Scripture Study for

As he prepares Israel to enter the land promised to their ancestors,  Moses once again exhorts the people to cherish their covenantal relationship with God and to heed carefully God’s commands, which are intended to give Israel life (Deuteronomy 10:15–16). The will of  God is not mysterious or changeable, such that Israel will never be sure what God wants of them. Their God is not capricious or subject to whims. The Law is a gift to Israel so that they will always know what God asks of them. It is always available to them; they do not need to go searching for it. They only have to carry it out. 

Here at the beginning of his Letter to the Colossians, Paul draws on a preexisting hymn to set the stage for his exposition of the work of God, through Christ, on behalf of all of creation. Who is Jesus  Christ? He is, in the first place, the visible manifestation of God, for in him the fullness of deity dwells. Before his incarnation, he existed  before all the rest of creation as the “firstborn.” This term refers not only to his primacy temporally but also and especially to his sovereignty of rank (just as with firstborn sons in the Old Testament). 

Because of this, and because all creation was made “through him”  (in the much the same way the wisdom literature speaks of Wisdom  [8:22–35]), all of creation is “for him” and subject to him. Christ is also the firstborn of the dead, making his “preeminence” even more clear. Through him, all creation holds together and all creation— currently marked by much violence and chaos—is reconciled, such that the promise of peace is firmly established. 

Jesus’ response to the scholar of the Law addresses both the substance of his question (“who is my neighbor?”) and the motivation for asking it (self-justification). The command to love one’s neighbor  (Leviticus 19:18) refers originally to one’s “own people,” which is to say, fellow Israelites. This did not mean that one was free to act unjustly toward non-Israelites, as the numerous injunctions about mistreating “aliens” make clear. In Jesus’ time, this would certainly have meant loving one’s fellow Jews. But what about others? Jesus emphasizes that one’s neighbor is anyone who needs help, regardless of religion or ethnic background or anything else. The scholar clearly believed that he regularly fulfilled this requirement, perhaps limiting its application to fellow Jews. Jesus challenges his piety by demanding that he expand his notion of neighbor to include even such as the despised Samaritans.