Through the lens of Young married
The Holiness Code — love your neighbor
“Love your neighbor as yourself.” The most quoted line in Leviticus 19. The verse Jesus picked up and made central.
In marriage, the closest neighbor is the one who sleeps next to you. The command begins there. The way you love your spouse is the testing ground for whether you can love your literal neighbor, your friend, the stranger, anyone else.
Most of us are kinder to strangers than to our spouses. Better at small talk with the cashier than at hard talk at the kitchen table. More patient with the friend who frustrates us than with the person we have spent the last decade promising to love.
Leviticus 19 puts the test under your roof first. If you cannot love this neighbor, you have not yet learned to love any.
One small thing this week: name one specific way you have been treating your spouse less well than you would treat a stranger. Repent of it gently. Begin treating them as your first neighbor — not your familiar one.