I doubt that neighbor is correctly understood to be all people. I think if Jesus had meant, "love everybody," he would have said that (and the Jewish Bible would say that), rather than what is recorded.
1) The Greek word for neighbor here is πλησίον, "one who is near" that is, near to or within in proximity; effectively it's anyone who isn't you.
2) "Who is my neighbor?" is precisely the question asked which results in Jesus responding with the parable of the good Samaritan; Jesus deliberately chose a disliked
other. Jesus takes the disliked other and, in contrast to those who should have been good, holy, righteous (etc)--namely the Levite and the priest--it is the Samaritan who shows compassion and kindness. The message is clear, our neighbor is not merely our fellow countrymen, our kinsmen, or our own; our neighbor is also those people whom we are taught in our society to dislike and to regard as aliens, others, and unwanted. Who is my neighbor? Everyone is my neighbor.
So that's precisely what, here, we have in Scripture. Love everyone. And if this isn't sufficient, the Lord in His Sermon teaches, "You have heard it said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy', but I say to you love your enemy," The commandment is clear, everyone, even those who hate us, mistreat us, curse us, and seek to kill us are to be loved by us. There is no exception to this, we are to love
everybody.
Jesus gave the example of the neighbor being the Good Samaritan when he rescued the stranger by the road who had been beaten by robbers. It suggests an element of "neighbor" is the exchange of aid, and also the element that one personally comes upon another.
The whole point of choosing the Samaritan was to choose a despised person, someone who in that culture would have been regarded as other and bad, and who in kind was taught to dislike and reject the Jews. It was a two-way animosity between Jews and Samaritans, and so in choosing the Samaritan here Jesus asserts, without question, that our neighbor isn't just those people we like, are similar to, or get along with. It's also the people who we have been conditioned to distrust, to dislike, or even hate.
I don't know that we want to get into a discussion of "love," like in 'called to love"? But my pointing to how Jesus clarified the concept "neighbor" was not to suggest any hatred of immigrants - in fact probably the opposite since it was in the context of pointing out that neighbors are usually considered to be those nearest, and I would think include of ones family which it seems Jesus is telling us to hate.
I certainly didn't mean to suggest hatred of anyone beyond those who Jesus seems to have admonished us to "hate"; I was questioning how to make sense of that admonition. SOYEONG perhaps comes close to a correct interpretation when he/she says: "The Bible is not saying that we should feel animosity towards our family and ourselves, but that everyone needs to take second place to following Messiah."
One thing I am thinking is those in one's family can easily come first (and insist they came first!), and a diligent Christian might appropriately develop an animosity toward them. (And how much animosity would be justified?)
But we aren't called to have animosity. The issue is entirely in the context that following Jesus takes precedence over familial loyalty. Jesus says something similar when He says that He came not to bring peace but a sword, and would divide fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, etc. It's simply the reality that, in the early Church, converts to Christianity were either Jews or Pagans, and choosing a new religion, following Jesus, was going to disrupt familial bonds if the family opposes one's conversion to Christianity. Jesus does not call us to hate people, He does not call us to have animosity toward people, but He does call us to an allegiance to Him that has priority over every other allegiance--to family, to home, to country. To say that He is Lord is to renounce all other lords or would-be lords. To say He is King is to renounce all other kings or would-be kings.
But the one who calls Him Lord and Him King does not actively hate his friends and family, but recognizes that the call of Christ is the call to pick up one's cross and follow Him, to endure every hardship and suffering which that will or might entail. Christ's call is nothing less than the call to die.
-CryptoLutheran
-CryptoLutheran
