By: Lisa Derringer
When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus responded, “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.”1 Love the Lord and love people. It sounds so simple, but exactly what it looks like to love one’s neighbor has become a fairly controversial topic.
What is love?
Depending on who is asked, there could be varying answers for what it means to put the Greatest Commandment into practice. Much of this controversy is related to how love is defined by culture. According to Betterhelp, an online therapy service, truly loving someone means “accepting their differences, even when they challenge your own beliefs or preferences.”2 This definition highlights the crucial aspect of love that has become so deeply ingrained in our culture that love is often equated with acceptance. According to this definition, one cannot love another if they are not completely accepting of that person, regardless of whether it differs from one’s own beliefs or preferences, which would include one’s religious beliefs.
If one is to live a life that is faithful to historic orthodox Christian doctrines, the idea that love and acceptance must go hand in hand does not compute. So, what does it look like to faithfully practice loving God and loving others without compromise? We must remember that love and truth cannot be separated. 1 Corinthians 13:6 describes love as not rejoicing in wrongdoings but rejoicing in the truth. Faithfully practicing love involves being willing to speak the truth and not encourage wrongdoing. When referencing wrongdoing, the Greek word Adikia is used. This can be translated to unrighteousness, and relates to falsehood, evil, wickedness, injustice, and deceitfulness.3 Anything that goes against the truth found in Scripture is counter to God, which is sin. By understanding what wrongdoing is, so love does not rejoice in sin, but rather in truth.
Truth and Relativism
This is where Christianity and culture collide because the current culture does not view truth as objective, but rather subjective. The controversy over what it means to love your neighbor is heavily dependent on one’s view of truth. Scripture speaks to the objective nature of truth, being that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.4 The Christian claim of truth is not a personal preference because “the truth doesn’t depend on us or our preferences. It certainly shouldn’t be based on how it feels because, let’s be real, sometimes being a Christian is really hard. It’s not like we’re out here winning a popularity contest! The truth of Christianity is based on the objective, public ministry of Christ and the eyewitness testimony of those who followed Him.”5
Christianity and culture are at odds when it comes to what truth is, and this is in part because of the influence of relativism. Relativism can be roughly described as “the view that truth and falsity, right and wrong, standards of reasoning, and procedures of justification are products of differing conventions and frameworks of assessment and that their authority is confined to the context giving rise to them.”6 This philosophical idea is not new, but it really took hold of cultural thought beginning in the Enlightenment period, and has continued into today.7 Relativism relegates truth to the subjective, determined on a person-by-person and case-by-case basis.
Loving Your Neighbor
Relativistic ideas are not only related to truth and morality, but also to the way in which Scripture is interpreted. The controversy surrounding what it means to love one’s neighbor has been heightened by the way in which this specific passage of Scripture is interpreted. One understanding of this passage typically takes the form of turning, “the command into a cudgel for beating the consciences of Christians, all but forcing submission in matters not required by the Lord.”8 Another interpretation of this passage takes the idea of loving your neighbor and equates it to “make sure your neighbor feels loved by you.”9 The key difference in these interpretations focuses on the idea that your neighbor should feel loved, making feelings paramount to being loved. A common cultural example of this would be when people are told to follow their heart or to do what makes them happy. This sounds like being loving, but if the choices being made are causing harm to themselves or others, then this is harm, not love. Loving your neighbor means that one must be willing to address these tough situations. It is not easy, but as believers, when someone is deep in sin, they are causing harm to themselves and others, and addressing it is the loving thing to do.
When catering to one’s feelings, it is difficult to truly practice a love that rejoices in the truth. Much of the issue surrounding practicing a biblically faithful love is that people do not want to be truthful if it involves hurting the feelings of another, and possibly ruining a relationship. In light of the events over the past few months, when proclaiming the name of Christ, one must love the Lord over everything, and obedience is an act of love. Secondly, we are called to love our neighbor; that love must not contradict the first commandment. If the love that we are showing our neighbor is not done first and foremost with obedience to the Lord at the forefront, then it is done in vain.
End Notes:
1. Matthew 22:37-40.
2. BetterHelp Editorial Team, “Nurturing Relationships with Love, Acceptance, and Therapy | BetterHelp,” Betterhelp.com (BetterHelp, July 15, 2019), accessed September 15, 2025, https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/love/love-and-acceptance-how-to-care-for-those-you-love/.
3. James Strong, The New Strong’s Expanded Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010), G0093.
4. John 14:6.
5. Rachel Shockey, “Why Should Anyone Believe in Objective, Absolute Truth? – Women in Apologetics,” Womeninapologetics.com, April 25, 2022, accessed September 15, 2025, https://womeninapologetics.com/why-should-anyone-believe-in-objective-absolute-truth/.
6. Maria Baghramian and Carter J Adam, “Relativism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, September 11, 2015, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/.
7. See: Trinity Westlake, “The Rise of Relativism in the West: From ‘Absolute’ to ‘Relative,’” History’s Page, March 27, 2025, accessed September 15, 2025, https://www.historyspage.com/post/the-rise-of-relativism-in-the-west-from-absolute-to-relative.
8. Joe Holland, “We’re Commanded to Love Our Neighbors, Not to Make Them Feel Loved,” Sola Ecclesia, June 5, 2023, accessed September 15, 2025, https://solaecclesia.org/articles/were-commanded-to-love-our-neighbors-not-to-make-them-feel-loved/.
9. Holland, We’re Commanded to Love Our Neighbors.