Scripture doesn’t give us the easy answers we want to questions of mass migration, immigration, borders, enforcement, and more. If we are following Christian teachings, then neither the ‘build the wall’ crowd nor the ‘abolish ICE’ protestors are likely to get what they desire. Instead, we get something that’s much tougher to live out. The government has the right to enforce borders, though it must do so through just means. The church has an obligation to care for the immigrant, but a compassion offered within the greater context of society. Both of these things are true, and both must inform how Christians think about our moment.
Borders
The Bible clearly teaches that God orders human life. Nations are not accidents. Boundaries are an understandable line of demarcation. Scripture speaks plainly about God appointing peoples, lands, and times (Genesis 17:8, Numbers 26:52-53, Deuteronomy 32:8, Acts 17:26). This ordering is a temporary arrangement, but that doesn’t make it insignificant or meaningless. It becomes part of how God restrains chaos and makes everyday life possible after Babel.
Authority and law stand as facts of life within all relationships, the family, the workplace, society, the church, and more. The Bible doesn’t see them as bugs in the system that need fixing. They are actually part of how God keeps society functioning. Indeed, this is the actual point behind St Augustine’s much-discussed “ordo amoris.” The point of the ordo is not to identify who you are obliged to love versus who you have no such obligation to, as some have suggested. Rather, the point is that finite human beings cannot love everyone in equivalent ways. We need ways of distinguishing between the obligations I owe to my child or spouse, to my next-door neighbor, and to the person living six hours away. I am called to love all of them. But I can’t love them all in the same way. Political boundaries do for political society what things like marriage vows or church membership do for families and churches: They help to identify and define mutual obligations of care and protection. National boundaries are, of course, negotiable and relative; they are not declared or made by God. They are creations of human communities. And yet we do need some kind of border to help us define a political society’s life in the same way that pastors are helped by having defined membership processes in their churches: The prudential boundary helps define the relationship and guide how we act within it.
Scripture is also equally clear about the command to love the sojourner. Not to ignore, not to tolerate, but to love. God tells Israel to remember its own vulnerability, its own history of displacement, and to let that memory shape its treatment of those who arrive from elsewhere. The call is explicit and repeated. There are no footnotes or exemptions. Indeed, the Christian church, often described as a pilgrim people in Scripture passing through a country that is not their home, should see a picture of their own life in the life of immigrants who, like them, are passing through a place that is not their home.
The Bible never treats borders as sinful. It also never treats hospitality for the alien as optional. Faithfulness lives within this tension.
The Sojourner
The sojourner in Scripture is not invisible. He is to be named, counted, and recognized within the community. He lives among the people and under the same law. He works, worships, and seeks justice within the same social order.
The biblical vision refuses people hiding in the shadows, afraid to come forward. It’s about bringing the vulnerable immigrant into the light, where they can actually be protected and held to the same standards as everyone else.
This matters. When people exist entirely outside the law, they do not become safer. They become easier to exploit, and thus may be more vulnerable at times than when dwelling in their former country.
Law & Mercy
Our fellow citizens sometimes speak as though law and compassion oppose one another. Scripture does not.
Paul describes governing authorities as servants of God tasked with restraining evil and maintaining order. Law names expectations. It limits the abuse of power. It gives the vulnerable something to appeal to when they are wronged.
When laws are not enforced, you don’t automatically get a kinder, more compassionate society. You usually get one where the worst people take advantage of both the vulnerable and the anonymous blob (the British term for the deep state). It becomes predatory. Traffickers flourish. Unscrupulous employers take advantage of people who have no recourse. Migrants themselves become more vulnerable precisely because they lack legal standing, or they simply adapt to the culture of lawlessness that already exists.
The failure is not enforcement at the moment (although some Democrats admit it was in the recent past). The failure is the refusal to hold enforcement and compassion together.
Cruelty
None of these grants permission to dehumanize the sojourner. Scripture is unyielding here.
Israel was not condemned for having borders. God condemned the crushing of the vulnerable, for exercising power without restraint, for forgetting the image of God in the stranger. Enforcement in Scripture is never an excuse for humiliation or harm. Justice is measured not only by outcomes but by process. Dignity matters.
This is where many evangelicals, myself at times, have forfeited moral credibility. We have defended family separation. We have minimized conditions in detention centers. We have spoken about order as though it absolves us from mercy. Then, when our own churches are disrupted, we suddenly discover the language of sanctity and protection.
It rings hollow.
Jesus Will Not Let Us Simplify This
Jesus refuses to let us draw tight conclusions here. The parable of the Good Samaritan makes that clear. Neighborliness is not limited by legal status.
At the same time, Jesus does not deny the reality of political authority. His acknowledgment of Caesar is not an endorsement of tyranny, but neither is it a dismissal of governance. Earthly authority exists, and it has real, though limited, responsibilities.
The kingdom of God does not erase political structures. It judges them. It calls them to justice and mercy. But it does not pretend they are imaginary.
Different Callings
Much of our confusion comes from collapsing roles that Scripture keeps distinct.
The church is called to radical welcome. It feeds the hungry, shelters the vulnerable, and offers care without first demanding credentials. It cannot stop doing this without ceasing to be the church.
The government has a different task. It governs. It sets policy. It enforces the law. It cannot welcome without conditions and remain the government of a defined political community.
When the church tries to govern, it becomes coercive. When the state attempts to play church, it swings between sentimentality and brutality, if not also waste and utilitarianism. Faithfulness requires honoring both callings without confusing them. Christians can welcome the stranger and advocate for just immigration enforcement. These are not contradictions unless we insist on making them so.
Faithfulness
Borders and laws are legitimate. Enforcement carries moral responsibility. Immigrants bear the image of God. They deserve dignity, protection, and fair process. Furthermore, hospitality works within order, not in defiance of it. Compassion without structure eventually collapses. Structure without compassion becomes cruel.
Scripture does not permit us to choose one and ignore the other. For too long, many of us have done exactly that. We have spoken loudly about order and quietly about mercy. Or we’ve marched in the streets demanding less law enforcement, with little to nothing about securing the borders and managing migrant flows.
If we want credibility, the work ahead is harder. We must insist on both order and mercy, and we must mean it, not only when it costs others, but when it costs us as well.
This review was originally published by Mere Orthodoxy on January 30, 2026. Reposted with permission.
Beautifully written, thought provoking and helpful. Thank you
Excellent, Case! Looking forward to our time together soon.