When the law expert tested Jesus, asking him, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responded (as he often did) with a question: “What is written in the law?” The law expert answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). So far, so good.
To which Jesus replied, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.”
I almost want to laugh out loud when I read that. I mean, that’s a big old “DO,” right? Yeah, just love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Make God the highest passion of your heart, the one you think about first and foremost in every decision you make. Also, while you’re at it, love everybody else as much as you love yourself, care about your neighbor’s needs as much as you do your own, rejoice in their happiness as much as you do yours, worry about their futures, and weep about their sorrows as if they were yours. And when you do that, then you’ll be ready for heaven!
The lawyer probably should have recognized he was out of his depths. But he picked a different angle. After all, he wasn’t really seeking answers about the kingdom; remember, he was trying to test Jesus. So his next step was to justify himself: “And who is my neighbor?” Which sounds like the kind of question a lawyer might ask, right? The rule was clear enough—“Love your neighbor”—but he wanted to press in a bit more, to see if there were any exceptions or extenuating circumstances. This guy thinks that if he can limit the scope of the commandment by identifying who technically counts as his neighbor, then he can meet the requirements. Maybe, he hopes, the fine print makes the rule a little more bearable than it sounds.
He would get no such assurance from Jesus. Instead, Jesus tells a story (the “Good Samaritan” parable) that shows this commandment has no limits—that true followers of Jesus have an instinct that makes them move toward need or suffering wherever they encounter it.
Loving our neighbor starts with who we love, and according to Jesus’ parable, that’s anyone—yes, anyone—in need.
It’s natural for us to help those who are like us, those with whom we have an affinity. But Jesus taught that we are, especially, to help those with whom we have little in common, even those we might consider enemies. People like those:
- on the other side of the political aisle from you
- in your neighborhood who immigrated from another country
- at work who have taken you for granted and consistently failed to acknowledge your efforts
- who sit on the other side of the classroom
- around the world in cultures vastly different from our own
The Bible says we’re to help anybody in need, regardless of who they are, how they got there, or how they’ve treated us in the past. And when do we love them? Whenever we see the need!
We come up with all kinds of excuses for why we shouldn’t help someone in need. We say things like:
- “Well, I don’t mind helping people who are truly victims of injustice. But those people don’t really deserve our help because their suffering is their fault.”
- “It’s their family structure. If they made better choices, they wouldn’t be in such a mess.”
- “They don’t have a good work ethic. If I were in their shoes, I’d figure a way out.”
- “If I help them, what’s to prevent them from getting into the same mess all over again?”
But here’s the thing: The Samaritan in Jesus’ parable would have had plenty of reasons to believe the Jewish man deserved his suffering. Jews were downright cruel to Samaritans, even explicitly racist toward them. If anybody ever had an excuse not to show kindness, it was this Samaritan. Yet, he shows mercy—not because he weighed the scales and found the dying man “worthy” of help, but simply because he was moved with compassion. As Proverbs 3:27 says, “Do not withhold good from [your neighbor] when it is in your power to act.” If we have the opportunity to act, we have the responsibility to act.
And how much love should we show? Until we are sharing in the burden ourselves.
The Samaritan put himself at great personal risk, then used his own money to meet the need. That’s the essence of love—sharing in someone else’s burden. To be sure, you can’t meet every need of every person in the world. But to love others means to share in their pain, which means you, through your generosity, enter into their pain to the point that you feel it yourself.
Paul put it this way in Galatians 6:2: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Which reminds me of what C.S. Lewis said the only “safe” rule was when it came to generosity: Give more than you think you can spare. In other words, he’s saying, give until you share in the burden. There’s no magic number when it comes to how much we should give, but our giving should be to a level that we experience some of the difficulty of those in need because of the amount that we give.
This is the core of what it means to follow Jesus. We love anyone in need, whenever we see the need, until we share the burden ourselves.
Jesus said to love your neighbor. Yes, even them. The question is … Do you?
