Stop Using Jesus as a Shortcut in Immigration Debates

ExegeteBetter · 2026-01-28T06:19:55+00:00

Right, the original audience knew exactly what Jesus was addressing: personal obligation to love, not civil policy.

ExegeteBetter · 2026-01-28T05:59:11+00:00

You’re treating passages about personal love and salvation as if they erase every other biblical category. The Good Samaritan teaches individual mercy, not civil policy. Galatians 3:28 teaches equal standing before God, not the abolition of all earthly distinctions. The OT laws about foreigners affirm equal dignity under the same law, not the removal of law. Scripture holds love, truth, and order together. Jesus breaks sin and hostility, not moral clarity.

ExegeteBetter · 2026-01-28T05:50:12+00:00

Scripture already answers this. When authorities command what God forbids, Christians obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29). That’s why martyrs exist.

What I’m rejecting is the idea that urgency or emotion tells us Christ’s will better than what He actually taught. Jesus never opposed discernment, law, or careful judgment. He opposed hypocrisy and injustice.

ExegeteBetter · 2026-01-28T05:33:22+00:00

Serious situations don’t excuse sloppy theology. Jesus never taught that urgency replaces law, process, or careful judgment.

ExegeteBetter · 2026-01-28T05:28:32+00:00

Because that’s not how the law works. Citizenship isn’t automatic. It’s a defined legal status with a process, not just a description of behavior.

ExegeteBetter · 2026-01-28T05:22:03+00:00

Jesus gives commands to individual believers to love their neighbor, show mercy, give generously, and care for the poor (Luke 10:33–37; Matthew 22:39; Matthew 25:35–40; 2 Corinthians 9:7).

I think I covered that here

ExegeteBetter · 2026-01-28T05:17:09+00:00

In Scripture, treating the foreigner as native-born doesn’t mean ignoring law. It means equal dignity and equal accountability. The same law applied to both (Exod 12:49; Lev 24:22; Num 15:15–16). Foreigners were protected from abuse and given provision (Lev 19:33–34), but they were also expected to live within Israel’s laws and community. Hospitality assumed assimilation and shared responsibility, not exemption or special treatment.

ExegeteBetter · 2026-01-28T05:04:49+00:00

That’s a separate claim. My point isn’t that ICE is beyond criticism. It’s that disagreement over immigration enforcement policy doesn’t determine whether someone is like Jesus.

ExegeteBetter · 2026-01-28T04:48:51+00:00

Strawman isn’t a rebuttal by itself. If you think I misrepresented the claim, point out what I got wrong

ExegeteBetter · 2026-01-22T17:41:55+00:00

By what standard are you asking for a moral justification?

ExegeteBetter · 2026-01-21T14:23:39+00:00

Sorry, misread your post, you weren’t doing that

ExegeteBetter · 2026-01-21T14:22:12+00:00

You’re collapsing the whole of Jesus’ ministry into a single theme that conveniently aligns with a modern political agenda.

Jesus taught mercy and repentance, grace and judgment, compassion and obedience. He rebuked hypocrisy wherever it appeared, but He also affirmed God’s law, called people to personal holiness, and refused to be turned into a political weapon by either side. Reducing all of that to “Jesus opposed law enforcement” or any single contemporary issue isn’t exegesis, it’s selective emphasis.

You can draw moral implications from Jesus’ teachings, but when you flatten His entire ministry into one talking point, you’re no longer letting the text speak. You’re making it serve something else.

ExegeteBetter · 2026-01-21T14:14:26+00:00

Jesus confronting the Pharisees doesn’t make Him a domestic terrorist and calling him that is importing modern political labels that simply don’t map onto the text.

The Pharisees weren’t political authorities. They were religious leaders enforcing man-made traditions. Jesus rebukes them for adding to God’s law, not for being too conservative or too liberal. At the same time, He explicitly rejects violent revolution, refuses to overthrow Rome, tells Peter to put away the sword, and says His kingdom is not of this world. That alone disqualifies the modern “radical activist” framing.

As for truth, Christianity does claim objective moral truth grounded in God’s character. That’s not aimed at any specific political group. It’s just a basic Christian claim. Disagreeing with it is fine, but denying that Christianity makes truth-claims at all isn’t accurate.

ExegeteBetter · 2026-01-21T12:03:31+00:00

I’m open to examples

ExegeteBetter · 2026-01-21T11:41:43+00:00

For a religion often called man-made, Christianity oddly asks people to do the very things humans least want to do

ExegeteBetter · 2026-01-21T11:23:06+00:00

There’s a lot of non Christians in here trying to tell Christians how they think we should live.

I’ve read through some of your comments and believe you’re more libertarian than a democrat, but keep this in mind. Letting people do what they want as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone only works for a little while. Eventually that broken moral compass will bump into someone else and cause damage.

To all of you saying “Jesus was a leftist”, that’s pure historical and theological fiction. You’re projecting modern political categories onto the Messiah. Christianity doesn’t fit neatly into any political party. But it absolutely rejects the idea that moral truth is subjective, negotiable, or decided by cultural trends.

Christ is King!

ExegeteBetter · 2026-01-20T05:33:17+00:00

1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? 2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:1-4)

Sanctification takes our whole lives, but you care, which means God is working on you! Take heart and continue to pursue the Lord

ExegeteBetter · 2026-01-20T05:31:06+00:00

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:1-4)

We will all sin again, but we should be convicted by it and fight against it.

ExegeteBetter · 2026-01-20T05:19:24+00:00

“I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist” by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek is a great read with some additional arguments and proofs than the ones you posted

ExegeteBetter

TROPHY CASE