How to Love Your Neighbor reports that it is never a good idea to interpret the bible from a cultural perspective. This is especially true regarding love. Everyone who has experienced love for another person, has seen a romance movie, read a romance book, or shared stories about falling in love knows that the process is different for everyone. This is not true for Godly love. 1 John 4:19-21 tells us the process:

19. We love because he first loved us.

INTERPRETATION: Jews and Christians commonly interpret verse 19 as “we love God because he first loved us.” The word “God” is inferred but the word “God” does not appear in the original bible text. The context of verse 19 is verse 20 which is about loving brothers and sisters.

The correct interpretation is “We love our neighbors and God because God first loved us.” This is a fair interpretation because it is consistent with God’s commandments about loving him and your neighbors

20. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.

INTERPRETATION: It is impossible to love God and hate a neighbor. If you love God you will automatically love your neighbor, brother and sister. If you don’t love your neighbors, it is impossible to love God.

People who claim to love God while hating their neighbor lie to themselves and others. Whatever feelings they have toward God are not Godly love. More likely they are in love with the idea of God – not God himself. Since God’s character is revealed in his laws, it is impossible to love God and not love his laws about how to love your neighbor.

People who claim to love God while hating their neighbor are religious boasters. It is good for their status in their religious community to boast about how much they love God. People who hear these boasts accept them at face value because they don’t know that it is impossible to love God without loving your neighbor.

21. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

INTERPRETATION: The word “must” does not appear in the original Greek text. Here is how the verse would read if King James bible editors had not changed the text to make the bible more readable: 

And this commandment from him, That loveth God love his brother also. 

By adding the word “must” bible editors give the impression that Christians love their neighbor as a willful act of obedience. In effect, they make loving your neighbor, brother and sister a religious duty. This interpretation is inconsistent with what scripture says, which is that people who love God automatically love their brothers and sisters by default – not as a matter of willful obedience. 

Religious people wrongly interpret these and other scriptures about love because God’s commands to love your neighbor as you love yourself are not written on their hearts. Therefore the concept of Godly love is missing from their religious vocabulary. They are too busy obeying their religious doctrines to obey God’s most important command.

Lacking a correct understanding of scripture, they have no experience with receiving Godly love in their hearts or sharing it with their neighbors. All they know is fleshly emotions experienced in a religious setting, in nature, listening to music, or in some other kind of community event that resonates in their mind and body as love because it feels good, seems right and agrees with their experience of receiving human love. They are full of confidence that they love God and their natural brothers and sisters. They don’t understand scripture because they interpret it with respect to human, cultural understandings of biblical words.

Because Jews and Christians share natural human love with their neighbors, brothers and sisters, and because they have the same kind of human affections for God, they think they are obedient to 1 John 4:19-21. There are four flaws in this thinking:

1. They do not have a global view of neighbors, brothers and sisters discussed in Who is your neighbor, brother and sister?
2. They don’t know that human love is not the same as God’s kind of love.
3. They don’t know that God’s definition of hate is not the same as the human definition.  
4. They don’t understand that God communicates Godly love through people who have God’s love in their hearts because they have God’s laws written on their hearts.

Lacking  understanding about these basic biblical interpretations, Jews and Christians disobey God’s commands about loving God and your neighbor. Therefore, they habitually create division and obstruct global unity that God wants to achieve through love.