“And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
So… knowing that biblical “love” is a verb, something we do, we come to one of Jesus’ most important teachings. That is, we show our love for God by loving our neighbor. Jesus’ teaching on the Greatest Commandment (love God) notes, “and the second is like it” — loving our neighbors as ourselves. We see this in Matthew 25 as well, where Jesus equates love shown to the “least of these” with love shown to Himself. We show our love for God by loving our neighbor.
What does this love look like? In the Matthew passage above, it looks like helping those in need. Fair enough. In 1 Corinthians 13, it looks a lot like putting the benefit of another ahead of our own self interest. This is getting tougher. Finally, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us to love our enemies — perhaps by not treating them as they might deserve.
Loving our neighbors is the serious business of being a follower of Jesus. Thank goodness for the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, eh?