Loving Those Who Owe You – The Second Great Commandment

Loving Those Who Owe You

Matthew 22:37-39

And he said to him, “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.”

Deuteronomy 24:10, 11

“When you make your neighbor a loan of any sort, you shall not go into his house to collect his pledge. You shall stand outside, and the man to whom you make the loan shall bring the pledge out to you.”

We must love those who are indebted to us.

The fifth commandment requires that we respect the inherent dignity in all people. Even those who are in our debt deserve our respect and love. Many people might fall into this category: neighbors to whom we have loaned a tool, employees, ministers whose work we support with our tithes, those to whom we’ve made a loan of money, even those for whom we have done some good thing in the past. We must not take advantage of whatever perceived advantage we may have over them. Instead, we must honor their humanity and recognize their dignity by refusing to use our “advantage” as a way of belittling, embarrassing, or bullying them, or of insinuating in any way that we expect them to reciprocate our “loan” by fulfilling some demand on our parts. This is a great temptation on the part of those who contribute to Christian causes, especially when they are close to those in leadership. They may expect that their considerable gifts to the ministry should qualify them to have a determinative voice in the conduct of the ministry. But this is to take advantage of our neighbor rather than to love him with Christ’s love.

What are some other ways that people you love might come into your debt? Might “owe” you something? What does love require of you in relating to them?

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“In the Gates” is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.