“When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” (Lev. 19:33)
These past few weeks, we have watched with shock the chaos in Minneapolis which has resulted in the deaths of 3 U.S. citizens. Although there are many political motivations on both the political right and left that have contributed to this chaos, at the heart of what is happening is how the U.S. deals with humans coming into the U.S. from other countries—immigrants. Depending on your news source on this subject, you may have thoughts on immigration that differ dramatically from the way other U.S. citizens view immigration. But if we are Christians, we have a responsibility to God to both think critically and act compassionately about all public issues. And this is especially so when it comes to immigration, because the foreigner–the immigrant—has a special place in the heart of God, and the Almighty demands that we stand up for the marginalized among us.
So, what does the Bible say about immigrants, how might this affect our laws in the U.S., and what can I do in response to God’s call to me?
THINKING BIBLICALLY ABOUT IMMIGRATION
As Matthew Soerens and Jenny Yang write in Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion, & Truth in the Immigration Debate, “While the Bible does not provide a specific prescription for a US immigration policy…it certainly offers principles that guide us as we consider the immigration dilemma and seek to influence policy in a way that reflects God’s love, compassion, and justice.”[1]
The Bible has much to say about immigration. As theologian Orlando O. Espin writes, “welcoming the stranger (the ‘immigrant,’ we could say today) is the most often repeated commandment in the Hebrew Scriptures, with the exception of the imperative to worship only one God.”[2] In fact, God used immigrants like Abraham and Joseph to further his purposes, and the immigrant Ruth (from Moab) was the great-grandmother of King David and is included in the lineage of Jesus in Matthew’s genealogy.[3]
What stands out when reading the Old Testament is how often God tells the Israelites that they must treat the immigrants among them with dignity, respect, and compassion. “For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner, giving him food and clothing. Love the foreigner, therefore, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt” (Deut. 10:17-19).[4] This protection of and compassion toward foreigners was unique to the law of Moses compared to the law codes of other nations in the ancient Near East. The compassion of God and his people made them different from the aggressive and greedy nations around them.
God has harsh words of judgment for those who mistreat foreigners, and this is seen especially in the biting words of the Old Testament prophets: “I will be quick to testify against…those who oppress the widow and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice” (Mal. 3:5). “Do justice and righteousness…and do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood” (Jer. 22:3).
TO BE RIGHTEOUS IS TO STAND UP FOR OTHERS
It is this characteristic of God to stand up for and protect the rights and needs of the marginalized, including foreigners, that is described throughout the Old Testament as “righteousness.” The Hebrew words “righteous” (sedeq) and “justice” (mispat) dominate the Old Testament scriptures and are used interchangeably. Righteousness is doing what is good and right for all people based on the compassionate love of God, and justice is putting God’s compassionate love into practice. “Justice is what love looks like in public….[it is] a fire in the bones to promote the well-being of all.”[5]
Old Testament scholar John Goldingay summarizes “righteousness” and “justice” as the “faithful exercise of power in community.”[6] The Israelites often sought “power” as a means to protect themselves and improve their own lives; God held them accountable for not faithfully using whatever power they had to protect and improve the lives of the defenseless, the foreigners, and the marginalized. As Bryan Stevenson writes, “The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned. We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation.”[7]
Jesus especially emphasized the care and protection of the vulnerable, and even the immigrant. In discussing the passage from Leviticus 19 to love our neighbor, Jesus answered the question of “who is my neighbor” with his famous parable of the “Good Samaritan.” Although Samaritans were considered “immigrants” and were even hated by Jews of Jesus’ day, it was the Samaritan in Jesus’ parable who proved to be the “neighbor” by caring for the hurt Israelite. And in the last parable in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus the King judges all of us by how we treat the most vulnerable because it is King Jesus himself who identifies with the vulnerable, including the immigrant: “I was a foreigner (xenos, meaning foreigner) and you welcomed me” (Matt. 25:35).
THE UNBIBLICAL USE OF ROMANS 13
So how do we as Christians apply these principles of the Bible to our current situation in the US? Certainly, every nation needs laws relating to the lawful and orderly entry of migrants into their country. There is no country in the world that doesn’t have such laws, and there is obviously a need for the US to both have immigration laws and to enforce them. But by all accounts, the current immigration laws in the US are contributing to the chaos we see in our nation. As the Evangelical Statement for Principles for Immigration Reform states:
Our national immigration laws have created a moral, economic, and political crises in America. Initiatives to remedy this crisis have led to polarization and name calling in which opponents have misrepresented each other’s positions as open borders and amnesty versus deportations of millions. This false choice has led to an unacceptable political stalemate at the federal level at a tragic human cost.[8]
When considering immigration laws, many Christians point to Paul’s statements in Romans 13, which states that we should “be subject to the governing authorities” since “there is no authority except that which God has established” (Rom. 13:1). So, Scripture tells us to obey the laws, and yet it also commands us to welcome and care for immigrants. How do we reconcile these?
As Michael Rhodes points out, Romans 13 was written to Christians who had “little to no direct influence over the type of political system in which they lived. By contrast, American Christians do have the opportunity to influence local and national politics in all sorts of ways… ‘Romans 13 Only’ Christians have often taken the text’s apparently ‘simple statement of God’s authorization of the state’ as an invitation to do just that, seeking to gain and use political power as they see fit.”[9] The real question is not only about obeying the law, but also “is the law just?” And if the law is not just, “do I have any power or influence to change the law to make it more just”? Am I being “righteous,” or “faithfully exercising power for the community”?
SO WHAT CAN I DO?
If we as Christians are convicted by Scripture to apply Biblical principles to the immigration debate, then we could advocate for comprehensive immigration reform. Since 2012, the Evangelical Immigration Table, a group of Christian leaders, pastors, university presidents, teachers, and others, have called upon Christians to advocate for a bipartisan solution on immigration that:
- Respects the God-given dignity of every person
- Protects the unity of the immediate family
- Respects the rule of law
- Guarantees secure national borders
- Ensures fairness to taxpayers
- Establishes a path toward legal status and/or citizenship for those who qualify and who wish to become permanent residents.
For more information on the Evangelical Immigration Table, see www.evangelicalimmigrationtable.com
So what can I do? I can stop listening to just my own favorite news outlet and start doing some research, reading, and critical thinking. There are many good Christian resources discussing immigration, and I would highly recommend getting and reading Matthew Soerens and Jenny Yang’s Welcoming the Stranger.
I can also refuse to put labels on others. I can put the dignity of all human beings above party politics, and I can give my first and foremost allegiance to the God of Jesus Christ over any political party. I can also put pressure on Congress to adopt just laws by emailing, writing letters to, or calling my representatives and Senators.
I can also actually do what Jesus called us to do in Matthew 25: I can welcome and care for immigrants in very tangible ways. There are numerous relief organizations to which we can donate, and two that I would recommend are:
World Relief: www.worldrelief.org
Prestige Learning Institute: www.prestigeinstitute.org
Finally, loving our “neighbor” (the immigrant among us) is “much easier when you actually meet and get to know the immigrants in your community and begin to realize that, for all your differences, you also have a great deal in common—probably a taste for good food, a concern for your families, and often a common Christian faith.”[10]
[1] Matthew Soerens and Jenny Yang, Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion, & Truth in the Immigration Debate (IVP: 2018, 85).
[2] Cited in Soerens and Yang, Welcoming the Stranger, 85.
[3] For Americans, it is important to remember that we are a “nation of immigrants,” and in some respect, we are all immigrants or descendants of immigrants.
[4] See the numerous Old Testament scriptures regarding the just treatment and welcoming of foreigners, including Deut. 24: 14, 17, Ex. 12:49, Ps. 146:9.
[5] Cornel West, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud (Smiley Books, 2010), 23.
[6] John Goldingay, The Theology of the Book of Isaiah (IVP Academic, 2014), 21.
[7] Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (Spiegel & Grau, 2015), 18.
[8] The Evangelical Statement of Principles of Immigration Reform. See https://www.nae.org/topics/immigration/
[9] Michael J. Rhodes, Just Discipleship: Biblical Justice in an Unjust World (IVP Academic, 2023), 230.
[10] Soerens and Yang, 100.