The Liberal Twisting of Jesus’ Command to “Love Your Neighbor” (Part 4)

Thus far in this series, we’ve worked hard to set the record straight on a few critical points. We’ve defined “neighbor” and “love” within a scriptural and covenantal framework. We’ve uncovered what “God’s best” means, too. We’ve also dug into the idea of ordo amoris—ordering our loves—and how prioritizing God’s covenant people is not only important but necessary. We’ve needed to do this because the notions of “neighbor” and “love” have been so twisted in our time that they’re nearly unrecognizable. The culture has attempted to redefine these biblical concepts with secular ideas, but scriptural perspectives are best.

The most egregious example of this, perhaps, is the way the idea of “loving your neighbor” has been hijacked to mean loving a Muslim terrorist or an LGBT activist just as much as someone who is part of God’s covenant people. In fact, it’s worse than that—many Christians today have been led to believe that those outside the faith should be held in higher regard than our own brothers and sisters in Christ. This perverse ordering of loves is a direct result of the culture’s influence on the church, where Marxist or Neo-Marxist narratives about “oppressors and oppressed” has crept in and infected Christian thinking.

In western cultures like America, for instance, we hear the constant refrain, the tired and broken-record trope, about loving and caring for “the marginalized.” It’s like a battle cry of sorts from liberal theological circles. But, just like they’ve redefined “neighbor” and “love,” they’ve also redefined “the marginalized” to mean anyone who, in a (Neo-)Marxist worldview, is on the oppressed side of the paradigm. This is not the way Jesus viewed the marginalized.

In fact, as Dr. Jeffrey E. Miller has shown in his dissertation, Jesus Among Luke’s Marginalized, it is a logical fallacy of the greatest sort to suggest that Jesus viewed all marginalized people in the same way. No, what we see in the Gospels, especially in Luke, is that Jesus understood two distinct categories of marginalized people: 1) the condition-marginalized, and 2) the conduct-marginalized.

The first group—the condition-marginalized—includes people who were marginalized because of their illness, their social status, or something else that was outside of their control. These are people who didn’t choose their lot in life. When Jesus interacts with these people, he often heals them and shows them great compassion. He restores their dignity because they are victims of their circumstances, not their choices.

The second group—the conduct-marginalized—includes people who were marginalized because of their sin, their poor choices, or their transgressions. These people, when they meet Jesus, don’t get a free pass. Jesus calls them to repentance. The love he shows them is still genuine, but it’s tough love. It’s the kind of love that tells them the truth about themselves and urges them to turn away from their sin and come back into right relationship with God.

But here’s the problem we’re facing today: Modern society, particularly liberal theologians and cultural influencers, have conflated these two categories into one. They’ve collapsed the distinction between the condition-marginalized and the conduct-marginalized. They’ve taken the modern understanding of victimhood and applied it indiscriminately, assuming that everyone who is marginalized is marginalized because of circumstances beyond their control. This is simply not true. And what’s worse, when we make this mistake, we end up treating everyone as if they belong in the first group, and the people who really need to repent are never told so. That’s a travesty. It’s a failure to love in the way Jesus did.

Miller summarizes this problem well in his dissertation’s abstract: “The path to restoration for society’s outcasts in the Gospel of Luke ran through Jesus. How they were restored by Jesus, however, seemed to take on different forms depending on why that person was marginalized in the first place….those who were marginalized through no fault of their own (condition outcasts) were unconditionally redignified by Jesus, whereas those who were marginalized due to sin (conduct outcasts) were offered forgiveness in exchange for repentance.”

Do you see what’s at stake here? If we fail to define these terms properly, we end up distorting the gospel itself. And that’s exactly what’s happening in many churches today. By conflating these two groups, liberal theology has effectively silenced the call to repentance. It’s turned Jesus into a one-dimensional figure who does nothing but pat people on the back and tell them they’re fine just the way they are. But that’s not love. That’s a betrayal of the truth. And it’s such a travesty because it is a hindrance to them being part of God’s covenant people.

Now, I want to give a personal example that might help illustrate this point. Some years ago, someone I knew, someone who called themselves a “Christian,” was living in open rebellion against biblical teaching. He was actively promoting ideas and behaviors that were not only unbiblical but were leading others down the same path. When I approached him, I didn’t go in guns blazing. I didn’t condemn him outright. I spoke to him in private, pointed him back to the Scriptures, and told him that I was concerned for his soul. But here’s the thing: I didn’t sugarcoat the truth. I told him that what he was doing was sinful, and that if he didn’t repent, he would be in danger of God’s judgment. That’s not a comfortable conversation to have. But that’s love. That’s what Jesus would have done. He would have told the truth.

This distinction between condition-marginalized and conduct-marginalized is all over the Gospels, but let’s just take two examples from Luke. In Lk 7:36-50, we see Jesus interacting with a sinful woman who is weeping at his feet. What does Jesus do? He forgives her sins. But he also acknowledges that she is sinful in the first place. He doesn’t gloss over her sin. He tells her that her faith has saved her, and then he tells her to go in peace—a peace that comes from repentance and forgiveness.

Contrast this with Lk 18:35-43, where Jesus heals a blind beggar. This man hasn’t sinned. He’s not being punished for anything he’s done. He’s just blind. And what does Jesus do? He heals him. There’s no call to repentance because there’s nothing to repent of. This man is condition-marginalized, and Jesus restores his dignity by healing his affliction.

When we engage with Scripture, it’s so important to define our terms properly. We need to dig into the context of the text, read closely, and interpret honestly. This is the only way we can get our bearings on words like neighbor, love, God’s best, and marginalized. And getting these definitions right is essential because it helps us avoid twisting Jesus’ words to fit our own agendas.

All of this matters for our witness as followers of Christ. When we get these things wrong, we risk losing our trustworthiness. But when we take the time to understand what Jesus really meant, we strengthen our witness, and we live in a way that honors him. Friends, the church must recover these teachings in a culture that’s constantly trying to distort them. The time is nigh.