(Part 2 of 2 in a study of the Parable of the Good Samaritan)
“And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 And He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?” 27 And he answered, “YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.” 28 And He said to him, “You have answered correctly; DO THIS AND YOU WILL LIVE.” 29 But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30 Jesus replied and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. 31 “And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 “Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 “But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, 34 and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 “On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you.’ 36 “Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?” 37 And he said, “The one who showed mercy toward him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.”
Previously, we looked at this interrupting lawyer, his impertinent question of Jesus, and the legalism expressed, both in his question and his response to the challenge of Jesus to keep the very Law the man had put his trust in.
Remember that Jesus answered the lawyer’s test with a test of His own, asking the man for his own take on the Law.
Now let’s not move too quickly and miss a point that is before us here.
The lawyer stands up, and says ‘Teacher’ – now listen to his question – ‘what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ Got it? ‘What shall I do’; so the assumption is that he must do something. And this is not an assumption unique to this man. It was a fundamentally accepted belief among the Jews.
Even Jesus’ disciples, at this point, still labored under the commonly held belief that acceptance with God was through the works of the Mosaic Law.
So in reality, he asks a question that is on the mind of every Jew and every God-fearing gentile of the day. “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Hear the nature of the question? His concern is the life after this one. They all believed in a life after death; except the Sadducees who didn’t believe in Heaven or Hell or angels or resurrection; but everyone else believed in a life after death. They just didn’t know exactly what was in store for them or what the trick was for securing eternal life.
So he asks the question to test this Rabbi, and the response he gets takes his question back to the Mosaic Law. Isn’t that interesting?
Hey, Jesus didn’t come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. He said so Himself.
What makes this hit us kind of screwy is our knowledge from the Scriptures that salvation and eternal life are not the result of the keeping of the Law of Moses or any law, but of Grace alone through faith alone in the shed blood and resurrection of Christ alone. So what’s going on here? Why is Jesus Himself referring to the Law in response to a question about eternal life?
It is because He is talking to someone who believes salvation is through the Law, and his own intense study of it, his own meticulous adherance to it, his dedicated repeating of it twice each day, says that according to his own understanding, he already has and knows – or thinks he knows – the answer to his own question.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself”
Now was Jesus telling the truth when He said, “You have answered correctly; DO THIS AND YOU WILL LIVE”?
YES! Yes, He was answering truthfully, because the Law is holy and righteous and good, and if anyone could consistantly and without ever failing in one instance, love God with ALL their heart and ALL their soul and ALL their strength and ALL their mind..and if they could love others with the faithfulness and intensity with which they love themselves, then they would earn favor with God and eternal life.
Can anyone do this? NO! That’s what Jesus wanted the man to see. The response of Jesus here was to illicit from the lawyer a desperate and humble cry of ‘I can’t do that!’ He then would have been in a position to hear the truth and have his eyes opened. Sadly, that was not to be.
He wanted to justify himself. In other words, if my neighbor can’t be clearly identified because my definition of ‘neighbor’ differs to any degree from yours, that lets me off the hook.
Doubly sad is that he tries to weasle out of the whole thing by focusing on the horizontal relationships but completely ignores the vertical relationship with God.
It would have been more understandable if he had said, “Well, you know, I can try to love my fellow man and do unto others as I would have them do unto me and all that, but God is holy and I am sinful and I don’t think I can love Him with the fervency and intensity that Law demands.”
Then they could have had a fruitful discussion, couldn’t they? Instead he asks this pathetic, insincere question, “And who is my neighbor” and we get a story.
Later, I’d like to pan out, as it were, to take a wider look at this passage and its connection to the earlier portion of chapter 10 and highlight the fundamental message that this man and all legalists fail to get.
First, we’ll go over this parable – we can’t pass that up, can we – then tie things together.
THE COMPASSIONATE SAMARITAN
A man was going down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. Now I’ve seen some teachers get very detailed in their description of the road between these two cities, and it is interesting information, but I haven’t been there and I don’t want to just recopy a geography lesson from someone else’s work to this sermon. So let me offer you just a few basic facts.
When it says he was going down the road, it literally means ‘down’. In the approximate 17 mile distance between Jerusalem to Jericho the change in elevation is over 3000 feet. So that’s a pretty steep incline to be traversing. In addition, we are told by those who know, there are caves and crags, and cliffs that make the road not only dangerous terrain, but dangerous in that there are many places robbers can hide and catch unwary travellers by surprise.
It has been called by some the ‘Bloody way’ for this very reason. So this lawyer and other hearers around them would at this early stage of the parable, probably have been thinking to themselves that this traveller was in peril.
Then Jesus says ‘and fell among robbers’. Yep, no surprises so far. ‘and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead’.
Are you getting this picture? These evil men didn’t just demand this man’s coin purse, slap him around a little and then run. They had murderous intent. They even took his clothes, leaving him exposed to the animals and the elements, pounded him into the rain ruts and left him, Jesus says, ‘half dead’.
It interested me that Jesus actually used a term that means ‘half dead’. We say things like that, but we don’t really intend to convey that someone was 50 percent alive and 50 percent dead; we only mean that they are in need of emergency medical attention. Sometimes we even say it glibly about how we felt after a hard day’s work.
Sometimes we make it into a joke and say things like, ‘What happens if you frighten someone half to death, twice?’
So I looked up the term and it actually does mean ‘half dead’.
Now some preachers and commentators who spiritualize this parable and try to make it an allegory of the gospel have said that Jesus used this term because mankind due to sin is half alive and half dead in that while they are alive physically they are dead spiritually. Then, as you think it through, the robbers are the sin that kill the spirit, the Samaritan represents Christ who ‘paid it all’ and brought us back to life and health, and so on.
I think we’d miss the point Jesus was making if we did that to the parable. Jesus was teaching something about compassion and rejoicing, and He was teaching something about the glory of God. We’ll see that; but let’s go on with the story.
As the man lays there in the roadway, presumably, or close to the roadway, two other men happen by in the course of their travels; one a priest and one a levite. Now the difference between the two is that one is a priest of the Aaronic line who serves in the Temple,whereas the levite would be of the lesser order of those who serve in the Temple; aides or assistants to the priests, since they were of the tribe of Levi and not of Aaron.
The point is, they both represent the Mosaic Law in their life and duties and as such would have been just as familiar as this lawyer with the passages recited twice each day and worn in the phalactries on their foreheads just as he probably was.
So when Jesus tells him that both priest and levite head in the opposite direction instead of helping the man, the lawyer may at this point be thinking he’s heard the punchline already. Oh, I see. The Rabbi is teaching that those who need help are the ones I should consider to be my neighbors.
Now at this juncture of the story is where many preachers and commentators try to explain what might have been on the minds of the priest and levite. Were they just religious hypocrites who had no compassion? Were they trying to keep themselves ritually pure for service in the Temple
Actually, there was nothing at all going on in their minds. They were characters in a story. Let me illustrate by telling you a short story of my own. It’s very short, so don’t miss it.
The man stood and walked across the room.
Now let’s analyze my story. Other than the fact that he is a man and not a woman, which is inherent in my story, there are only two things you can possibly know about this man. He was previously not standing and he was in a room. That’s it.
If you begin to speculate about why he crossed the room; saying things like, ‘well, I think maybe he was going to the chips and dip on a table there’, or ‘perhaps he was leaving and the door was across the room’, I would say to you that if you want to attribute any of those things to the man, go write your own story. The only thing I as the storyteller desire to convey, is that the man stood and walked across the room.
You can’t add to my story because outside the scope of what is said this character doesn’t exist. He didn’t exist before he stood and he ceased to exist the moment he walked across the room.
So what do we know of the priest and the levite? They happened upon this wounded man and they went the other way. That’s all.
So instead of speculating as to why they did what they did or where they were coming from or where they went, we need to ask what Jesus was conveying to his hearers.
Are you ready? They didn’t help the man! That’s it! That’s all! They saw him, they passed him by on the other side.
But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion. There. The distinction is made. Two passed him by, one felt compassion.
There is absolutely nothing to gain in specualting about what was in the minds of the priest and levite, any more than to know where the Samaritan was journeying to or even what direction he was going in when he saw the victim on the road.
What is important is that he felt compassion. That is the only feeling expressed in this entire parable. No one else’s feelings are mentioned whatsoever.
Do you know why this is important? It is important because of what actions this man took as a result of the compassion he felt.
The parable should be called ‘The Compassionate Samaritan’ instead of ‘The Good Samaritan’. The word good refers to his character. We aren’t told anything about his character in general. Oh, you might say that his helping and the extent to which he helped says a great deal about his character. But we don’t know that.
There have been times when some normally very selfish and thoughtless people have been moved in an emotional moment to do something quite noble and they’ve even surprised themselves.
But as I’ve pointed out, these people don’t exist except within the scope of this parable, and all we know is what the Storyteller has told us; that the journeying Samaritan felt compassion, and it is just intuitive for the hearer that the actions that follow are a result of his compassion. It’s a given.
What we can assume though, not about the story characters but about the real characters standing by and hearing Jesus, is that they were shocked by the turn this parable took when Jesus said the word ‘Samaritan’.
A BRIEF HISTORY
The Jews and Samaritans hated each other. Jews who were travelling from Judea in the south to Galilee in the north, or the other way around, would actually go east, cross the Jordan and then come back across when they had reached their destination, rather than pass through Samaria. This is why John told us in chapter four of his Gospel that Jesus ‘needed’ to pass through Samaria. The implication is that no one would, who didn’t need to. Then when the disciples saw Jesus talking to the woman by Jacob’s well they were doubly shocked that He would be talking to her; one because she was a woman, but two, because she was a despised Samaritan.
What initiated this hostility began almost 800 years previously. When the northern kingdom of Israel fell and was taken into captivity in 722 BC, (the southern kingdom of Judah would fall later), the Assyrians moved in to possess the land and its resources. Over time, scattered Jews who had been left behind in the land married and had children with Assyrians, producing this half-breed race that came to be known as the Samaritans.
Later, when the Jews returned to the land they considered these Samaritans to be despicable. When the rebuilding of the Temple was underway, Samaritans came to help rebuild and were turned away in no uncertain terms, so they went and built their own temple for worship on Mt Gerazim.
This is what the woman at the well is referring to in John 4 when she challenges Jesus with the fact that the Jews say the proper place for worship is in Jerusalem, but the Samaritans say it is on the mountain; to which Jesus replies that those who worship God will worship in spirit and in truth, rather than in some geographic location.
So when the lawyer heard Jesus say, “A Samaritan who was on a journey came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion”, he must have gasped at the very thought!
Then Jesus goes into the great extent to which the Samaritan helped this poor victim. I won’t go into it all in detail; you can get all that elsewhere. In brief, he bandaged his wounds after cleaning them with his own wine and oil, puts the man on his own beast – here again, we don’t know if this is a camel or a donkey or a horse or a St Bernard; the story doesn’t say so we don’t make it up – the point is that the Samaritan is now walking. He takes him to an inn, pays the innkeeper enough money to give the guy room and board and promises to make up for whatever might be lacking when he passes back by.
Now as I said, much could be made and has been made of these details, but we get the message. Two people who would have been expected to help didn’t help, and the one of whom nothing would have been expected went the extra mile out of compassion.
WHO’S THE NEIGHBOR HERE?
But look at Jesus’ closing question. “Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?”
Do you hear it? The lawyer had asked, “Who is my neighbor?” and Jesus turned it around showed the man he was asking the wrong question. The question is not ‘who is my neighbor’, but ‘to whom should I be neighborly?’
And of course the correct answer to that is, ‘you should be neighborly to anyone near you who needs compassion’.
Well, we know the lawyer got at least that much, because he responded correctly, ‘The one who showed mercy toward him’. Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same”.
Was this the end, and was it really the point? I don’t think so. I think Jesus told the man to go and do the same because that was as deep as the lawyer was able to go.
Remember, the original question was ‘what shall I do to inherit eternal life’. The final words from Jesus are, ‘go and do the same’. Of course he wasn’t going to earn eternal life by being a compassionate neighbor. So what was he missing that Jesus would not be able to convey to someone blinded by legalism?
WHAT THE LAWYER MISSED
Well, I think it’s found in verses 17-24 of Luke 10. Remember, this is what the lawyer rudely interrupted.
“The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.” 18 And He said to them, “I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning. 19 “Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you. 20 “Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven.” 21 At that very time He rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and said, “I praise You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. 22 “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.” 23 Turning to the disciples, He said privately, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see, 24 for I say to you, that many prophets and kings wished to see the things which you see, and did not see them, and to hear the things which you hear, and did not hear them.”
The lawyer wanted only to test this Teacher and perhaps throw Him off with vague questions about the Law and behavior. What he missed was that he was witnessing a large gathering of people rejoicing that in the power of the Holy Spirit of God they had been able to show compassion and help to many people.
Sort of like the parable, huh?
The lawyer interrupted to ask ‘what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ But he either didn’t hear or didn’t notice that Jesus has just told this large gathering of people that their names were written down in heaven.
He missed the message that acceptance with God – right standing with God – isn’t earned, it’s a gift.
WHY THE LAWYER MISSED IT
Now let’s not miss this point of doctrine demonstrated in this account. Rejoicing greatly in the Holy Spirit, Jesus said, “I praise Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these things from the wise and intelligent and didst reveal them to babes. Yes, Father, for thus it was well-pleasing in Thy sight.” (vs 21)
And while the ‘babes’ rejoiced in what they had been shown, the intelligent, wise Scribe couldn’t even see it.
Student of God’s Word, this was by the will and choosing of God the Father, Lord of heaven and earth. Jesus, said so.
And as Lord of heaven and earth, He will reveal Himself to whom He chooses, and He will hide Himself from whom He has not chosen. That is why Jesus can be rejoicing happily in the midst of His chosen ones; rejoicing over them and rejoicing with them, and turn at the same time to a blind legalist and say, ‘If your trust is in your flesh and in the keeping of the Law then you must keep it. Go and do’.
MARTHA AND MARY
Now before we close, I think we have to go beyond our text and notice something significant. In the last 5 verses of this chapter we are told something that doesn’t seem on the surface to fit with anything else being said. That is, it doesn’t fit if you isolate the parable of the Samaritan and make it all about doing good and helping people in need; and especially if you try to spiritualize it and make it an allegory of the Gospel
But if you’re taking it all in the same light as we have been discussing this chapter, you may be able to pick up on why Luke recorded this brief account of Jesus’ apparent first visit with Martha and Mary.
“Now as they were traveling along, He entered a village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to His word. 40 But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she came up to Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; 42 but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”
Christ-follower, you who love the Lord, you who know that salvation does not come from ‘doing’, please understand today that doing for doing’s sake can be empty and fruitless and even harmful.
God is not served by human hands as though He needed anything; since He Himself gives to all life and breath and all things. (Acts 17:23)
Am I saying we shouldn’t serve the Lord with our bodies and with our talents? No. Of course not. Just be sure that He has put you to the task and that you’re not serving to be seen or because you think He somehow can’t do without you. Or, because you think it earns His favor.
We don’t even know the Samaritan’s name. Do you know why? Was it because he was humble and didn’t give it? Was it because his motives were pure and he didn’t want the attention?
NO! I told you, he never had a name, it was just a story! J
No, I think it comes down to this and I think it is why the Holy Spirit inspired Luke to include this brief account of this visit in the home of the ladies, here at the end of this particular chapter.
It is about rejoicing. It is about rejoicing in the Holy Spirit, praising the Father, Lord of heaven and earth, simply that our names are recorded in heaven and that we as His chosen ones are blessed to sit at the feet of our Savior – a place that can never be taken away from us.
Jesus has no cheerful words for the legalist. Is your faith in your strength? Is your trust in your keeping of the law; the rules? Go and do it. That’s all He can say to you.
But to the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly (Rom 4:5), He says that you can rejoice that your name is recorded in heaven, and by faith you have chosen the good part that can never be taken away.
22 “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”
If you are one in whom the Son has chosen to reveal Himself and His Father, rejoice! That’s the message the legalist misses. But it is revealed to you by God’s grace alone and now… you’ve got the message!
