“You shall not murder . . . commit adultery . . . steal . . . give false testimony against your neighbor. You shall not covet . . . anything that belongs to your neighbor.” (Deut. 5:17–21)
Expanded Passage: Deuteronomy 5:17-21
My son and his wife put up a backyard playground for our granddaughters that resembled a wooden Pirate ship. The girls loved climbing up into the crow’s nest to look through their telescope at the neighbors. Long Island homes are pretty close together, and so it wasn’t surprising when the home across from them put up a tall privacy fence along the property line. They probably weren’t very happy when they were on their back porch, looking at two little heads surveying them over the barrier calling out, “Ahoy neighbor! We can still see you!”
Robert Frost in one of his famous poems writes “Good fences make good neighbors.” One way of dealing with other people is to seclude them from your world. The law of God calls us to engage and to love our neighbors, by treating them the way you would want to be treated. The conclusion of the commandments is a series of “thou shall nots” that teach us how to treat other people.
The laws of God that inform our love of neighbor require us to stop looking at other people through motives of competition and covetousness. We will discover why Jesus reduced the entire Torah to loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind—and our neighbor as ourselves (Matt. 22:37–39). No one can build a fence big enough to keep that from happening.
Do something today that shows your neighbor you appreciate them.
Rich Eckley is professor emeritus of theology at Houghton University (NY). He is an ordained Wesleyan minister, and enjoys—with his wife Lynn—entertaining their active grandchildren.
© 2025 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission. Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
