B-log

Today, my pastor began a new teaching series called “grace and your neighbor,” asking the question, “who is your neighbor?”

The message was built on the passage known as the parable of the good Samaritan, found in Luke 10:25-37.

Here’s what I left with, as a take-away:

• Our human nature leads us to behave like the lawyer, asking, “who is my neighbor?” We tend to ask this with the same motive as the lawyer, too…asking God who exactly we are obligated to consider as our neighbor, which may allow us to exclude anyone outside of a neighborly relationship.
• The correct answer to this question of “who is my neighbor,” is (and I’m paraphrasing my pastor here): anyone I influence and anyone who needs grace and mercy through me. How we relate to our neighbors is a pathway to how we relate to God.
• Here’s the big idea (at least for me): Jesus never answered the lawyer’s question. The lawyer asked the question and Jesus replied with the parable. Then, Jesus asked the lawyer, “who was a neighbor to the man (who was robbed and beaten)?”

From Christ’s perspective, it doesn’t matter who the lawyer could include as his neighbor…what really mattered was who could identify the lawyer as their neighbor.

The point for me is this…I am the neighbor. All around me…all around us…people are hurting. They are emotionally abused. They are spiritually robbed. They are relationally battered. Jesus told the lawyer to go and be like the Samaritan. And he says the same thing to me, now.

I will not ask, “who is my neighbor?” Instead, I declare, “I am your neighbor.” And with the grace and mercy of God, I will be a good neighbor to you.