Please read the passage before reading the commentary
“Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.”
We tend to think of ourselves as holy, as good people. Perhaps we prefer not to use the word holy to describe us, preferring good instead.
We say that we love everybody, but we find it hard or impossible to love those whom we do not like. Yet God tells us to be holy as God is holy. God challenges us to treat those we love and those whom we do not like the same. God sends the same sun to shine on the just and the unjust; the same rain to fall on the good and the bad. Unlike us, God gives good things to the bad and the good alike and makes no distinction; all get to taste God’s bounty.
Leviticus brings this segment to its conclusion by stating that we should love our neighbors as ourselves because God is the Lord.
This is the only reason for loving others as ourselves, because God has said so. We all belong to God. We are not our own. We owe our entire existence to God. We are nothing without God.
If God tells us to be holy and to love one another, we must do as God says. God’s love has made us after the image and likeness of God, and the image and likeness of God is love. Loving is the way we imitate God and show ourselves as Godlike.
To meet the challenge we have to change. We must continue loving those whom we like and renew our love for those whom we do not like. We must do this because the God who calls us is holy and wants to share this holiness with us completely.
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