Loving People You Didn’t Choose
What Jesus says about difficult people
Someone came to mind the moment you read that title. You know exactly who it is.
And Jesus had something to say about that person.
In Luke 10, a lawyer asks Him a question designed to find the edges of the command. He already knows the Law: love God, love your neighbor. Jesus affirms him. Then he asks the follow-up: “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29 NIV). Luke tells us why—the lawyer asked it to justify himself. He wanted a boundary. A shorter list. Permission to love some people and reasonably exclude others.
The Question Behind the Question
Most people aren’t trying to be unloving—they’re tired, or hurt, or carrying a relationship that has cost them more than they expected. The question underneath the question is one you may have asked yourself: Does love for humanity really have to include this person? Jesus takes that question seriously enough to answer it with a story.
A man is beaten and left on the road. Two religious leaders pass by—on the other side. Then a Samaritan comes. In first-century Jewish culture, Samaritans were the people you didn’t associate with, didn’t trust, and didn’t claim. This one stops anyway. He bandages the wounds, loads the man on his own animal, pays for his lodging, and promises to cover whatever else the recovery costs.
The Holy Spirit produces in you what you cannot produce yourself—love for the people who cost you the most.
Jesus then turns the question: “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” (Luke 10:36 NIV). The lawyer can’t bring himself to say Samaritan. He answers, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus says: “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37 NIV).
Where this Kind of Love Comes From
The neighbor is defined by need—and the love that moves toward it. The difficult person in your life is where love is called to go.
That kind of love requires a source beyond yourself. Romans 5:5 says, “God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us” (NIV). Poured out—not rationed, not conditional, not dependent on how deserving the recipient is. The Holy Spirit produces in you what you cannot produce yourself, including the capacity to move toward someone who has hurt you, drained you, or gone silent on you.
That love originates with God and flows through you—which means the supply holds even when you feel empty. So before you take that next step toward the difficult person in your life, ask the Holy Spirit to bring out of you what you can’t manufacture on your own. Invite Him to move you toward this person the way the Samaritan moved toward the man on the road. That prayer positions you to act from God’s supply rather than your own reserves.
Go and Do Likewise
This changes the ask. Jesus tells you to go. The action comes before the feeling. You take one step toward that person—a call you’ve been putting off, a door you’ve left closed, a moment of patience you’ve been withholding—and the Holy Spirit meets you in that movement.
God positions you as the one through whom His love reaches someone who may have no other access to it. That’s the weight of being trusted with something that matters.
The lawyer got his answer. So do you. Go and do likewise—starting with the person who already came to mind.
A Life That Speaks: Serving Others with the Story You Live
This blog is one conversation in a larger one. Our free five-day YouVersion devotional, A Life That Speaks: Serving Others with the Story You Live, goes deeper into exactly this—the lamp, the salt, the mustard seed, the alabaster jar. Five scripture images Jesus chose on purpose, each carrying one anchoring truth about what God does with a life faithfully lived in love—even when love costs something. Find A Life That Speaks on YouVersion and start today.