What does First B Jackson teach about who is my neighbor?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First B Jackson, the teaching on who is my neighbor begins where Jesus began: with the lawyer's question in Luke 10 that was never really innocent. Pastor Brian, Pastor Mark, Brad, and Pastor Josh have all worked through the parable of the Good Samaritan and reached the same conclusion. Your neighbor is not a category you get to define narrowly. Your neighbor is whoever you are in contact with, whoever needs something, whoever God has placed in your path today. The neighborhood, the workplace, the sideline at a kids' sports game, all of it counts.
The parable makes this uncomfortable on purpose. Jesus did not make the hero a respectable Israelite. He made him a Samaritan, exactly the group his audience would have named as the enemy of the gospel. Pastor Mark put that edge back on it by reading out what the congregation actually wrote on their cards: antifa, the media, radical Muslims, woke culture, hypocritical Christians, Democrats, extreme right wingers. That, the teaching said, is roughly the category Jesus was pointing at. The neighbor you are called to love is not just the one who is easy to love.
The love Jesus describes, the Greek word agape, is sacrificial and active by definition. Brad put it plainly: if it does not cost you something, it is not agape love. The Samaritan in the parable did not feel compassion from a distance. He stopped, used his own supplies, put the man on his own animal, stayed with him, and paid for his care. That is the model the church keeps coming back to, not passive goodwill toward people in the abstract, but costly, present attention to the actual person in front of you.
Taught from Luke 10:25-37 · Ephesians 2:8-10 · Luke 6:35-36 · Romans 8:28
The passage taught · 2 Corinthians 12
1 It is doubtless not profitable for me to boast. For I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord.
2 I know a man in Christ, fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I don’t know, or whether out of the body, I don’t know; God knows), such a one caught up into the third heaven.
3 I know such a man (whether in the body, or outside of the body, I don’t know; God knows),
4 how he was caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- April 13, 2025 Love Your Neighbor As Yourself Jesus defines neighbor as anyone in your path, and calls us to costly, sacrificial love for every person made in God's image, both inside and outside the church.
- March 9, 2025 There Are No Ordinary People Brad explores what it means to love your neighbor, from sacrificial agape love for strangers to the honest, burden-sharing relationships God calls us to inside the church.
- January 22, 2023 Sunday Jan 22nd. Join us in the book of Luke Chapter 10 A Wyoming pastor uses audience poll cards and Luke's Good Samaritan story to ask: can you love the people you find most offensive to the gospel?
- January 22, 2023 Do This and You Will Live A Wyoming pastor walks through the Good Samaritan story and asks his congregation to name the people they trust least, then challenges them to see those people as neighbors.