Get To Know Your Neighbors, So They Get To Know You – & Jesus

Word-Of-The-Day: ‘<A Levitical teacher responded to Jesus,> “To love Him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”’ (Mark 12:33)

The context of Mark 12 is Jesus, responding to the questions of the Pharisees and Sadducees, was overheard by a teacher, most likely a Levite from a local synagogue, walking past.  Impressed by Jesus’ answer to them, the teacher asks the question, ‘What is the greatest commandment?’, likely thinking it would be one of the ten given to Moses. 

Jesus instead gives us the Two Great Commandments, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength’ and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’, which can be summed up in the One Commandment, ‘Love God and each other’.  In a deeper thought into Jesus’ answer, the underlying thread of the Ten Commandments given to Moses can be the preceding line of ‘If you love…’; if you love, you won’t murder.  If you love, you won’t covet and on down through the other eight.  In loving God, you’ll obey Him, and if you love your neighbors, you won’t seek to harm or hurt them.

The definition of a neighbor can be flexible (and it should be), as the person next to you sitting in the traffic jam on the interstate is your neighbor at that moment, as is the couple behind or in front of you in the booth at a restaurant.  The people surrounding you at any given time are your ‘neighbors’. 

For the sake of this discussion, let’s talk about the usual definition of ‘neighbors’, namely those living next to you in the confines of your neighborhood.  How much do you talk to your neighbors; do you know them to see them, how are they generally doing?  While it may be true that if you don’t know them they likely won’t harm or hurt you, and vice versa, it may also be true that not reaching out to know them may hurt them. 

It may not be direct, but an older or disabled neighbor may need physical help every once in a while, or for someone to keep an eye to ensure they’re doing OK.  It may not be much, other than occasionally ensuring to move their garbage can to the curb for pickup or put back to the side of their house, picking up groceries for them, or providing them an extra hand to complete a chore.

In Florida, there are a number of ‘shut-ins’, or people without family or friends close by, and they don’t often talk to people.  They may want to talk to someone just for the sake of having a conversation, to know someone hears them.  While my late mother talked to my aunt and others on the phone, she enjoyed her neighbor coming over to talk to her between my visits with her.   

More importantly, who is responding to their Spiritual needs?  Do they know Jesus?  If we get to know our neighbors, they in turn should get to know Jesus through us.  It may very well be our neighbors know Him and have received Salvation through Him.  Others may only have a passing knowledge or they rely on their childhood visits to a church; they don’t know what they need to know, until someone shares the Word with them. 

The benefit of getting to know your neighbors is not only getting to share the Lord with them, but in the cases when the neighbors may need each other.  Here in Florida hurricanes can impact our movements and keep us within our neighborhoods.  It would be better to know our neighbors before a disaster, and better know something about them, than to try to strike up a relationship with them on the fly and cold (or in the case of Florida, hot).  If you at least have had some introductions beforehand, they may be more open to talk, ask for assistance, and respond better to requests to provide assistance.  They also may be, in times of trouble, more open to hear the Gospel from someone who they know then by someone they don’t know. 

If you don’t know a neighbor, but see they are needing help, offer them help!  To love Jesus isn’t just being in church, studying His Word or giving tithes and offerings. It is also the practical application of loving those around you as you are wanting love.