Introductory Note:
George MacDonald (1824-1905)
George MacDonald was a Scottish pastor, teacher, and author. As a young pastor in his 20s, MacDonald preached boldly about the need for social and spiritual reform in the Victorian era, but his dearly held belief in the extravagant grace of God towards all cost MacDonald a decrease in salary and ultimately induced him to leave formal church ministry after 28 months. MacDonald devoted the rest of his life to writing for children and adults, teaching English Literature, and investing in his family and friendships. C.S. Lewis would later praise MacDonald’s novel Phantastes as being essential in his conversion from atheism to Christianity. Combining prophetic imagination and theology with a seamless purity that few have been able to mimic since, MacDonald’s life and work reflect a God of beauty, relational warmth, and mystery who wants to be found by us. In the
piece shared here, MacDonald shares wise counsel on how to recognize in every neighbor “a beautiful brother.”
The Law of Love
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Matthew 12:31
The original here quoted by our Lord is to be found in the words of God to Moses, “Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the Lord” (Lev. 19:18). Our Lord never thought of being original. The older the saying the better, if it utters the truth he wants to utter. In him it becomes fact: The Word was made flesh. And so, in the wondrous meeting of extremes, the words he spoke were no more words, but spirit and life.
I am certain that it is impossible to keep the law towards one’s neighbor except one loves him. The law itself is infinite, reaching to such delicacies of action that the man who tries most will be the man most aware of defeat. We are not made for law, but for love. Love is law, because it is infinitely more than law. It is of an altogether higher region than law — is, in fact, the creator of law.
Had it not been for love, not one of the shall-nots of the law would have been uttered. True, once uttered, they show themselves in the form of justice, yea, even in the inferior and worldly forms of prudence and self- preservation; but it was love that spoke them first. Were there no love in us, what sense of justice could we have? I do not say it is conscious love that breeds justice, but I do say that without love in our nature justice would never be born. For I do not call that justice which consists only in a sense of our own rights.
What man, for instance, who loves not his neighbor and yet wishes
to keep the law, will dare be confident that never by word, look, tone, gesture, silence, will he bear false witness against that neighbor? What man can judge his neighbor aright save him whose love makes him refuse to judge him? Therefore are we told to love, and not judge. It is the sole justice of which we are capable, and that perfected will comprise all justice.
The Good Samaritan
“Who is my neighbor?” said the lawyer. And the Lord taught him that every one to whom he could be or for whom he could do anything was his neighbor, therefore, that each of the human race, as he comes within the touch of one tentacle of our nature, is our neighbor. Which of the shall-nots of the law is illustrated in the tale? Not one. The love that is more than law, and renders its breach impossible, lives in the endless story, coming out in active kindness, that is, the recognition of kin, of kind, of nighness, of neighborhood; yea, in tenderness and loving- kindness — the Samaritan-heart akin to the Jewish-heart, the Samaritan hands neighbors to the Jewish wounds.
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
The mystery of individuality and consequent relation is deep as the beginnings of humanity, and the questions thence arising can be solved only by him who has, practically, at least, solved the holy necessities resulting from his origin. In God alone can man meet man. In him alone the converging lines of existence touch and cross not. When the mind of Christ, the life of the Head, courses through that atom which is a man within the slowly revivifying body, when he is alive too, then the love of the brothers is there as conscious life. From Christ through the neighbors comes the life that makes him a part of the body.
It is possible to love our neighbor as ourselves. Our Lord never spoke hyperbolically, although, indeed, that is the supposition on which many unconsciously interpret his words, in order to be able to persuade themselves that they believe them. Yet there are mingled processes in the attainment of this final result.
Out of Self, into Love
The whole system of divine education as regards the relation of man and man, has for its end that a man should love his neighbor as himself. It is not a lesson that he can learn by itself, or a duty the obligation of which can be shown by argument… The whole constitution of human society exists for the express end, I say, of teaching the two truths by which man lives, Love to God and Love to Man.
What I want to speak of now, with regard to the second great commandment, is the relation of brotherhood and sisterhood. He who loves not his brother for deeper reasons than those of a common parentage will cease to love him at all. The love that enlarges not its borders, that is not ever spreading and including, and deepening, will contract, shrivel, decay, die. That we are the sons and the daughters of God born from his heart, the outcoming offspring of his love, is a bond closer than all other bonds in one.
A man must not choose his neighbor; he must take the neighbor that God sends him. The neighbor is just the man who is next to you at the moment, the man with whom any business has brought you in contact. In him, whoever he be, lies, hidden or revealed, a beautiful brother.
Thus will love spread and spread in wider and stronger pulses till the whole human race will be to the man sacredly lovely. Drink-debased, vice-defeatured, pride-puffed, wealth-bollen, vanity-smeared, they will yet be brothers, yet be sisters, yet be God-born neighbors. Any rough- hewn semblance of humanity will at length be enough to move the disciple to reverence and affection. It is harder for some to learn thus than for others. There are many whose first impulse is ever to repel and not to receive. But learn they may, and learn they must.
This love of our neighbor is the only door out of the dungeon of self.
Questions for Group Discussion
- MacDonald defines neighbor as “just the man who is next to you at the moment, the man with whom any business has brought you in contact.” How would you define neighbor?
- “Had it not been for love, not one of the shall-nots of the law would have been uttered.” How does love being at the root of the law affect how we interpret God’s “shall-not” commandments? And where does Jesus’ saying, “I have not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it” (Matt. 5:17) fit into this?
From IN: Exploring the Depths of Christian Community © 2024, Renovaré.
MacDonald excerpt adapted from Unspoken Sermons, Series I by George MacDonald, 1867. Public domain. Project Gutenberg eBook #9057, added October 1, 2005.
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Text First Published January 1867 · Last Featured on Renovare.org September 2024
