Who is My Neighbour?

‘Who is my neighbour?’ is the million dollar question which needs much meditation for us to grasp.

We look into the Bible to find the meaning: “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord” (Lev 19:18).

Truly, this would be really hard for us because when we talk of loving yourself it comes with a lot of commitment. Everyone wants to dress nicely, eat good food, sleep well, have a nice home, drive a nice car, and have a good job and a smoothly flowing life. However, attaining this for myself leaves no space for me to accommodate my neighbour. But does the Bible say that we have to do the other things: dress, feed, shelter and buy good cars for them? It does say, however, ‘love your neighbour’.

Mark gives us the two greatest commandments: “The most important one, answered Jesus, is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord, is one. Love the Lord your God will all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.” So we see that love is what breaks the barriers and, as we practise it, we follow the way of Jesus. Let us look at the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:29-36. We will see that the man who was robbed, the priest and the Levite were all Jews. Surely, they were ‘neighbours’, but the two both ignored the man who was robbed. When we look at the Samaritan, he must have been a long way from home, and not a Jew, but in the time of need, he offered his help to the desperate man. So we see that although the Samaritan and the robbed man were total strangers, he still offered help. It is not the one who lives close to you who is necessarily the one who offers you a shoulder to lean on in times of distress. “’Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?’ The expert in the law replied, ‘The one who had mercy on him.’ Jesus told him, ‘Go and do likewise.’” (Luke 10:36,37).

To sum up everything, we look at Romans: “The commandments, do not commit adultery, do not commit murder, do not steal, do not covet and whatever other commandments there may be are summed up in this one rule: Love your neighbour as yourself. Love does no harm to its neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfilment of the law” (Romans 13:9,10).

A brother in Johannesburg advertising the Truth by putting a poster in the rear windscreen of his car

Bro Richard Phiri (Johannesburg, South Africa)