Sometimes Scriptures are so familiar that we miss the most important details.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan can change the world. 

The Good Samaritan is one of the most well-known parables of Jesus. It also happens to be my favorite of Van Gogh’s paintings (pictured above). This parable is one of those passages so familiar that even if not part of the Church, you’re likely to have some familiarity with it, even if all you know is the name. So disarming and poignant is this parable, that organizations, charities, and even laws, have been given its name. 

It wasn’t until this week when I was teaching online about interpreting parables and proverbs that I began to understood a detail of this text that had long since puzzled me. About 6 or 7 years ago I noticed it, and this week it finally “clicked.” This parable, for me, has exploded with meaning. Not newmeaning, not a different meaning… I still think the common interpretation is correct…but a much deeper meaning than I had previously understood. 

What is this puzzling detail? After considering the three passersby in the parable (the priest, the Levite, the Samaritan), Jesus doesn’t ask, “Which of these three loved his neighbor?” which is typically how we hear His question. The question Jesus actually asks is similar, but just different enough to take this teaching to a whole other level of complexity and life-changing profundity.  So let’s dive in. 

________________

Luke 10:25-37 (LEB)

And behold, a certain legal expert stood up to test him, saying, 

“Teacher, what must I do so that I will inherit eternal life?” 

And he said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” 

And he answered and said, “You shall love the Lord your God from all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” 

And he said to him, “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.” 

But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 

And Jesus replied and said, “A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who both stripped him and beat him. After inflicting blows on him, they went away, leaving him half dead. Now by coincidence a certain priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. And in the same way also a Levite, when he came down to the place and saw him, passed by on the opposite side. But a certain Samaritan who was traveling came up to him and, when he saw him, had compassion. And he came up and bandaged his wounds, pouring on olive oil and wine, and he put him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And on the next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him, and whatever you spend in addition, I will repay to you when I return. 

Which of these three do you suppose became a neighbor of the man who fell among the robbers?” So he said, “The one who showed mercy to him.” And Jesus said to him, “You go and do likewise.”

__________

Who is the Lawyer?

First, it’s helpful to know that a “legal expert,” or “lawyer,” as some versions read, is the same group referred to as “scribes” in Matthew and Mark; these are Jewish leaders opposed to Jesus. Luke wrote his gospel to a more Gentile audience than Matthew and Mark, so Luke is probably clarifying for his non-Jewish audience that these people are experts in the Jewish Scriptures. Over the course of Jewish history, scribes, whose responsibility was primarily copying and preserving texts, became known as the top experts in the content of Scripture (usually referred to as Torah, “law”), and thus became authoritative teachers of Scripture. 

Clashes between scribes/lawyers and Jesus are always related to interpretation of Scripture. What is interesting is Jesus seems to agree that the scribe/lawyer has a legitimate authoritative role in teaching Scripture (Matt. 23:1-3, 34). Yet He pulled no punches when it came to pointing out their errors. 

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

Luke 10 records one such clash between a teacher of Torah and Jesus where the lawyer tests Him by asking him what he must do to inherit eternal life (vs25). 

Jesus agrees with the scribe that his interpretation of God’s Word is correct.  Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself (vs. 27). This is the summary of God’s Law, the combination of the 1st-4th Commandments, and the 5th-10th Commandments. “Do this and you will live,” Jesus says (vs. 28). 

Luke, revealing both the scribes’ self-assumed relationship to the Law, as well as their heart condition, includes the detail, “wanting to justify himself,” as the explanation for why he then asked, “And who is my neighbor?” (vs. 29)

In the parable, a man is mugged, beaten, and left for dead. Not to be bothered, a priest and Levite (a member of the esteemed priestly tribe of Israel) pass by, and finally a Samaritan stops and renders aid. In typical parable fashion, its point is made by a surprising twist in the plot. The Samaritans, the “half-breed” product of decades of forced intermarriage with Assyrians when they occupied Israel’s northern territory, were despised by the properly pedigreed, righteous Jews of the South. The Samaritans had a different version of the Scriptures than the Jews had, and had an addition law in what we call the 10 Commandments (a command to worship on Mt. Gerizim). This man…this Samaritan the Jews despised, loved the wounded Jewish victim. 

The culturally despised, the geographical less-than, the religious heretic…he is the one who loves his neighbor as himself, in proper religious fulfillment of the Law of Moses. 

As Jesus so frequently does, He uses the example of the outsider to shame the insider, to the extent that He flips the entire paradigm and demonstrates that the outsiders are really the insiders because the insiders have so grossly misunderstood their relationship with God that they have none; by a false sense of religious security, they had excluded themselves from true fellowship with God. 

Who is the neighbor? 

So then Jesus asks the big question to make the parable’s point. “Which of these three do you suppose became a neighbor to the man who fell among robbers?” (vs. 36)  The lawyer answers correctly. End scene. 

Pause and think for a minute. 

At the beginning of this post I said there is a difference between how we typically hear Jesus’ question, and the actual wording of the question. We tend to read the challenge to the lawyer as if Jesus asked, “Which of these three loved his neighbor?” But He doesn’t. He said, “Which of these three became a neighbor?” 

It is worth noticing that Jesus does not answer the lawyer’s question directly. 

Lawyer’s question: “Who is my neighbor?”

Jesus’ response: “Which of these three do you suppose became a neighbor…”

The lawyer tries to narrow down the specific details of how to obey the law in order to earn eternal life. Rather than answer directly, Jesus shows the lawyer someone he despises who is obeying the law better than him. 

But again, Jesus doesn’t ask, “Which of these three obeyed the Law?” or “Which of these three loved his neighbor?” His is a different question, with a different aim. 

“Which of these three do you suppose became a neighbor to the man who fell among robbers?”

The difference between how we usually hear the question and what Jesus actually asked finally clicked this week. 

Question: “Who is my neighbor?”

Answer: “The Samaritan.” 

Jesus and the lawyer were agreed. The Law of God is fulfilled by loving God completely, and by loving neighbor as oneself. But Jesus takes this established theological doctrine to a whole other level by pointing out that the neighbor to be loved is the one we are quick to despise, the one who has wrong beliefs, the one who doesn’t deserve to be included in the family of the righteous. Who was the “neighbor” for Israel living in the Promised Land? It wasn’t fellow Israelites, but the surrounding nations who did not know God. They were to love God completely, and love those who were foreign, separate from God, sinful, heretical, and unclean. 

And anyone who thinks they can achieve this is completely and utterly self-deluded. None of us has ever or ever will love God with their whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love those they despise as themselves. Not on this side of life anyway. That is an impossible kind of love for human beings with a sin nature. 

So how is the Law to ever be fulfilled? What must we do to inherit eternal life? 

Jesus said to the Jewish people in the presence of their religious leadership, “Do not think that I have come to destroy the Law and the Prophets. I have not come to destroy them but to fulfill them.” (Matt. 5:17, LEB)

Jesus insisted that the Law is forever (Matt. 5:18-19), but that He is the one who fulfills it. Jesus did everything the Law requires, and by faith we are joined to Him, and His righteous record is attributed to us as if we had loved God with our whole heart, mind, and strength, and loved our own Samaritans as ourselves from the second we were born. 

Think about this. God became us. God the Son became human and stood in the place of humanity to earn for them what they could not earn for themselves. Why? Because we are all Samaritans. We are all wrong in beliefs and in heart, and separated from the truth. The Son of God became man, so that when God the Father loved Him, He loved mankind as Himself. God fulfilled the Law in our place. He loved God, and He loved His neighbor(s) as Himself. 

No one can ever love those who they despise as themselves without first recognizing that they were the despised neighbor whom God loved as Himself. And if this truth does not flood our hearts with love for those we are disgusted by, offended by, hurt by, think we’re better than… then we simply haven’t understood the insane love that has exploded from heaven onto us. 

“And who is my neighbor?” It depends on you. It’s the Democrats. It’s Republicans. It’s Antifa. It’s the billionaires. It’s your ex. It’s the Klan. It’s the police. It’s the Church. Whoever it is that you cannot stand, who you are quick to see as an enemy, as the problem, as the ones who are getting in your way of you living your life…that’s your neighbor. And the only way we can undergo a heart change to love our neighbor is first seeing that we were God’s neighbor and we have had this love extended to us first. 

In John 13 Jesus gathered His disciples together and instituted what the New Testament writers call “the law of Christ.” 

“A new commandment I give to you: that you love one another—just as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples—if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35, LEB)

Because the Law was fulfilled by Christ’s self-sacrificial love for us as Himself, now the Law is fulfilled by us loving one another as Christ loved us. The way we fulfill the “law of Christ,” is by living in light of how He loved us to fulfill Law. This kind of love is only possible if we have first been loved to this extent, understand it, and let it melt our hearts. 

The Parable of the Good Samaritan accomplishes two things. First, it shows us that even those who don’t know God can have compassion for the down and out in a way that shames those of us who call ourselves followers of Christ. But second, more importantly, it shows us that the only resource for truly loving our neighbor, and our enemy, as ourselves, is understanding first that we have that kind of love extended to us from Christ, and that truth is enough to melt our hearts by His grace to cause us to want to love one another as ourselves, and thus demonstrate a kind of love that this world knows nothing about.