Who is your neighbor? (The Good Samaritan Luke 10:29-37)

Who is your neighbor? (The Good Samaritan Luke 10:29-37)

Who is your neighbor? How you answer this question will give everyone around you great insight into your world view and the condition of your heart before God. If you limit your neighbors to those who look like you, act like you, and live along side you in your culture then your mercy and compassion does not extend far beyond those boundaries. On the other hand, if you view everyone as your neighbor and you have the same love and compassion for them regardless of their demographics then you have shrunken the world into a small community of compassion. The person who asked this of Jesus in Luke 10:29 was trying to justify who should be loved and who it was ok to exclude from loving in their life. He was willing to fulfill his commitment of God but did not want to go to far or do anything that would inconvenience himself any more than he had to. By asking this question of Jesus, he had already shown his heart to be corrupt and void of true love and compassion for those around him. We can point the finger at this individual or we can look our selves in the mirror and realize that it is a trap that is all too easy to fall into because we love to segregate ourselves into groups and clicks. When we do this, we tend to shrink our circle of compassion to only those closest to us but as children of God we must extend the love of Christ to everyone we encounter.

As members of the Kingdom of God our neighborhood is a global one, where we treat everyone as our neighbor, and we show everyone the love and compassion of Jesus Christ. In John 15:12-13, Jesus commanded us to love one another as He has loved us and that no greater love could be shown than to lay down your life for a friend. Jesus was our role model for how we should love those around us, He did not die just for those closest to Him, He died for those who hated and despised Him. He died so everyone would have hope of redemption and eternal life, He laid His life down so that everyone could experience His Kingdom. We can not narrow our neighbors and try to justify those we should love and those who we can exclude, we simply must show the love of Jesus Christ to everyone that we encounter regardless of who they are. There is no one that it is ok to see in a place of need and for us to just turn a blind eye to and keep walking, everyone is our neighbor, and everyone deserves the love of Jesus Christ. That is why He suffered and died upon a cross over 2000 years ago to allow everyone to have access to His Eternal Kingdom and to experience the unconditional love of God. We simply extend the same love to others that God extended to us through the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus.