You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself – Luke 10:27. This verse sums up the commandment of love as given by Jesus. The parable of the good Samaritan is all about love.

The scholar of the law had asked Jesus what he needed to do to inherit eternal life and Jesus answered him as the verse above. The explanation that threw the law scholar off-guard is the definition of who your neighbour is. 

Your neighbour is someone who irregardless of their tribe, race, nationality, gender or creed will come to your help during your greatest time of need without expecting any reward in return. 

These days, people tend to think that it is only the people who come from the same locality, tribe, race, creed etc can help them. To their surprise, they find out that those they thought were good friends or neighbours fled from them and a stranger came to their rescue.

Jesus is today telling us that the psychological barriers that we have put in our heads and hearts like race, tribe, religion etc are not important and always drive us away from embracing Gods Love. When you think that you cannot help someone because they adhere to a different faith, that makes you a sinner because you have gone against the commandment of love.

So, Just like the scholar of the law, if we want to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven we should Love God and love our neighbours with the measure that Jesus Christ exemplifies in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, You have taught us how to be good neighbours today. Strengthen our hearts so that we can love others with the same measure as the Good Samaritan did. May we finally get to inherit the Kingdom of God. Amen.