How do we balance ‘love your neighbour’ with controlling borders?
Question 12048
Few issues stir as much emotion in churches and communities as immigration and border control. On one hand, Scripture clearly commands love for the stranger and care for the vulnerable. On the other, the Bible also teaches the legitimacy of national boundaries, the responsibility of governing authorities, and the need for order in human society. So how do Christians hold these things together without falling into either cold indifference or naïve open-borders idealism? The answer, as always, is found in what Scripture actually says.
The Biblical Case for Loving the Stranger
The command to love one’s neighbour is not optional. Jesus identified it as the second greatest commandment (Matthew 22:39), and He expanded it powerfully in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), where the “neighbour” turned out to be someone from an entirely different ethnic and religious background. The point was clear: love is not limited by nationality, ethnicity, or convenience.
The Old Testament reinforces this repeatedly. God told Israel, “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34). The Hebrew word here is ger (גֵּר), referring to a resident alien who had placed themselves under the laws and customs of the host nation. This is an important distinction. The ger was not an invader or someone refusing to live under the community’s established order. They were someone who had come lawfully and submitted to the authority of the land in which they now lived. God’s people were to treat such individuals with dignity, fairness, and genuine compassion, remembering that Israel itself had once been vulnerable and displaced.
Scripture also uses the term nekhar (נֵכָר) or zar (זָר) for foreigners who remained outside the covenant community and did not adopt its laws. These individuals were treated differently in certain respects, not out of hatred, but because their relationship to the community was fundamentally different. This distinction matters enormously for the modern discussion. The Bible’s command to love the stranger is real and binding, but it was never a command to erase all distinctions between those who have entered a community lawfully and those who have not.
The Biblical Case for National Boundaries and Order
The same God who commands love for the stranger also established the principle of distinct nations with defined territories. In Acts 17:26, Paul declares that God “made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.” This is not a throwaway statement. God Himself is the one who ordained national boundaries. The existence of distinct nations with their own territories is part of God’s providential ordering of human history, not a sinful human invention to be dismantled.
This principle traces back to the Table of Nations in Genesis 10, where God dispersed humanity into distinct peoples, languages, and lands after Babel. Throughout the Old Testament, Israel’s own borders were God-given (Deuteronomy 32:8), and other nations also had divinely appointed territories. Edom, Moab, and Ammon all had lands that God had assigned to them, and Israel was explicitly forbidden from seizing those territories (Deuteronomy 2:4-19). God takes national boundaries seriously.
Governing authorities also bear a God-given responsibility to maintain order and protect those under their care. Romans 13:1-7 makes clear that government is instituted by God to reward good and punish evil, and this necessarily includes the responsibility to control who enters a nation and under what conditions. A government that refuses to enforce its own borders is failing in one of its most basic duties, just as a householder who refuses to lock his doors at night is being reckless rather than generous. Compassion that comes at the expense of order and safety is not truly compassionate, because it harms the very people the government is supposed to protect.
Avoiding Two Errors
The temptation for Christians is to fall into one of two ditches. The first ditch is to use “love your neighbour” as though it automatically means open borders, no enforcement, and unlimited entry for anyone who wants to come. This sounds compassionate on the surface, but it ignores the biblical principles of order, lawful authority, and the distinction between the ger and the nekhar. It also ignores practical reality. A nation that cannot control its borders cannot protect its most vulnerable citizens, including the very immigrants who are already there legally and building their lives. Uncontrolled immigration often hurts those at the bottom of the economic ladder most severely, and it can destabilise the social fabric that makes compassion and community life possible in the first place.
The second ditch is to use border control as an excuse for hostility, racism, or indifference toward people made in God’s image. Some talk about immigration in ways that dehumanise people, treating desperate men, women, and children as nothing more than statistics or threats. A Christian must never speak about any human being that way. Every person attempting to cross a border, whether legally or illegally, bears the imago Dei and deserves to be treated with basic human dignity. Firm immigration policy and genuine compassion are not mutually exclusive. You can support strong borders while also insisting that those who are detained or deported are treated humanely, that asylum processes are fair, and that your own heart is free from prejudice.
What Does a Biblical Balance Look Like?
A biblical approach recognises that love for neighbour operates at multiple levels. You love your immediate neighbour by supporting just laws and stable communities. You love the stranger by ensuring that immigration systems are fair, that genuine refugees are given protection, and that those who come lawfully are welcomed and treated well. You love even those who have entered unlawfully by treating them as human beings while still upholding the rule of law.
Think about it practically. A church can advocate for compassionate immigration reform while still affirming that nations have the right and duty to control their borders. A Christian can volunteer at a refugee centre on Saturday and vote for border security on Tuesday without any contradiction whatsoever. These are not competing values. They are both expressions of a biblical worldview that takes seriously both God’s command to love and God’s establishment of ordered human society.
The key principle is that love does not require lawlessness, and law does not require lovelessness. Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and posted guards at the gates (Nehemiah 7:1-3), but that did not make him unloving. He was protecting his people and establishing the conditions under which a community could flourish. At the same time, the law of Moses required that the stranger within Israel’s gates be treated with justice and kindness. Both things were true simultaneously.
Conclusion
Christians should resist the false choice between loving the stranger and supporting national borders. Scripture teaches both, and it teaches them without contradiction. God commands compassion, hospitality, and justice toward the foreigner. God also established nations with boundaries and gave governing authorities the responsibility to maintain order and protect their people. The Christian’s job is not to pick one side of this equation and ignore the other, but to hold both together with integrity, speaking up for the vulnerable while supporting lawful governance, and doing all of it with the humility and grace that come from knowing that we ourselves are strangers and pilgrims on this earth (1 Peter 2:11), welcomed into God’s kingdom not by our own merit but by His extraordinary grace.
“You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.” Leviticus 19:34 (ESV)
