Matthew 22:39
“And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
King James Version (KJV)
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During the temple confrontations of Passion week, a lawyer tests Jesus by asking which is the great commandment. Jesus answers with two, drawn from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18.
What Does Matthew 22:39 Mean?
Jesus is answering a lawyer who asked which commandment is greatest, and here He names the second: to love your neighbour as yourself. He has just cited love for God with all the heart, soul, and mind (Matthew 22:37-38), and now He binds a second command tightly to the first, calling it "like unto it." The two are not rivals; they belong together.
By quoting Leviticus 19:18, Jesus places this command at the center of the moral life and gives it a built-in measure: "as thyself." The self-care every person already practices -- feeding, protecting, forgiving, hoping the best for oneself -- becomes the pattern for how to treat others. "Neighbour" is not narrowed to the familiar or the deserving; elsewhere Jesus stretches it to include even the stranger and the enemy. To call this command "like unto" love for God is striking, because it means devotion to God cannot be separated from how a person treats the people around them. The vertical and the horizontal are one cloth. Worship that ignores the neighbour is incomplete, and kindness to the neighbour is itself an expression of love for the God who made them.
In the Original Language
The verb is "agapēseis" (thou shalt love), the future of agapaō, used as a command. The same self-giving love named in the first commandment is now directed toward "ton plēsion," the neighbour or the one near at hand.
Cross References
“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.”
- Leviticus 19:18
“Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”
- Romans 13:10
“A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”
- John 13:34
Application
Let the care you naturally give yourself set the standard for how you treat others today, remembering that love for God is shown in love for the people He has placed around you.