Loving Your Neighbour

Nelson Ashitiva built an award-winning law firm in Nairobi from a one-man operation in one of the city's most challenging neighbourhoods. He didn't separate his faith from his firm. He saw his clients, his staff, and his broader community as neighbours to be served, not transactions to be completed.

His vision was simple: hope, hard work, and no handouts. Creating real opportunities for real people to build real businesses.

When Jesus was asked for the greatest commandment, he gave two, and then added: "All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two." Love God. Love your neighbour. Nothing is outside the reach of these commands, including your business.

In the marketplace, your neighbours have job titles. They are your employees, who depend on your leadership for their livelihood and dignity. Your customers, whose trust you hold every time they choose you. Your suppliers, your investors, your community.

Leviticus 19, rarely cited in business schools, contains strikingly practical commercial ethics: don't withhold wages, don't exploit the vulnerable, don't use dishonest weights. Loving your neighbour, in the Hebrew economy, had very specific commercial implications.

As part of a wider value chain, your business is probably answering someone's daily prayer for provision right now. That is not incidental to your faith. It is a direct expression of the Great Commandment, played out through ordinary commercial activity.

Excellent, ethical, dignified business is one of the most practical ways to love the people God has placed around you.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1. Which of your business neighbours, employees, customers, suppliers, or community do you most tend to overlook when you think about the Great Commandment?
2. What is one concrete way you could more intentionally love one of them this week?

PRAYER

Jesus, you gave up the comfort of heaven to serve the people others overlooked. Please give me that same other-centred vision for my work. May my business be a place where people feel genuinely seen, valued, and well served.

Amen.