# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1861_S337
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report on the Law. 337

order his whole life so that it be serviceable to his neighbor in love (as
the Apostle said above, v. 13), for though you build churches for the whole
world, and had the merits of all the monasteries, and did all the miracles
of the saints, without thereby serving your neighbor" *). Therefore the
written law, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," says nothing other than what
the law of nature says, Matt. 7:12: whatever ye would that men should do
to you (that is, love yourselves), do ye even the same things to them —
that is to say, in truth, exactly as much as you love yourself, so also
love others. But what else does the whole Gospel teach? So this, then, is
the law which goes through the whole world, well known to all men, written
in the hearts of all men, and it will leave no one excused from beginning
to end; although the Jews besides this also had their ceremonies, and
other peoples too had their own laws, which yet did not bind the whole
world, but only the law which the Spirit puts into the heart of each
person without ceasing. This too is well worth noting here: that certain
fathers have taken from the words of this commandment the notion that an
ordered love has its beginning in itself. For they say, self-love is
prescribed as a rule according to which you are to love your neighbor. I
too will here give my own opinion on this, and it is this: I understand
the commandment to mean that it does not command us to love ourselves, but
only to love our neighbor. First, because the love of self is already
present and dominant, all too strongly, in all men beforehand. Second, if
God had wanted this order, he would have spoken thus: Love yourself, and
after that your neighbor as yourself. But instead he says: Love thy
neighbor as thyself — that is, love him just as you already love yourself
without any commandment at all. So too the Apostle, in 1 Cor. 13:5, gives
as a special property of love that it does not seek its own; with these
words he wholly denies self-love. So too Christ commanded the denial of
self and the hating of one's own life, Mark 8:35. He also says clearly to
the Philippians, ch. 2, v. 4, that no one should seek what is his own, but
what serves other people. In the

*) The reporter cannot forbear to remind the reader how exceedingly important this
saying is. A man can do much for church purposes and yet not be a Christian. Great
sacrifices for the concerns of the kingdom of God only too easily bring a false comfort into
the heart, that one must therefore be a true Christian and have a share in heaven; hence
many a man is generous here while living in self-seeking toward his neighbor. But God's
Word teaches — and all upright preachers should say it again and again — that only those
are good works which one does out of love for one's neighbor and in his service; and
therefore only he brings, and can bring, sacrifices pleasing to God for godly purposes who
in his whole life is driven and guided not by self-seeking but by love of his neighbor.
Whoever does much for the church and yet is stingy toward his poor neighbor and grasping
in his business and dealings deceives himself bitterly with that very zeal in giving.