Matthew 22:39
What does Matthew 22:39 mean?
A second likewise is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
The short answer
In Matthew 22:39, Jesus has just been asked to name the greatest commandment. He answers first with love for God — with all your heart, soul, and mind — and then, without being asked for more, he adds a second: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." The small word "likewise" (or "like it," in many translations) is doing a lot of work here. Jesus is not offering a bonus suggestion or a footnote. He is saying that the command to love your neighbor belongs to the same category as the command to love God. The two stand together. As J. Ellsworth Kalas observes, once Jesus paired these commands, the word love became something no serious reader of the Bible can walk around. Jesus put his full authority behind it.
But that raises the question most of us actually feel when we read this verse: can love really be commanded? If love were only an emotion — a warmth we either feel or don't — the answer would be no. You cannot order someone to feel fond of a difficult coworker or a hostile neighbor. Frances Taylor Gench points out that in both the Old and New Testaments, love is not primarily a feeling at all. It is something you do. It seeks another person's well-being and shows up in concrete action on their behalf.
That changes how the verse lands. "Love your neighbor as yourself" is not a demand to manufacture affection. It is a call to act toward others with the same practical care and attention you naturally give your own needs. Feelings may follow, or they may not. The command stands either way — and, read this way, it becomes something we can actually obey.
What scholars say
These excerpts take up the two questions this verse presses on readers: Kalas shows that by pairing love of neighbor with the greatest commandment, Jesus made the word love impossible to escape, while Gench answers whether love can be commanded — arguing that biblical love is not merely a feeling but concrete action for another's well-being, which means we don't have to like everyone in order to love them.
“But we’re stuck with this word. Jesus put an eternal imprimatur on it. When an inquirer asked him what was the first commandment—that is, what commandment summarized and included all the rest—he answered, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ ” (Matt. 22:37–39). It’s difficult, indeed impossible, to get away from that word love.”
“A second question may also give us pause: Can love be "commanded"? Not if it were simply a feeling. But the love of which John speaks is more than the warm feeling one has toward another. It is more than that emotion extolled in Hallmark-speak as "the feeling you feel when you feel you're going to feel a feeling you never felt before." Love, in both the Old and New Testaments, is not just something you feel; far more, it is something you do. Love seeks the well-being of others and is expressed in concrete efforts on their behalf. Thus, love can be commanded. Love is something we do, redefined by Jesus' own act of self-giving. Love is something we do, regardless of how we feel; thus, it may come as a relief to know that we don't have to like everybody—we just have to love them.”
What it means for you
Start by noticing where you already treat love as a feeling to wait for rather than an action to take. Is there someone you've been avoiding until you "feel better" about them? This verse suggests you don't have to wait. You can seek their good today — a kept promise, a practical kindness, a fair word spoken about them — regardless of how you feel.
There is also real relief here: you are not commanded to like everyone. You are commanded to act for their well-being. That is harder in some ways, but it is possible, and it is something you can begin this week with one specific person in mind.
Matthew 22 in context
Matthew 22 is a chapter of tests. Religious leaders come at Jesus with trick questions — about paying taxes to Caesar, about marriage and the resurrection — hoping to trap him. Then a lawyer asks which commandment is greatest. Jesus answers by quoting two passages from the Hebrew Scriptures: love God completely (Deuteronomy 6:5) and love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18). Verse 39 is the second half of that answer, and Jesus concludes that the whole law and the prophets hang on these two commands. Far from being caught, Jesus distills everything to love.