What Does It Really Mean to Love Your Neighbor?
Discovering the love of Christ through the Parable of the Good Samaritan
A Beautiful House with a Broken Foundation
Luke 10:25-37
About five years ago, Daisy and I were looking to buy a home in the Denver area. From the outside, the house looked great. It had wonderful curb appeal and a lovely little garden out front. But when we had the home inspected, we discovered some significant problems. The boiler was on its last legs, and parts of the house had no insulation. Heat was escaping, making it difficult to keep the home warm.
As much as we appreciated the house’s good qualities, we realized that some essential things were missing. A house can look beautiful on the outside, but without the right foundation and essential systems, it simply won't function as it should.
In many ways, our culture's understanding of love is similar. We hear a great deal about love, and some of what we hear is good. But there are also some foundational pieces missing from the way our culture defines and practices love.
So what does love really look like? Rather than relying on our culture to answer that question, let's turn to Jesus.
What Our Culture Gets Wrong About Love
Our culture has a lot to say about love, but several common messages can leave us with an incomplete understanding of what love truly means.
1. Love is primarily a feeling.
We see this idea everywhere, especially in movies and popular culture. Love is presented as something we feel, and when those feelings change, love is assumed to have disappeared.
Feelings matter, of course. But genuine love is more than an emotion. It is also committed, dependable, and loyal. Sometimes love means choosing to serve someone even when we don't feel like it.
2. Love yourself first.
Self-care and recognizing our own worth have their place. But when loving ourselves becomes our primary focus, it can easily turn into self-centeredness, greed, or materialism.
Jesus calls us to something greater than simply pursuing our own happiness and comfort. He calls us to love our neighbors, serve others, and put their needs before our own.
3. Love is someone else's responsibility.
We can debate the effectiveness of government programs and other systems designed to care for people in need. But as Christians, we must never assume that the existence of these programs replaces our own responsibility to act.
We are called to do more than support the idea of helping others. We are called to help them ourselves.
4. Love those who love you.
This is perhaps the easiest kind of love. It's natural to care for people who care for us, who support us, and who make our lives better.
But Jesus challenges us to go further. He tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who mistreat us. And He doesn't merely tell us to do this; He demonstrates it. Even while we were still sinners, Christ gave His life for us.
That is the extraordinary love of Jesus.
5. Love people who are like you.
We naturally gravitate toward people who share our interests, backgrounds, and beliefs. Even within the church, it's easy to surround ourselves with people who think like us and see the world as we do.
But Jesus asks us to look beyond our familiar circles. What about people whose backgrounds are different from ours? What about those with whom we disagree? How are we showing them the love of Christ?
6. Love means affirming everything.
Our culture sometimes treats love as though it requires us to affirm every belief, opinion, or lifestyle. But Christians are called to hold firmly to God's truth while treating every person with dignity and compassion.
Tolerance doesn't mean the absence of convictions. It means how we treat people whose convictions differ from our own.
We can disagree without demeaning one another. We can hold different beliefs without shutting down conversation or deciding that someone is no longer worthy of our friendship.
In a world increasingly divided by disagreements, Christians have an opportunity to model something different: truth spoken with grace, conviction expressed with humility, and love extended even when agreement is impossible.
The Bible challenges every one of us. It challenges those who prioritize personal freedom above serving others, as well as those who are tempted to withhold compassion from people with whom they disagree.
Ultimately, Jesus calls us beyond the incomplete definitions of love offered by our culture and toward a love that is sacrificial, generous, and rooted in Him.
Jesus Shows Us What Love Looks Like
The Apostle Paul writes in Galatians 5:6 that what counts is “faith expressing itself through love.” And in 1 Corinthians 13:13, we read that faith, hope, and love remain, but the greatest of these is love.
Jesus made this calling even clearer to His disciples on the night before His crucifixion:
“Love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15:12)
He also told them that the world would recognize them as His disciples by their love for one another (John 13:35).
That's a high calling. But how do we live it out?
During our Built for This series, we've been exploring what Christ is building among us as His people. What does it mean to be a community shaped by Jesus? And what should love look like among us?
To find out, let's revisit one of Jesus' most familiar parables.
The Parable of the Good Samaritan
In Luke 10:25–37, a lawyer approaches Jesus with a question about eternal life. He is well-versed in Scripture, and when Jesus asks him what the Law says, he correctly answers that we are to love God with all that we are and love our neighbors as ourselves.
Jesus tells him he has answered correctly and instructs him to live it out.
But the lawyer wants to justify himself, so he asks, “And who is my neighbor?”
In other words, who exactly qualifies? Is there a way to narrow the definition so that he can be confident he's meeting the requirement?
Jesus responds with a story.
A man is traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho when he is attacked by robbers. They strip him, beat him, and leave him half dead on the side of the road.
First, a priest comes along. He sees the injured man but passes by on the other side.
Then a Levite, someone who served in the religious life of Israel, comes to the scene. He, too, sees the man and passes by without helping.
Finally, a Samaritan approaches.
To appreciate how surprising this is, we need to understand the deep hostility between Jews and Samaritans during Jesus' time. These were groups with a long history of religious and cultural conflict. Jesus' Jewish audience would not have expected a Samaritan to be the hero of the story.
Yet the Samaritan is the one who stops.
He sees the injured man, feels compassion for him, tends to his wounds, and places him on his own animal. He takes him to an inn and cares for him. The next day, he gives the innkeeper two denarii and promises to repay any additional expenses when he returns.
The Samaritan doesn't simply feel sorry for the man. He takes action, gives his time, uses his resources, and accepts responsibility for the man's ongoing care.
He demonstrates a kind of love that crosses boundaries and comes at a personal cost.
Who Is Your Neighbor?
Imagine how each person in the story might have viewed the injured man.

• The expert in the Law sees him as a subject to discuss.
• The robbers see him as someone to exploit.
• The priest and the Levite treat him as an inconvenience.
• The innkeeper receives him as a customer.
• The Samaritan sees a human being worthy of care.

And Jesus sees people who are worth dying for.
It's easy to read this parable and imagine that our challenge is to identify the people around us who need help. But the story also asks us to examine our own hearts.
Do we see the people who are hurting, or do we see them as interruptions to our schedules?
Do we make time for people who need us, or do we assume someone else will take care of them?
Do we extend love only to those who agree with us, share our backgrounds, or make us comfortable?
Perhaps you have a political opponent, former friend, or family member with whom you can barely have a conversation anymore. Maybe your disagreements have become so significant that you no longer spend time together.
What if Jesus were to tell this story today and make that very person the hero?
Would we be willing to recognize their compassion? Would we be willing to learn from them? And would we be willing to extend the same love to them?
Jesus isn't simply interested in whether we know the right answers. He wants His love to transform our hearts and change the way we treat the people around us.
We Are All the Hurting Person
There's another way to understand this parable that is especially important for us as Christians.
What if, in some sense, we are the injured man on the side of the road?
Scripture tells us that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Every one of us experiences brokenness. We carry guilt, struggle with sin, and experience seasons of loneliness, grief, and despair. We cannot rescue ourselves from the power of sin and death.
We need someone to come to our aid.
And there is someone greater than the Good Samaritan who has come to rescue us: Jesus Christ.
Jesus enters our broken world on a rescue mission. He comes to those who are hurting, those who know their weaknesses, and those who recognize their need for grace. He gives Himself for us on the cross and rises from the dead to defeat sin and death.
He doesn't rescue us only to leave us on the side of the road. He brings us into His Church, where we receive His Word and Sacraments, where we are forgiven and encouraged, and where we are surrounded by a community called to care for one another.
And His work is not temporary. Just as the Samaritan promises to return and continue caring for the injured man, Jesus promises to come again in glory. He will bring His people into the fullness of life with Him forever.
This is the heart of the Christian faith: we are loved, rescued, and restored by Jesus.
Receive God's Love Before You Try to Give It
Have you ever struggled to believe that God truly loves you?
You may know the Gospel intellectually. You may understand that Jesus died for your sins and rose again. You may have heard those truths hundreds of times. And yet, deep down, you may still struggle to believe that His love is really for you.
If that's you, you're not alone.
Even Christians who know the Gospel need to grow in their understanding and experience of Christ's love. In Ephesians 3, Paul prays that believers would have the strength to comprehend the vastness of Christ's love—a love that surpasses knowledge.
Knowing about God's love and resting in God's love are not always the same thing.
First John 4:19 gives us a beautiful reminder: “We love because he first loved us.”
Notice the order. We don't begin by trying harder to love everyone around us so that God will love us in return. We begin by receiving the love God has already shown us through Jesus.
Ephesians 2:8–10 makes this clear. We are saved by grace through faith, not by our own works. Salvation is God's gift. Then, in verse 10, we learn that we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works.
The order matters.
We are not saved by our good works. We are saved by God's grace and transformed so that we can do good works.
We receive His love so that we can extend His love. We receive His grace so that we can show grace to others.
The Gospel doesn't merely give us a list of things we should do. It changes who we are and gives us a new reason to serve.
Love Means Taking Action
This past summer, an incident on the Yellowstone River near Graycliff, Montana, offered a powerful picture of what sacrificial love looks like.
A boat capsized, sending three people into the river. Two made it out safely, but one man remained trapped in the water and was struggling to survive.
A 14-year-old boy named Jory and his father witnessed what was happening. While his father called first responders, Jory grabbed a lasso and threw it toward the struggling man. When the lasso caught hold, Jory waded chest-deep into the river and held on, helping pull the man to safety.
Jory didn't wait for someone else to act. He didn't stop to consider whether helping would inconvenience him or whether he felt particularly prepared for the moment. He saw someone in danger and did what he could to help.
His actions may have saved that man's life.
We, too, are like that man struggling in the river. We are caught in the consequences of sin and death, unable to rescue ourselves. But Jesus comes to us. His entire ministry is marked by this kind of compassionate rescue.
He reaches out to the sick and suffering. He draws near to the grieving and the outcast. He restores the brokenhearted and brings hope to those who have lost it.
Ultimately, He goes to the cross, giving everything—even His own life—to rescue us.
That is the love we have received. And it is the love we are called to share.
Love Is Doing Something Sacrificial for Someone Else
The Parable of the Good Samaritan is sometimes presented as a challenge to do more good works, as though we could earn God's favor by helping enough people.
But the Gospel gives us a different starting point.
We help others not to earn God's love, but because we have already received it.
So what does love look like in everyday life?
It looks like doing something sacrificial for someone else's benefit, without expecting anything in return.
It means caring for someone even when we don't feel like it. It means giving our time when our schedules are full. It means extending kindness to people who may never return the favor. It means crossing the boundaries of familiarity, background, and disagreement to see the person in front of us.
And it begins with a simple question:
Who is being overlooked in your life right now?
Perhaps it's someone you see five days a week. Perhaps it's a person in your own household who needs your attention. Maybe it's a lonely neighbor, a struggling coworker, or someone whose background makes it easier to keep your distance.
Who is hurting? Who is isolated? Who needs someone to notice them?
The Good Samaritan saw the injured man. Before he could help, he had to recognize that someone needed help.
We must learn to see people in the same way.
At St. John's, our hope is to invite people to the One who is greater than the Good Samaritan: Jesus Christ. In Him, people can find rescue, hope, forgiveness, and healing. That invitation may look like welcoming someone to worship, inviting them into a life group, listening to someone who is struggling, or simply showing up when they need support.
In the midst of distraction and misplaced hope, we walk together with others toward renewed hope and life through Jesus Christ.
There are people around us who need that hope. Some know it, and others may not yet realize it. Our calling is to love them, serve them, and point them toward the One who first loved us.
Receive Love. Give Love.
The world offers many definitions of love, but Jesus shows us a love that goes deeper than feelings, crosses boundaries, and acts sacrificially for the good of others.
The Good Samaritan reminds us that our neighbors are not limited to the people who are like us or who agree with us. Our neighbor is the person God places before us who needs our compassion.
But we don't carry out this calling alone, and we don't have to manufacture this love from within ourselves. We begin with Jesus—with His grace, His forgiveness, and His unchanging love for us.
We are the ones He has rescued. We are the ones He continues to care for. And we are the ones He sends into the world to share that same love with others.
May we receive God's love deeply, extend His grace generously, and become a community through which others can experience the hope and healing found in Jesus Christ.
We receive God's love so that we can extend God's love.