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Lord, but When Did We See You?
When the volume of public discourse increases and threatens to overwhelm, it’s important to turn to the steady, powerful truth of the Bible.
As immigration has risen to the forefront of the nation’s attention, we must turn to God’s instruction in both the Old and New Testaments to form our opinions, decisions, and actions.
In our latest blog article, Rebekah Teuscher pulls on her years of education and experience to build a foundational understanding of what the Bible has to say about caring for immigrants.
She writes, "My brothers and sisters in Christ, we cannot allow our political leanings to shape our opinions toward immigrants and refugees more deeply than the foundational text of our faith, the Bible. I write this as a reminder about the many ways scripture directs Christians to interact with those from other lands..."
There is far more rich content in the article than can fit in this short summary, but in it, Rebekah closely examines God's commands in the Old Testament, Jesus' teaching in the New Testament, and what that means for us in 2025:
📖 In the Old Testament, God gives over 30 explicit commands regarding treatment of immigrants. These instructions compel the Israelites to remember their experience of oppression in Egypt and let it influence how they treat those from other lands in their midst – avoiding inflicting similar harm that was done to them.
🐑 Throughout the New Testament, Jesus re-emphasizes the Old Testament’s commands to care for people often overlooked – including foreigners. His parable of the sheep and goats recorded in Matthew 25 perhaps demonstrates this most clearly:
Caring for the foreigner – who is often also hungry, thirsty, sick, or unclothed – is such a high priority to God that Jesus identifies himself with the foreigner. Not only this, but he warns the listeners of this parable that those who do not respond to the stranger with welcome are sent to eternal punishment.
🤝 In 2025, it is an unfortunate reality that the political rhetoric we are steeped in as American Christians tempts us to minimize scripture’s teaching in favor of name calling, fear mongering, and “other-ing.”
Responding to the God-given humanity in each person and following scripture’s guidance to welcome the foreigner (the immigrant, the refugee) moves the conversation from a policy issue to a human issue.
Read the full article for more, in-depth exploration of scripture including additional scripture and helpful immigration definitions.
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