Who is My Neighbor?

In the Gospel of Luke 10:25-37, as Jesus expounds on the two greatest commandments, to love God with all of who we are and to love our neighbor as ourself, we encounter an amazing story.

Jesus unveils the great truth that we are to love our neighbor as ourself and he gets this unique response:

“But the man wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” (10:29)

This is a very important question because, if we can get the right answer out of Jesus, we can be off the hook of this rule.

I mean, it’s just another rule that we can parse and define and clarify until we can ignore it, right?

And so Jesus tells a story. It is the story we know as ‘The Parable of the Good Samaritan.’

When he finishes the story, Jesus asks: “Which of these do you think was a neighbor to the man?” (10:36)

The point of Jesus’ story is that we are neighbors to everyone, no matter the situation. The person next to where we are is our neighbor.

No matter their religious affiliation.
No matter their worldview.
No matter their bad habits.
No matter their socio-economic differences from us.
No matter their attractiveness or repulsiveness.

Everyone is our neighbor.