Loving Your Neighbor

“For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Galatians 5:14

I distinctly remember a conversation I had with a foreign exchange student who was living in our home while attending high school in America. We often had long talks about God. Her understanding of God was that He was some lofty, unapproachable being worshipped in stained-glassed churches that smelled like old people. 

I was telling her about some things Jesus had done and said, “While he was here on earth…” She stopped me for a moment and got that look in her eyes. You know, the “aha moment” look when suddenly the light goes on? “You mean to tell me,” she said, “that Jesus was a real person? That he lived on earth? That he was human? That you could touch him?” 

It took some time for her to grasp, but I explained how the Son of God took on flesh and lived among us. And He didn’t just arrive on the scene unexpectedly. About 700 years before Jesus was born, Isaiah prophesied of his coming.

“The Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’).” Isaiah 7:14

Before His arrival on the planet, no one had seen God. To this day, no one has seen God, but Jesus revealed God to us (John 1:18). Jesus said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Jesus revealed God to us so that we could reveal Jesus to others. Or, as one writer puts it, 

“God made himself visible in Jesus. Jesus makes himself visible in us.” — Donna Burns 

We love our neighbors by showing them what Jesus looks like, by revealing Jesus to them. This might involve telling your foreign exchange student that Jesus was a real person. Or it might mean helping someone in need, giving financially, speaking words of encouragement, or just enduring hardship with grace and faith. When you respond in the way that Jesus would respond, he makes himself visible in you.