I’ve spent a lot of time on here talking about culture, specifically about how while our Christian culture is amazing we often end up adopting the false cultures of the world to our own detriment. The issue of immigration is an excellent example of how well meaning but fundamentally deceived Christians, including most Latter-day Saints, are lied to, fooled, and manipulated by the ideologies of the world into supporting immigration actions from governments which, at their most basic level, are cruel, anti-Christian, and outright evil. The purpose of this article is straight-forward- to address what exactly the scriptures command when it comes to immigration and the treatment of immigrants (of any sort) and to establish what exactly a Christian immigration policy would look like. In doing so I do not give a single iota for what repercussions this may or may not have for any government, nation, ethnic group, or country. The single thing a Christian cares about is whether his actions are in accordance with the will and commandments of Almighty God, with anything that aligns to God’s will and anything that does not being rejected. To do anything less is idolatry, with political idolatry being a tragically all too common problem today.
Before going farther, I will point out that everything explored herein applies equally to refugees as refugees are merely another type of foreigner. Thus, what we discover and conclude about what the scriptures teach about foreigners applies equally to refugees as well. Now, onward to discovering what saving truths the scriptures teach on this important subject.
The Old Testament
In dealing with the Old Testament and events which happened millennia ago to people who thought and lived fundamentally differently than modern peoples, we must be careful about how we deal with issues such as immigration. There seem to be three basic terms which are used to denote foreigners in the Old Testament. The first are the ger. The current definition of ger is those who accepted the Mosaic Law, lived according to it, and may have even been converted to the Israelite faith. These were given the special recognition of being able to take part in Israelite religious ceremonies and had access to social aid and protection. But the earliest idea tied to ger is that of being a stranger, something reflected in the way that biblical references to the ger always relate the experiences of ger in Israel with the experiences of Israel in Egypt, and command Israelites to protect the ger and to treat them in the opposite manner to how the Israelites were treated in Egypt. The Israelites were to provide for and protect the ger, the strangers living in a land that was not their own in a society that was not like their own.
The second, the nekhar, are those who are foreigners, who by custom and ancestry are not of the House of Israel and who are not like the Israelites. Whereas the ger were resident foreigners living among the Israelites, the nekhar are all other foreigners, which would suggest that they are those travelling through an area, but not necessarily those looing to move into or settle within an Israelite settlement. Finally, the zar were those who were neither living in Israelite territory nor passing through it. In modern language we would say the zar are foreign people, i.e. people not from our country and not living in our country.
Now that we understand that the earliest meanings of ger, nekhar, and zar all applying to essentially the same thing – foreigners or what we would call immigrants and non-native born people – and differentiating them only by whether they are moving in, passing through, or living outside of the Israelite nation in question, we are prepared to evaluate exactly what the Old Testament teaches about how we are supposed to treat immigrants. In this I will pay special attention to the ger and the nekhar as they are what we would today term immigrants as these are the two groups which move into and pass through other nations. What do the scriptures teach about these immigrant peoples?
When a foreigner resides with you in your land, you must not oppress him. You must treat the foreigner living among you as native-born and love him as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.
Leviticus 19:33-34
Here we have a very clear command from the Lord that foreigners living among the people of God are not supposed to be treated any differently than native born Israelites. Notice here that loving foreigners is explicitly tied to loving others as yourself, something which should trigger the ear of every Christian as loving others as yourself is one of the Two Great Commandments that Christ taught summed up everything. More on this momentarily. It may be true that in terms of religious ritual that foreigners may not have had access to the same rites and privileges, but in terms of legal protections for themselves and their property they were to be treated equally to and be as protected as native born Israelites. This is emphasized in other Old Testament scriptures as well:
Native-born Israelites and foreigners are equal before the LORD and are subject to the same decrees. This is a permanent law for you, to be observed from generation to generation. The same instructions and regulations will apply both to you and to the foreigners living among you.
Numbers 15: 15-16
In the above scripture we see the Lord declare that both foreigners and native-born peoples should be subject to the same laws and decrees. There aren’t separate sets of laws that apply to the foreigners that do not also apply to the native-born. Likewise, there are no laws that apply to the native-born which do not apply equally to the Israelite. All people are accorded the same rights and privileges under Israelite law, where there were born was irrelevant. These truths are re-emphasized in Deuteronomy, with one of the defining characteristics of Jehovah being how He treats foreigners:
Therefore, change your hearts and stop being stubborn.
For the LORD your God is the God of gods and Lord of lords. He is the great God, the mighty and awesome God, who shows no partiality and cannot be bribed. He ensures that orphans and widows receive justice. He shows love to the foreigners living among you and gives them food and clothing. So you, too, must show love to foreigners, for you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt
Deuteronomy 10:16-19
Again we see here that the Israelites are told that as they were once foreigners in Egypt they must be merciful to foreigners and ensure they have food and clothing. They must love foreigners. So important to Jehovah is the dealing of justice to the foreigner that He declares anyone who denies foreigners justice is to be cursed by Him (see Deut. 27:19) and warns that in the Final Judgment He will speak against (and judge against) anyone who mistreats and oppresses foreigners. (Malachi 3:5) It seems clear that according to the Old Testament if we truly wish to follow God and serve Him then we must serve and help foreigners, seeing to their needs, providing for their wants, seeing that the law treats them as if they were native-born and thereby obtain justice, and treat them as if they were our very self. Just as you would not beat, starve, and imprison yourself for crossing an imaginary line on a piece of paper, neither are you supposed to to do this to anyone else, including foreigners. The people and nations which violate His commandments regarding how foreigners are to be treated face cursing, condemnation, and judgment at His hand.
The New Testament
One of the most famous passages of scripture from the New Testament is Matthew 25: 31-46. In it Jesus lays out a series of actions which if the righteous believer undertakes it will be as if the believer was serving Christ directly. In the Final Judgment, Christ will separate the goats from His sheep and place the sheep on His right hand, saying:
Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.
Verses 34-36
The righteous sheep react by asking when they did all these things. After all, Christ has not often been bodily upon the Earth for them to have served Him so directly. To their question, the Lord, here in His role as King of Heaven, responds:
‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you were doing it to me!’
Verse 40
And what of the goats, not necessarily unbelievers but including both non-believers and believers who did not did not go out and serve others? To them the Lord turns and says
Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me a drink. I was a stranger, and you didn’t invite me into your home. I was naked, and you didn’t give me clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.
Verses 41-43
Faced with eternal damnation these people protest that they never saw Christ and therefore could not serve Him. Christ dismisses such excuses and self-justifications saying:
I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.
Verse 45
When we serve others we are serving God directly and that when we refuse to serve others we are refusing to render service to God. The result of this is that those who serve God by serving their fellowman received Heaven and “eternal life” while those who do not are damned to “eternal punishment.” (verse 46)
So, what does all this have to do with foreigners and the treatment of immigrants?
Well, here is the interesting bit. This teaching from Christ contains this line in verse 35:
For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home.
The Greek word here (and in verse 43 where the goats are damned for not helping aiding “strangers”) is xenos. What is xenos, you ask?
Xenos
Definition
1. a foreigner, a stranger
alien (from a person or a thing)
without the knowledge of, without a share in
new, unheard of2. one who receives and entertains another hospitably
Xenos
(with whom he stays or lodges, a host)
Xenos doesn’t just mean “someone I don’t know.” Xenos means foreigner, alien, someone I have never known or heard of and with whom I have no common cause or share. So, let us reread that line again where Jesus tells his exultant and exalted sheep, those who get into Heaven, exactly why they get into Heaven. This time we will use a more correct and exacting translation of xenos:
For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a foreigner, and ye took me in.
How we treat foreigners is how we treat Christ Himself. When we bring them into our lands, nations, communities, and homes and care for them as He commands then we are taking Him into our lands, nations, communities, and homes. Those who do so He promises will be blessed with eternal life. Those who do not?
Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me a drink. I was a foreigner, and you didn’t invite me into your home.
Jesus warned that we would be blessed by God for inviting foreigners in and that we would be cursed by God for refusing to do so. Seems like a Christian nation would not be imprisoning people in concentration camps for crossing an imaginary line on a piece of paper, which was not just a “Trump thing” and which has continued under Joe Biden direction despite his lies otherwise. Imprisoning children in immigrant concentration camps is a bipartisan affair. A Christian nation – i.e. a nation where the people within it followed the teachings of Jesus Christ – would be welcoming foreigner into their nation as the foreigners’ new home. Likewise in a Jewish nation as the Law of Moses demands that foreigners be treated as equals to native born peoples. In the end, we are all foreigners here on Earth. Like Abraham we are all strangers in a strange land. Our command is to help one another in the tribulation here, not make it harder.
Now, we could end there. For a Christian, the words of Jesus Christ should be enough. Christ commanded us to welcome foreigners in, to serve them in their needs, to feed them when hungry, to give them drink when thirsty, to clothe them when naked, and that we would be blessed for doing so and cursed for not doing so. This combined with the Old Testament teachings above make it clear that no Christian or Jew – no one who follows the God of Abraham – could imprison immigrants for entering the country of the Christian or Jew in question. But we can go a little deeper about xenos and how it relates to xenia, the ancient Greek custom of hospitality to strangers. Doing so will help us to understand just exactly what Christ meant when He said serving foreigners was like serving Him directly.
Xenos and Xenia
The Ancient Greeks had a related term to xenos; this related term is xenia. Xenia is often explained as the ancient Greek concept of hospitality. But it was much deeper than that. Xenia was about guest rights. As Dr. Pamela Johnston explains in her paper on the ancient Grecian practice of xenia, strangers and foreigners had a right to aid from their peers, a right that was protected by no less than the head of the gods, Zeus himself. The invoking of xenia could be overtly complex and formal (pgs. 115-116) or simple, as wee see in The Odyssey when Odysseus, dressed in rags as a beggar, petitions the swineherd Eumaeus for xenia by knocking on his door and merely asking for help.
In her paper, Dr. Johnston outlines the essential steps of proper xenia thusly:
1. Arrival of the stranger at the door
2. The stranger is welcomed, disarmed, and invited in
3. The stranger is bathed or given a chance to wash up (this sometimes
occurs later in the sequence)4. The stranger is invited to sit (and usually given the best seat at the
table)5. Entertainment, food, drink is given.
6. After this, and only after all needs are taken care of, is the stranger
questioned; “Who are you, whence have you come, and what is the
purpose of your journey?”7. The guest is given a place to sleep
“All Strangers and Beggars are from Zeus”: Early Greek Views of Hospitality, pg. 2 of the PDF version
Notice how closely this aligns with what Christ taught are the kinds of righteous actions that separate the sheep from the goats, the saved from the damned. The practice of proper xenia matches exactly and Christ’s teaching about how His disciples should treat others aligns perfectly with the proper practice of xenia. This is almost certainly no accident. For centuries Judea had been ruled by Hellenistic (that is Greek) empires and Hellenistic culture had a large influence on Judean society and culture. Jesus very likely knew exactly what He was doing when He was teaching His disciples to live in a similar manner.
Here is the real interesting part though. Xenia wasn’t (just) about teaching people to serve strangers and foreigners from different cities, regions, or nations you never knew. Xenia was incredibly important to Greek culture and religion because people thought gods mingled among them. If one had poorly played host to a stranger, there was the risk of incurring the wrath of a god disguised as the stranger. But if you fulfilled your obligations to the foreigners and strangers you met then you could actually be serving gods in disguise and be incredibly blessed for doing so. Dr. Johnston shares this example of just such a story from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, the:
cautionary tale of Baucis and Philemon is useful to illustrate the importance to the Greeks of xenia. Zeus and Hermes (or as the Romans would know them, Jupiter and Mercury) are traveling through a town. All of the well-heeled mansion dwellers refuse to offer the travelers hospitality. Baucis and Philemon, two elderly poor hut-dwellers, welcome the strangers, giving them what humble food they have, and offer them their own rude bed. Touched by their generosity, the gods invite them to ask what boon they would wish. They ask nothing more than to share the hour of their death so that neither would experience the sadness of outliving the other. In recompense, the gods install them as priest and priestess of their temple, and upon their death turned the couple into two trees, an oak and a linden tree, whose limbs were forever entwined with the other. The homes of those other inhabitants who denied them xenia sank into a swamp where their owners perished. This tale of theoxenia (hospitality to the gods) underlines a primary concern behind xenia itself: one should always offer hospitality to strangers on the possibility that the prospective guest might be a god in disguise.
“All Strangers and Beggars are from Zeus”: Early Greek Views of Hospitality, pgs. 3-4 of the PDF version
Recall what Christ taught His disciples about serving foreigners:
I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you were doing it to me!
and
I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.
The Greeks enforced the social custom of xenia partially because they were terrified that at anytime they could reject not just a foreigner, but a god or goddess in disguise and therefore be punished for doing so. Christ is specifically calling upon this idea when He says that when we serve foreigners and strangers then we are serving Him. Except He has removed all doubt by clearly saying, “I was a foreigner and ye took me in.” We don’t have to wonder if the foreigner we are serving or rejecting is or is not God Himself in disguise. Christ has made it clear – that foreigner and stranger is God in disguise. That is Christ Himself and how we treat that foreigner is how we treat God. Christ is every stranger, every foreigner, every person in need- every single one of them is God in disguise. When serve them we directly serve God as surely as if knelt before the throne and when we reject them, imprison them, deport them, destroy their families, seize their property, etc. then we are doing it to Him and rejecting Him as surely as if we stood before His throne and spit in His face.
Final Thoughts
It seems clear. Both the Old Testament and New Testament command the followers of God to embrace foreigners.
In the Old Testament, God forbids His servants from creating laws that target foreigners specifically, which means all modern immigration law is automatically in opposition to the laws and will of God as immigration law specifically targets foreigners and subjects them to laws that treat them differently than native born people. God specifically commands that we treat foreigners as if they were native born, which means they must be given the same equal rights and protections as native born people.
In the New Testament, Christ commands us to love and serve foreigners. He tells us those who do so will be blessed as His sheep who inherit eternal life while those who reject serving foreigners or who mistreat them will be the goats who are damned eternally. Christ teaches that He is every foreigner we will ever met and how we treat them is the exact same as treating Him that way. We are to bring them into our homes, which must therefore include bringing them into the country we live in, because how could they come into out homes if they cannot come into the country which our homes are in? Those who accept foreigners accept Him and those who reject foreigners reject Him.
It is no surprise that there is so much overlap between the Old Testament and New Testament. After all, the One giving each set of commands is the same whether we call Him by the title Jehovah or by His earthly name Jesus of Nazareth. They are the same Being – the Christ. And if we as Christians claim to follow His teachings and serve Him then there is no way that we can support modern immigration law. Immigration laws are entirely different sets of laws that treat foreigners different from native born people, violating the teachings of the Old Testament. And the imprisoning of immigrants, whatever their documentation status, and the deportation of them violates the teachings of the New Testament. For the disciple of God, for the Jew and the Christian, there is only a single policy which meets the requirements of and aligns with the commandments of God – the complete annihilation of immigration law, the treatment of foreigners as equal to native born citizens by the law with all their inherent human rights protected, and a policy of immigration at will across free and open borders.
As disciples of Christ, let us remember and live the ancient Christian wisdom and truth expressed in the venerable and revered Gaelic Rune of Hospitality:
