Who Is My Neighbor?
Is it the person who lives next door? Is it the person next to me? Is it my enemy? Who is it? To answer this question, you need to answer another question. Who do you love? And this answer is wrapped up in faith. Jesus answers the question — Who is my neighbor? — by tying faith and love together. Where faith is seen in love, and love is indistinguishable from faith. Here’s how Jesus does it.
In Luke 10:25-37, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. In this story Jesus explains to a lawyer what he must do to inherit eternal life. In other words, showing how his faith is evident in his life. And in doing so Jesus tells all of us what real Christian love is.
Christian love is loving God with all that you are, and that love is seen in loving your neighbor. Upon hearing this, Luke says that in his self-righteousness the lawyer asked, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus then proceeds to tell of a Samaritan that went out of his way to care for a stranger, even as it cost him. The Samaritan proved to be a neighbor of the man who robbers left for dead.
A priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan all came down the road. Two passed by the man on the other side of the road. These two were too busy to be interrupted, too self-absorbed to care, too religious to act out real conviction. Only one, the Samaritan, tenderly and sacrificially tended to the wounded man. This Samaritan proved to be a neighbor to the man who was in need.
Instead of answering who is the neighbor, Jesus asked the lawyer who proved to be a neighbor to the man who was stripped, beaten, and left for dead. It was the one who showed compassion and mercy. The point of Jesus’ story is not to give you a definition of a neighbor, but to tell you the kind of person a neighbor is. Jesus turned the lawyer’s question back onto the lawyer. Christians do not just have neighbors. They are neighbors.
So, the question is not—Who is my neighbor? The question is—How can I be a neighbor? The answer to being a true neighbor is being a person who loves God deeply with a heart that bursts with love for others. And how does anyone become a person like this? Only by grace-given faith. Those who have received mercy show mercy to others. And the merciful are this way because their faith in Jesus Christ has shaped their new life in a new way of love. A heart full of compassion for others that comes from a love for God.
We need to stop asking — Who is my neighbor? — and ask ourselves — Am I a neighbor to others? Only in answering this question will our love and faith be joined forever. You and I can’t do this on our own. It is God who gives it. We ask, we receive, and then with faith in Jesus we love others.