“Love your neighbor as yourself.” I’ve always taken this to mean something like “regard and act toward those around you as if they and their good are as important to you as you and your good.” We can call that an equivalential reading. It’s probably a valid way to take it. But a passing remark in John Barclay’s Paul and the Power of Grace (that I’m having some difficulty re-finding so as to quote) has me thinking of another subtly but importantly different way of parsing it: “Regard and act toward those around you as if they and their good are you and your good.” We can call this a constitutive or even identificatory reading. I like it.
[edit, 7/8/26] Here’s the Barclay quote:
Love, then, does not mean self-sacrifice in the sense of negating oneself for the sake of others and expecting nothing back. The scriptural citation—“You should love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18, cited in Galatians 5:14)—could be understood in a number of ways, but it seems to include, not exclude, the self in the good that one shares with another in love (perhaps: “You should love your neighbor as if he/she were integral to yourself”). In other words, the self is not given away in love, but given into a relationship with others, a relationship in which all parties flourish“.