Who Is My Neighbor?

Who Is My Neighbor?

We all have that one question that exposes the real issue.

In Luke 10, a lawyer stands in front of Jesus, answers correctly, “love God, love your neighbor,” and then asks the follow-up that reveals his heart: “And who is my neighbor?”¹

It sounds like theology. It’s really about limits.
Not about love. About lines.

And we’ve all asked it in modern language:
Who really counts?
Do I have to love everyone?
What if they vote differently… live differently… believe differently?

The Gospel does not shrink our world; it expands it. It doesn’t narrow our circle; it widens it.

Jesus refuses to help us love safely, because the Gospel never existed to protect our comfort. It exists to release our compassion.

A Culture of Exhaustion and Isolation

We’re leading in a moment where fracture lines are everywhere, and they are exhausting people. Pew Research reports that 65% of Americans say they always or often feel exhausted when thinking about politics, while only 10% say they feel hopeful.³

That fatigue doesn’t stay on cable news. It follows people into marriages, workplaces, small groups, and church lobbies.

And underneath the noise is something even more sobering: loneliness.

The U.S. Surgeon General notes that “about one-in-two adults in America” have reported experiencing loneliness, and highlights research showing the mortality impact of social disconnection is comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.⁴

So when Jesus asks us to love our neighbor, He isn’t giving us a sentimental bumper sticker. He’s prescribing a countercultural way of life for a world coming apart at the seams.

This is where the church gets to be the church again.

Not as an optional lane of ministry, but as our primary purpose.

The Question Behind the Question

The lawyer didn’t want a bigger definition of neighbor. He wanted a smaller one.

“Please tell me it’s someone already in my circle.”

Because if neighbors can look different, vote differently, or carry different wounds, love gets complicated. It costs. It interrupts. It risks your reputation.

That’s why Jesus answers with a story instead of a rule.

In His parable, neighbor isn’t defined by proximity, ethnicity, status, or alignment. Neighbor is defined by mercy-in-motion.

The one who crossed the road became the neighbor.

Who Is My Neighbor Today?

Let’s put real faces on it. Your neighbor might be the person you’re tempted to avoid because they feel “loaded”:

• The teen who isn’t sure they belong anywhere
• The family who is living one crisis away from eviction
• The atheist coworker who jokes about faith but is quietly drowning
• The person on your street you’ve never learned the name of
• The person you muted… and told yourself it was “for peace”

And here’s the opportunity: people are more open than we assume.

Barna reports that in a survey of 2,000 U.S. adults, 74% say they want to grow spiritually, and 44% say they are more open to God today than before the pandemic.⁵

The field is not closed.
But if comfort keeps defining our circle, we will miss the very people Jesus told us to reach.

Understand Them Before Being Understood

Jesus doesn’t shame the question. He redirects it.

What if we stopped using “Who is my neighbor?” to create distance and started using it to build bridges?

Paul models the posture: “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.”⁶ Not compromise, but context. Not dilution but love with wisdom.

James gives the pace for leaders in a tense age: “quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to become angry.”⁷ Proverbs adds: “To answer before listening… is folly and shame.”⁸

Pastors, this is not soft theology. This is strategic shepherding.

If we don’t understand people’s pain, our passion can feel like pressure. Instead of opening a door, we build a wall.

From Defining Neighbor to Becoming One

The church is great at defining things. Doctrine matters. Clarity protects.

But when our definitions become a reason to keep our distance, we’ve crossed a dangerous line from stewarding truth to gatekeeping grace.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said the priest and Levite were really asking, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” Then he flips it: “If I do not stop… what will happen to them?”⁹

That’s the moment the road narrows to the heart.

The greatest threat to our witness isn’t a hostile culture. It’s selective compassion.

A Simple Framework for New Neighboring

Here’s the street-level framework I unpack more deeply in The Road We Must Travel Again:²

You don’t need a title to be a neighbor.
You need a heart willing to cross the road.

In the kingdom, the ditch is not the distraction; it’s the assignment.

Final Thought

Jesus didn’t come to bless our boundaries. He came to break them open with mercy.

So maybe it’s time we stop asking, “Who is my neighbor?”

Let’s become the kind of Jesus-followers and the kind of churches who live like everyone is.

If you want to go deeper, please check out my website, www.marcestes.com, and get on the pre-release list for my new book, “The Road We Must Travel Again,” which releases in early 2026.

Endnotes & Sources

1. Luke 10:25–37.
2. Left blank intentionally – Just to see if you actually read endnotes!
3. Pew Research Center, “Americans’ Dismal Views of the Nation’s Politics” (65% exhausted; 10% hopeful).
4. Office of the U.S. Surgeon General, Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation (2023) (one-in-two adults reported loneliness; mortality impact comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes/day for social disconnection).
5. Barna Group, “Rising Spiritual Openness in America” (Oct 2022 survey; 74% want spiritual growth; 44% more open to God).
6. 1 Corinthians 9:19–23.
7. James 1:19.
8. Proverbs 18:13.
9. Martin Luther King Jr., “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” (April 3, 1968), Good Samaritan illustration.
10. John 1:14.
11. 1 John 3:18.