Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

The greatest commandment — Treat others as we would like to be treated — Forgiveness and responsibility — Give each person what is due — Instructions from the Spirits about love, selfishness, faith, charity, and care even for those who committed crimes.

The greatest commandment

1. When Jesus was asked which was the greatest commandment, he answered: love God with all your heart, soul, and understanding. Then he added a second principle inseparable from the first: love your neighbor as yourself.

Jesus concludes that the whole law and the teachings of the prophets can be understood from these two principles. (Matthew 22:34-40)

2. “Do to others what you would like them to do to you.” This simple rule appears as a practical summary of moral law. (Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31)

Luke 6:31

3. Jesus told the story of a servant who owed the king an enormous amount. Because he could not pay, he asked for patience and mercy. The king had compassion and forgave the entire debt.

Soon afterward, that same servant found someone who owed him a much smaller amount. Instead of repeating the mercy he had received, he treated his companion violently and had him imprisoned until he paid.

When the king learned what had happened, he called the servant and asked why he had not shown the other person the same compassion he had received. The parable shows the inconsistency of asking for mercy for ourselves while acting without mercy toward someone who owes us something.

Jesus concludes that forgiveness needs to reach the heart and not merely appear in words. (Matthew 18:23-35)

4. Loving our neighbor as ourselves and treating others as we would like to be treated offers a practical measure for charity. If we want respect, kindness, understanding, and help, we should try to offer these same attitudes.

When this principle stops being only a religious idea and begins to guide relationships and institutions, there is less room for selfishness, exploitation, and violence. Peace and justice depend on people who can recognize in others someone with the same dignity.

Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar

5. Some opponents tried to put Jesus in a difficult political situation by asking whether it was right to pay taxes to Caesar. Jesus asked them to show him a coin and asked whose image was engraved on it.

When they answered that it was Caesar's, Jesus said: “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” The answer avoids the trap and affirms that there are social responsibilities and spiritual responsibilities. (Matthew 22:15-22; Mark 12:13-17)

6. For many Jews of the time, paying taxes to Roman rule was a highly sensitive political and religious issue. Therefore, the question was not neutral: any direct answer could be used against Jesus.

Jesus responds with a principle of justice: each person should fulfill what they truly owe, without using religion as an excuse to deny social responsibilities and without allowing human power to take the place of conscience and God.

See also in the Introduction: tax collectors

7. “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar” can be broadened into a rule of respect for rights and duties. Just as we want our legitimate interests to be respected, we should also respect the rights of others and avoid causing material or moral harm.

This principle reaches responsibilities toward family, society, and everyone with whom we have commitments.

Instructions from the Spirits

The law of love

Lazarus - Paris, 1862

8. Lazarus' message presents love as the center of Jesus' teachings. It does not refer only to romantic love or personal affection, but to the ability to recognize value, dignity, and connection with other people.

Love reduces selfish isolation and broadens concern for those who suffer. The poetic language of the message describes this love as an inner light capable of deeply changing the way we live.

The message connects this teaching with reincarnation. In the Spiritist view, understanding that life continues and that the Spirit goes through several experiences should lead less to fear of death and more to responsibility for one's own growth.

The goal of moral progress would be learning not to live only by impulse and immediate satisfaction. Feelings such as empathy, loyalty, and love need to be cultivated until they guide choices more strongly than selfishness.

The Spirit is compared to a field that needs care. What we plant today in thoughts, habits, and attitudes would form what we carry as learning into the future.

Fénelon - Bordeaux, 1861

9. Fénelon states that every person has the capacity to love, even someone who has already committed very harmful acts. This capacity may be limited to only a few people or interests, but it can be broadened and educated.

I said for any being or object because, among you, there are people who pour treasures of love from their hearts onto animals, plants, and even material objects. Like misanthropes who lament humanity, they resist the soul's natural tendency to seek affection and sympathy around itself. They lower the law of love to an instinctive state. But whatever they do, they cannot suffocate the living seed that God placed in their hearts at creation.

This seed develops and grows with morality and intelligence and, although often pressed down by selfishness, it is the source of the gentle and sacred virtues that make sincere and lasting affections and help us cross the steep and difficult road of human existence. Some people dislike the idea of reincarnation because they imagine that others will share affections they jealously consider exclusively their own.

It is their attachment that makes them selfish; their love is restricted to a small circle of relatives or friends, and everyone else becomes indifferent to them. To practice the law of love as God establishes it, people need gradually to learn to love all their brothers and sisters without distinction. The task is long and difficult, but it can be accomplished.

God wills it, and the law of love is presented as the first and most important teaching of the new Doctrine because it should one day overcome selfishness in all its forms — personal selfishness, family selfishness, group selfishness, and national selfishness. Jesus said: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” What is the limit of the neighbor? Is it the family, a religious group, or the nation? No: it is all humanity.

In the higher worlds described by the work, mutual love would harmonize and guide the advanced Spirits who live there. The message imagines Earth also moving toward social progress in which this law would be practiced more widely. Its expected effects would be moral improvement and greater happiness during earthly life.

People who are more resistant or caught in harmful habits would also be invited to change when they see the benefits produced by this principle: do not do to others what you would not want done to you; instead, do all the good you can. The message expresses confidence that the human heart can change through contact with love.

The message imagines the transformation of Earth through charity, humility, patience, dedication, and renunciation of selfishness. It recalls the teaching attributed to John: “My children, love one another.”

Loving broadly is difficult, but the message considers this effort capable of transforming people and, little by little, society itself.

Sansão, former member of the Spiritist Society of Paris - 1863

10. Sansão summarizes his guidance in one sentence: “Love greatly in order to be loved.” For him, practicing this principle helps people face ordinary suffering better and reduces the domination of purely material interests.

To love, in this sense, is to act with loyalty, honesty, conscience, and respect, trying to do for others what we would consider fair to receive from them.

It also means noticing nearby suffering and trying to relieve it. Humanity is presented as one great spiritual family, broadening responsibility beyond the circle of people we already know and love.

A word of support, hope, or respect can be a real form of charity. The message notes that societies can change and that values once rejected, such as freedom and fraternity, can become more accepted over time.

The text, written in the nineteenth century, expressed confidence in future social progress. The idea that remains is that new forms of justice can seem difficult to accept in one era and become natural in another.

Knowledge and experience accumulated across generations can prepare broader moral changes. For the message, the desirable destination of this progress is an increased human capacity for cooperation and love of neighbor.

The final hope is for a humanity capable of reconciling material and spiritual interests without turning difference into permanent conflict, living more consistently with the rule: love in order also to build relationships of love.

Selfishness

Emmanuel - Paris, 1861

11. Emmanuel presents selfishness as one of the main obstacles to moral progress. The first struggle, according to the message, is not defeating other people but recognizing and working on selfishness within ourselves.

Selfishness appears when personal well-being is placed above every consequence for others. The message uses Pilate as a symbol of someone who perceives an injustice but prefers not to become involved and thinks only: “this is not my problem.”

Even though Pilate recognized Jesus' innocence, he did not prevent the condemnation. The example shows that omission can also have moral weight when we truly have the possibility to act in the face of injustice.

The message asks Christians and Spiritists to confront selfishness through concrete actions. Social progress would depend on people who stop living only for their own interests and broaden responsibility and solidarity.

Pascal - Sens, 1862

12. Pascal reminds us that charity should not be limited to people considered respectable. Jesus welcomed people who were socially rejected and did not place his own reputation above the possibility of helping someone.

Social change begins with individual example. Practicing charity only when we receive approval is not the same as acting from conviction. The message advises doing good without depending on the opinion of those who despise or criticize us.

Without charity and cooperation, society becomes a dispute in which whoever can best impose their interests wins. Selfishness and pride also weaken family relationships when each person places personal advantage above bonds.

Faith and charity

Protective Spirit - Kraków, 1861

13. The message connects faith and charity but recognizes that people without religion can also be generous. The point it seeks to defend is that a deep spiritual conviction can give continuity and meaning to the practice of good even when it requires sacrifice.

Constant charity requires moving oneself out of the center and giving up some personal advantages. For those who have faith, trust in a greater purpose can help sustain this effort. This does not diminish the value of charity practiced by someone with another belief or no religion.

In the Spiritist view, earthly life is a stage of moral development. Differences in personality, needs, and interests create opportunities to learn coexistence, patience, and charity.

Living together requires concessions and reciprocal limits. The message places part of the happiness possible on Earth precisely in the practice of good, not only in material satisfaction.

Today it is not necessary to seek martyrdom in order to demonstrate faith. The proposed sacrifice is much more everyday: reduce selfishness, pride, and vanity and allow charity and conviction to guide decisions.

Charity toward criminals

Elisabeth of France - Le Havre, 1862

14. The message asks for charity also toward people who committed crimes. Recognizing their humanity does not mean denying responsibility, failing to protect victims, or abandoning justice. It means not concluding that someone has forever lost every possibility of repentance and change.

Avoid judging with pleasure in condemning. We all need understanding for our own mistakes. Charity is not limited to money; it also appears in how we speak and think about people in situations very different from our own.

Words of encouragement, guidance, and respect can help people who do not need material resources but need support to change the direction of their lives.

Treating everyone as children of the same God means not removing someone's dignity because of their errors. This can coexist with boundaries, social protection, and legal consequences proportionate to the actions committed.

The message rejects pleasure in the destruction or death of a criminal. Instead of wishing suffering, it proposes prayer and hope for repentance. Justice and safety may be necessary without turning revenge into a virtue.

The proposed model is Jesus, who welcomed people considered lost and sought to awaken in them a possibility of transformation.

Even someone who committed crimes remains a person capable of change. Charity can appear in prayer, support for processes of accountability and recovery, and recognition that no one should be reduced forever to the worst act in their history.

Lamennais - Paris, 1862

15. The message asks: if someone is at risk of death, should we try to save them even knowing that this person committed crimes and might offend again? The question separates the immediate value of life from judgment about past behavior.

The answer is that, when we can provide aid responsibly, we should not decide that a certain life no longer deserves help. Saving someone may offer an opportunity for accountability, change, and reparation that death would close.

This does not require a person to place themselves recklessly at fatal risk. In emergencies, the principle is to call for help and act within what is possible and safe. The moral value defended by the message is not to deny aid merely because we judge the person unworthy of living.