This is the question the expert in the law asked Jesus in Luke 10. In response to this question, Jesus told a parable which I encourage you to read and pay attention to the details in the Gospel of Luke 10:25-37.
The parable was about a Jewish man who was robbed and thereafter, left to die on the road. When a priest and a levite passed through that road on separate moments, they avoided their own Jewish brother who laid almost lifeless on the road. Then came a Samaritan man. Unlike the Priest and Levite, he stopped to help. Although the Samaritan was going a long journey, he felt compassion on the Jewish man.
Please take note that Jesus deliberately used a Samaritan as an example because the Jews despised Samaritans. They never wanted to associate with them because they perceived them as gentiles. [Reference can be made to the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman in the Gospel of John chapter Four]. Even though Samaritans knew that they were hated and despised by Jews, this Samaritan man in the parable didn’t leave the Jewish man to die like his fellow Jews did. He got him, cleaned him then took him to a lodge where he paid for his care and asked that he be kept until his return.
In this parable, Jesus taught that a neighbor isn’t the person you live or share the same ethnic background with but rather someone who is closer to you when you are in need or distress. The person may not even share the same faith with you as it were in the case of the Jew and the Samaritan. However, if they are close to you in times of need, those are your neighbors.
Therefore, to love your neighbor as yourself implies that we do good to those who are in need even though they despise us. It is my prayer that the LORD helps you to be as the Samaritan man.
Blessings!
Good insight… I must mention that even in law there is similar principle/definition of neighbour. In Donoughue v Stevenson 1932, one of the celebrated cases in the law of negligence, Lord Atkin stated that a neighbour is not someone we live to nextdoor, but it is an person who is so closely affected by our actions that we ought to have them in contemplation for any acts or ommissions that are likely to injure them.
Really need to change who a neighbour is! Think even how we use the word neighbour does not depict what we do even in the community. Learnt alot thankyou Apostle
Thats very true Apostle and we keep learning. Its very common to find people helping only who they know or are familiar with.
Literally, We don’t get to choose who becomes our neighbour. Likewise our helping should not look at who the person is but the need to be helped.