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Caring for Immigrants Is Not Merely Mercy—It Is Memory
Most Christians want to care for immigrants. Food pantries. ESL classes. Legal clinics. Rides to appointments. All good things. Necessary things. But Scripture presses us further than simply doing good. God does not begin by asking us to help immigrants. God begins by reminding us that we are immigrants.
The Bible does not say, “Care for immigrants because they are vulnerable.” It says, “Care for immigrants because you were—and still are—one.” That shift changes everything. Biblically speaking, hospitality toward immigrants is not a side ministry. It is a spiritual diagnostic for our own survival. It reveals whether God’s people remember their story—or have forgotten it.
Today’s texts insist on this truth again and again: The health of God’s people, the security of their identity, their understanding of the gospel, is inseparable from how they treat the immigrant. So I want to give a brief comment about each of our texts and then offer some reflections about our identity as Christians. (As we each have to make complicated political choices, these are Biblical and theological elements that ALL Christians must wrestle with.)
Exodus 23:9 — Knowing the Soul of the Stranger
“You shall not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.”
The Hebrew word translated foreigner here is גֵּר (ger). Not a tourist. Not someone passing through. A resident alien. Someone who lives among you but does not belong by power, land, or lineage.
And God says: Do not oppress [crush] the ger. Why? “Because you know how it feels.” This was Carlos point two weeks ago. We all know, in greater and small ways, what it feels like to be foreign, bullied, excluded, othered. We all know.
The word for know in Hebrew is יָדַע (yada‘)— an embodied, soul-level knowing. The NIV says, “you yourselves know how it feels” but the Hebrew is more emphatic, “you yourself know the soul [nephesh] of a foreigner.” The language reflects a deep, soulful empathy that isn’t toxic but a clear command.
Such soulful knowing is an intimate, experiential, relational understanding rather than just intellectual awareness. Yada’ implies deep loyalty and connection and is used euphemistically to describe sexual intimacy, such as when Adam "knew" (yada) Eve (Gen 4:1). You know it in your bones—your life, your breath, your whole being. The only way to know – in that way – is to experience knowledge by being in relationship with immigrants. Soulful knowing demands it.
Biblical ethics are grounded not in abstraction but in embodied memory. Israel’s moral imagination was shaped by a story of what God has brought them through. To forget the immigrant experience then was to forget that story of liberation and, by extension, Israel’s own salvation.
Oppression, then, is not just political. It is amnesia. When people forget what it felt like to be powerless, they begin to reenact the very violence they were rescued from. In the Old Testament, the first step in Israel stepping away from God and falling into sin was always the charge of “forgetting.” And the first step in Israel toward stepping toward God and righteousness was the command to “remember.”
Leviticus 19:33–34 — The Holiness Chapter Jesus Never Forgot
Leviticus 19 is often called the Holiness Code, and in Scripture holiness rarely means withdrawal. It means imitation. It means to engage things like God – that’s holiness.
“When a foreigner resides among you… do not mistreat them. The foreigner… must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself.” That phrase—love them as yourself—is revolutionized by Jesus to explain what it actually means to love God
When Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” (Lev. 19:18) he is quoting a chapter that explicitly includes immigrants as neighbors. Is it any wonder then that when Jesus is asked for an example of such neighborly love he tells the heroic story of an outside, foreign, ethnic group – Samaritans.
Biblical scholar Willie Jennings, reading Leviticus through the history of displacement and colonization, argues that the failure to love the foreigner is not merely moral failure—it is theological collapse. God’s people lose the ability to love others and can’t imagine belonging without dominance.
And notice the radical claim: The ger is to be treated as native-born. Not “with kindness.” Not “with tolerance.” But with equality. Why? “For you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.”
So we are to love them because we are one of them. But we are also to love them because God does. God ties God’s own identity to this command. To mistreat the immigrant is not just to break a rule. It is a theological failure which misrepresents who God is.
1 Chronicles 16 — Protected Strangers Who Praise
In First Chronicles, the Chronicler looks back on Israel’s early story: “When they were few in number… strangers in the land… He allowed no one to oppress them; for their sake he rebuked kings.”
This is a dangerous memory. Israel was never meant to forget that their survival depended on God restraining the powerful when they were immigrants. Scripture consistently portrays God not as neutral in human conflict, but actively opposing domination and harmful behavior. For the sake of immigrants, God rebukes kings.
And what follows this remembrance? The global worship of the earth! Sing to the Lord, all the earth… Declare his glory among the nations.”
Follow the flow: Praise flows from memory. Mission flows from holiness (imitation of God). Worship flows from justice. God’s glory and salvation is not declared solely for Israel. It is exemplified through it so that “all the earth” might worship.
So here are a few take-aways.
Immigration Is Not a Side Issue—It Is a Mirror
Here is the hard word for the church: When we talk about immigrants as “them,” Scripture keeps interrupting us with “you.” Our passages keep preaching to us:
“You know how it feels.” “You were foreigners.” “Remember when you were few.”
Scripture constantly forms a people capable of empathy through memory. When memory erodes, so does covenant faithfulness and kindness.
This is why Scripture links treatment of immigrants to:
- Land flourishing
- Community health
- Faithful worship
- National survival
- Theological correctness
Care for immigrants is not mere mercy. It is self-care for God’s people. When we harden ourselves toward the vulnerable, we lose access to compassion altogether and become, essentially, suicidal.
Jesus is the Immigrant God
Jesus does not just teach Leviticus 19. And Scripture does more than reminding us of our immigrant identity. In Jesus, God becomes an immigrant – a refugee – a stranger.
Born under occupation. Fleeing as a refugee to Egypt. Living without a home.
When Jesus identifies himself with “the stranger,” the Xenos, in Matthew 25, he is not inventing a new ethic. He is fulfilling an old one. To welcome the immigrant is to welcome Christ. To reject the immigrant or to ignore the stranger is anti-gospel and rehearses Egypt all over again.
The Church as an Immigrant Body
The New Testament does not erase this immigrant identity. It intensifies it.
Peter calls believers “aliens and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11). Paul says our citizenship is in heaven (Phil. 3:20). Hebrews says we are “seeking a homeland” (Heb. 11:14). The church is not a settled people guarding territory. We are a pilgrim people from every nation practicing trust and loyalty in God and gospel alone. The New Testament will always tell you, you cannot define yourself by your nation first. Forgetting this truth has always led the church into alignment with empire rather than with God.
Immigrant care, then, is not about politics. It is about formation. Who are we becoming? A fearful people obsessed with borders? Or a confident people rooted in an immigrant gospel that loves the stranger?
Conclusion: Remembering Their Souls for the Sake of Our Souls
God’s command is simple—and devastating: Remember. Remember where you came from. Remember who protected you. Remember who you are.
The immigrant in our midst is not a threat to our faith. They are a theological gift— calling us back to strangeness, humility, memory, trust, and Jesus himself.
The first question before the church is not merely, “Will we help immigrants?”
The deeper question is: Will we remember ourselves? Because our life as God’s people— our holiness, our joy, our witness— depends on it. Amen.
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