without enabling them.

Sometimes loving someone who takes advantage means saying no. Means refusing to rescue them from consequences of their choices. Means establishing limits that protect both of you.

Wisdom: Loving your neighbor doesn’t require you to be naive about manipulation or to ignore patterns of taking advantage.

Practical Ways to Love Your Neighbor This Week

1. Notice People

Most of us move through world focused on our own agenda, barely noticing people around us. Slow down enough to see people. Make eye contact. Acknowledge their humanity.

The cashier isn’t just transaction facilitator. She’s person made in God’s image. The person asking for money isn’t just interruption to your day. He’s neighbor Jesus said to love.

2. Listen Without Agenda

When someone talks to you, actually listen. Don’t formulate your response while they’re speaking. Don’t turn conversation back to yourself. Just listen with genuine interest in what they’re saying.

Listening communicates value. It says “you matter enough for me to give you my attention.” That’s act of love.

3. Meet Practical Needs You Can Meet

If you see need you have capacity to meet, meet it. Your neighbor needs meal after surgery? Bring one. Coworker struggling with project you could help with? Offer assistance. Friend moving and needs help? Show up.

Don’t wait for needs to be explicitly stated. Notice and respond when you’re able.

4. Pray for Specific People

Choose three people to pray for daily this week. One you naturally love. One who’s neutral. One who’s difficult. Pray specifically for their needs, struggles, and wellbeing.

Praying for people changes how you see them. Hard to harbor resentment toward someone you’re genuinely praying for.

5. Speak Words That Build Up

“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”

Ephesians 4:29 (ESV)

Use your words to encourage. To acknowledge effort. To express gratitude. To build up instead of tear down.

Compliment genuinely. Thank sincerely. Encourage specifically. Your words have power to love your neighbor.

Your Sunday Challenge

This week, practice loving your neighbor by doing these five things:

1. Notice three people you usually overlook. Acknowledge them. See them as image-bearers.
2. Have one conversation where you only listen. Don’t turn it to yourself. Just listen.
3. Meet one practical need you have capacity to meet. Do it without being asked.
4. Pray daily for three specific people. One easy to love. One neutral. One difficult.
5. Speak building-up words to at least three people. Encourage. Thank. Affirm.

A Prayer for the Grace to Love Your Neighbor

God, You commanded me to love my neighbor as myself. I confess I find this harder than I want to admit.

I’m good at loving people who are easy to love. Who love me back. Who share my values. Who make my life better. But my neighbor includes people who are difficult, different, and sometimes downright hurtful.

Help me remember that loving my neighbor is how I demonstrate I love You. Help me understand it’s not optional add-on but foundational to following Jesus.

Show me who my neighbor actually is. Not just people I choose but anyone You put in my path who needs something I can give.

Help me love with actions, not just words. Give me courage to help, to listen, to serve, to give even when I don’t feel warm emotions toward the person.

Teach me healthy boundaries. Help me love my neighbor as myself, which includes appropriate care for my own needs. Help me steward my resources wisely instead of depleting myself through poor boundaries.

Give me courage for difficult conversations that love requires. Help me speak truth gently. Help me confront in spirit of restoration, not condemnation.

Help me love enemies who’ve hurt me. Help me pray genuinely for those who’ve wronged me. This feels impossible, so I need Your grace.

Help me notice people I usually overlook. Help me listen without agenda. Help me meet needs I can meet. Help me pray for specific people. Help me speak words that build up.

Let my love for neighbors be evidence that I actually love You. Let my actions toward people demonstrate the truth of my faith in You.

In Jesus’s name, Amen.