Welcome to this space where I seek to interpret the Scripture and Christian faith accurately through the lens of history, and just maybe uncover some real-world applications even in this modern era!
Below you’ll find the video recording of this Sunday’s sermon, where I explore the lawyer’s question posted in Luke 10:25–37: “Who is my neighbor?” (With a little help from Psalm 82.) This message was delivered live on July 13th, 2025.
If you’re visual, I invite you to watch the video, which beings with our scripture readings and continues all the way through my message. Prefer to read (skimming counts!), or maybe read along? Great! Scroll down to read the full sermon text, with or without the recording.
Read along with the complete sermon text below.
Who Is My Neighbor? (Luke 10:25–37)
It’s a legitimate question. A necessary one. One which has to be asked. And ultimately, I think, one with a simple answer.
Or perhaps, I should say, an instinctual answer.
In fact, I think at least part of Jesus’s point here, with the parable, the framing of things as a story, is that this is not some drawn out theological debate, some riddle to be solved. It’s not even a subject that’s worth much consideration. This is something we all just know.
“Who was a neighbor to this man?”
“The one who showed him mercy.”
Obviously.
Simple.
When We Want Theology to Be Complicated
The lawyer, for reasons best known to himself, wants to make it a complex, nuanced, theological question. He wants to engage with Jesus in what I did in preparation for this morning, just to be sure—see I usually rely on my interlinear Greek-English bible when preparing these messages—it’s easy, it’s on my phone, it has a built in dictionary…
But every once in a while, I drag out my actual, biblical Greek dictionary—the fancy, academic kind of dictionary that’s called a “lexicon.”
This is the Greek lexicon I bought back in seminary that’s, you know, bigger than a Milwaukee area phone book—back when they existed…
And this week, when my interlinear bible just told me the word we translate “neighbor” means “near, neighbor…” I got out that big Greek-English Lexicon of New Testament and other Early Christian Literature—the one that gives me a fill historical breakdown on the literary use of words in the New Testament…
Only to discover that since Homer—that is, since the first written examples we have of the Greek language—this word has been the “marker of a position quite close to another position, nearby, near, close…” in other words, when applied to a person: a neighbor.
In other words, this word in Greek two thousand year ago meant exactly the same thing our English word “neighbor” means today. Which is kind of boring when you’re an other thinking intellectual who wants to discover some new or hidden meaning in everything …
But which also brings us back around to the question.
What Does “Neighbor” Really Mean?
Because, like the religious leader in Luke, we recognize the command cannot be as literal as “just love the person in the house next to yours…”
So, who is my neighbor?
All teaching in all the Law and the Prophets, apparently, boils down to this command—everything God wants or expects of us hinges on our understanding of this word—so…
“Who is my neighbor?”
And quite annoyingly, Jesus does not pull out the lexicon, does not discuss etymology or word roots or try to trace the literary use of the word “near” back into the dark age that began Greek history as we know it, or delve into its mythological or symbolic significance…
Jesus tells a story.
Because ultimately, it doesn’t matter what the word means. It’s all about action.
You will know your neighbor by his action.
“Who was this man’s neighbor?”
“The one who showed him mercy.”
“Go and do likewise…”
It’s an interesting progression at the end of the story. We go very abruptly from discussing who a neighbor is to being told—”just go and be a good neighbor.”
Ultimately, at the end of the story, we’re told: Stop worrying about who your neighbor is and just BE one.
Be a good neighbor.
Who Is My Neighbor?—The Two Qualities Jesus Highlights
The question, though, is still valid. In order to be a good neighbor we have to know who our neighbor is. It may be obvious, but we do still need to know the obvious answer is correct.
And there are two aspects, highlighted in Jesus’s story here, of what a neighbor is, that I think deserve some discussion.
First, a neighbor starts out, very basically, being the person put into your path.
In other words, that defining quality in the word neighbor, of “near” or “nearby,” does matter. Not in a literal: the person living in the house next door and that person only, way…
But in the story, all three “potential neighbors” are in fact people who pass nearby to the man in question. Who actually see him. Who have, or could have, actual contact with him.
A “neighbor” is and will always be, first and foremost, a person who is “near” to us—and I don’t think we can responsibly ignore that reality.
Or, in other words, not everyone on this planet is your neighbor.
Your neighbor is something more specific, someone who is near to you in some way that allows you actual influence or impact on their life…
And if that sounds off or limiting to you, think of it this way:
As Christians we are not called to engage in this empty, hypothetical exercise of claiming to love people on the other side of the world—or even on the other side of this country—whom we will never meet.
In Christian thought and practice love is always tied to action. And that is what this story gets to, as so many of Jesus’s stories get to that point with cutting precision. Claiming to love everyone in the world when you will never have any interactions with 90% of those people is really easy… And also meaningless.
Freedom from the Impossible
Like most of what Jesus actually does teach, not being called to love the entire world – at least, all at once – is a freeing thing. The impossible burden of loving, and caring for, and fixing the entire world does not and never has been meant to fall on us.
The world is God’s problem.
We are called to love and care for and when need arises fix our neighbor—the person put into our path.
This man whom history has dubbed the “Good Samaritan” is not so praised for loving and caring for all Jewish people, or even all victims of highway robbery. It’s just this one Jew, this one victim. The one person dropped into his path, whom he could help.
And you know, this does perhaps look a little different in the modern age. These days, a lot of people do actually know people, personally, who live countries away, whom they may never meet in person. And so, yes, the definition of “who is near to us” might look a little different today than 2k years ago.
Your neighbors, today, might include people you only ever interact with on Facebook or YouTube…
Even before the internet, a person’s neighborhood looked different according to who that person is. This is why Paul warns teachers that they will be held to a higher standard. Because teachers, politicians, anyone who speaks to a large platform all at once—the sphere of influence is greater.
The number of “neighbors” is greater, and the definition of what actually counts as a neighbor is more broad.
But the basic principle will always be the same. Your neighbor will always be the person you have the ability to help. A neighbor will always be a person who is near to you—by some definition of that word.
Neighborliness Means Action, Not Just Proximity
We’ve touched several times now already on the second quality of “neighbor-ness”—and that is, action.
We might say that a “neighbor” is defined in this story as a person who takes positive action in the other person’s life.
In other words, just being “near” someone, is not enough to be a “neighbor.”
The priest and the Levite were both just as “near” the man in need as the Samaritan. But that’s not enough.
You have to be “near” in order to have the ability to take positive action in another person’s life. But to be a neighbor, you have to also take that positive action.
And I think, part of the reason this is important, is it allows us to explain why the bandits at the beginning of the story, who beat the guy up and leave him for dead, were never in the running for “neighbor-ness.”
Now, we are called, as Christians, to love our enemies—but that, importantly, I think, is another conversation. An important conversation, but…
Enemies are not neighbors.
One of the goals of Christian living is to turn enemies into neighbors—but that’s not what enemies are to start with. These are two different groups of people in our lives that we respond to differently—or, at least, that given the imperfect reality of this world, we are allowed to respond to differently, according to the specific circumstances in which we find ourselves.
And this story acknowledge that. The neighbor is defined as the person who “shows mercy.”
But remember the point that the story ends on. They go to the trouble of established the neighbor character in the story—but then Jesus turns it around. Jesus doesn’t say, “Okay, so go be on the lookout for the people who show mercy to you, so you can know for sure they are your neighbors, and then you show mercy back to them…”
No. Jesus says, “Good, so just go be that person. Just go be the neighbor. Go be the person who helps they people dropped into your path, who gets them help, who walks them through life. Go be that person first. And worry about who’s a good neighbor to you second.”
The Cosmic Perspective: God’s Supreme Command
Psalm 82—I want to end here by pulling things back to a more cosmic perspective for a minute.
I love Psalm 82 mainly for its imagery. “God presides in the great assembly… gives judgment among the gods…”
This is a well-known image in mythology. All the gods in the pantheon would come together in a “divine war council.” And the divine council would have a leader—the high god of the pantheon, who called all the shots…
So the psalm is referencing that imagery, the idea of God as the one supreme authority controlling all powers in this world… and even to those great powers—whatever they might be—to the greatest, most powerful people, beings, creatures on this earth, God’s command is exactly the same. Simple. Straightforward. The great summary of every command God has ever given to any lawgiver or prophet:
Love your neighbor as yourself. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Act from a place of justice and mercy.
Just be a good neighbor.
Thank you for joining me on this exploration of what a “neighbor” truly is (according to the bible). I’d love to hear your thoughts or questions—please share them in the comments below!
Read about how perfectionism undermines spiritual growth here <== | Or, you can find all of my Sunday Messages here.
And don’t forget to come back next week as we continue our journey through the Scriptures, seeking out their original meaning and real-world application for modern life. See you soon!
