To Encourage You

Luke 10:29 “And who is my neighbor?”

Throughout the Scriptures, Christians are called to live out their faith in relationships.  For example, the Bible is filled with commands that some have called “the one anothers.”  Some examples: “Love one another.”  “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.” “Give preference to one another in honor.” “Admonish one another.” “Encourage one another and build one another up.”  And the list goes on.  Then we have the following directives from Titus 2:3-5: “Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.” And this: 2 Timothy 2:2 “And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.” 

So, who are these “others,” when it comes to our individual lives?  It’s the same question the Jewish lawyer asked in the verse above from Luke 10.  It’s a question he asked Jesus in a conversation he was having with Him about what he had to do to inherit eternal life.  Jesus then asked him what was written in the Law.  To this the lawyer answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” It was a good answer, for those are the greatest commandments that God ever gave us.  But then it says of the lawyer, “But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” In reply, Jesus teaches the parable of the good Samaritan.  It’s a parable that exposes the sin of the human heart as it shows us how so many “religious” people avoid actually obeying God’s greatest commandments even when the opportunities are staring them right in the face.  In the case of the Jewish lawyer (who hated the half-breed Samaritans) to love such a person was the furthest thing from his mind.  That’s because the love he had was the love of a sinner – those who love those who love them (Luke 6:32). But God calls us to a much different kind of love, a love that comes to the believer who realizes that “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

And so back to the question of “who is my neighbor?” As Jesus showed the Jewish lawyer, our neighbor is anyone that God has sovereignly placed in our lives.  You see, the Bible says that it was “by chance a priest was going down that road” when he came upon the Samaritan. Yet, the Bible is also clear that nothing happens “by chance” in this world. Proverbs 16:33 tells us that “We may throw the dice, but the Lord determines how they fall.”  And so it is with the people God brings into our lives.

As we look around us, who do we see?  For those who are married, obviously there’s our spouse. Then, there are our children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and other relatives.  There are our actual next-door neighbors. There is the hairdresser, physician, mechanic, and so many others that touch our lives. It is anyone – male or female, rich or poor, young or old, Republican or Democrat, black or white – whom the Lord brings across our path.  It’s in these relationships that our faith is played out. It’s in these interactions that the reality of what we say we believe as Christians is proved. 

May God help us to open our eyes and see our neighbors. May he help us to realize that one day as we stand before the King of kings, He will say to us “as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).  And may He help us to realize that the “it” He is talking about refers to the good we do, the evil we do, or the avoidance of doing anything at all.