LOVING YOUR NEIGHBOR AS
YOURSELF[1]
LUKE 10:25-37
And a
lawyer stood up and put Him to the test saying, "Teacher what shall I do
to inherit eternal life?" And He said to him, "What is written in the
Law? How does it read to you?" 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." And He
said to him, "You have answered correctly, do this and you will
live." But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, "And who is
my neighbor?"
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." And by
chance a priest was going on that road, and when he saw him, He passed by on
the other side. Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him,
he passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan who was on a journey, came upon
him; and when he saw him, he3 felt compassion, 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.
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."
"Which of these three do you
think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers' hands?"
And he said, "The one who showed mercy toward him. Then Jesus said to him,
"Go and do the same" (NASB).
INTRODUCTION
Between
two farms near Valleyview, Alberta, you can find two parallel fences, only two
feet apart, running for a half mile. Why are there two fences when one would
do?
Two
farmers, Paul and Oscar, had a disagreement that erupted into a feud. Paul
wanted to build a fence between their land and split the cost, but Oscar was
unwilling to contribute. Since he wanted to keep cattle on his land, Paul went
ahead and built the fence anyway.
After
the fence was completed, Oscar said to Paul, “I see we have a fence.” “What do
you mean ‘we’?” Paul replied. “I got the property line surveyed and built the
fence two feet into my land. That means some of my land is outside the fence. And
if any of your cows sets foot on my land, I will shoot it.”
Oscar
knew Paul was not joking, so when he eventually decided to use the land
adjoining Paul’s for pasture, he was forced to build another fence two feet
away.
Oscar
and Paul are both gone now, but their double fence stands as a monument to the
high price we pay for stubbornness.
Setting
The
Parable of the Good Samaritan has become part of our culture and vocabulary. It
is not uncommon to see hospitals and institutions of mercy bearing that name.
The Jericho road has found its way into hymn and song, and today the tourist
can find the Inn of the Good Samaritan halfway between Jerusalem and Jericho.
In
the parable of the Good Samaritan, the man who came to the Lord expecting to
score a knockout punch went away in a very different frame of mind.
I. THE PRIORITY OF LOVE VV. 25-29
On His way to Jerusalem, an expert
in the Old Testament Scriptures asks Jesus the way to inherit eternal life.
This man is “an expert in the Law.” However, it is Jewish religious law, not
Roman civil law in which he has expertise. In other words, this man is a
theologian rather than an attorney. Of course, he does not ask the question in
ignorance, for he wants to test Jesus and hear His explanation of the
Scriptures. His motivation is transparent; he wants to test Jesus. His question
is not that of a sincere seeker but of an adversary inspecting Jesus, probing
Him to expose suspected inadequacy. This man represents the religious
establishment, which is troubled by the growing popularity of this unorthodox
and unapproved teacher.
He
addresses Jesus as “Teacher,” thereby acknowledging Him as a person of
authority in religious matters. He expects Jesus to provide an answer to a
frequently asked question. If his motivation is dubious, his question is
crucial: “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” What
question can be more important? There is a significant assumption to the query
that this man shares with multitudes of others. Eternal life, he believes, is
obtained by doing a set number of meritorious acts. Salvation comes by human
works. That is the route many contemporary religions, even some who claim to be
Christians take. They think that they can win God’s approval by doing some good
works. This theologian thought that he could perform to obtain eternal life.
Intriguingly, the Lord does not quibble by pointing out the contradiction
implicit in the man’s question.
Skillfully
and at the same time gently, the Master Teacher instructs His theological
student in the teachings and implications of the Word of God. Jesus comes with
a counter-question: “What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?”
In effect Jesus asks, “How do you recite the Law in summary form when you
worship in the synagogue?” Swiftly but surely, the Lord has reversed the roles.
The questioned has become the questioner; the hunted has become the hunter. The
theologian has asked life’s greatest question. He now puts his finger on the
heart of Old Testament theology to describe life’s greatest need. The
theologian wants to score a point with Jesus. Therefore he quotes from
Deuteronomy 6:5, citing the two commands linked by the keyword “love”: “Love
the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself.” This is a brilliant
answer. The theologian realizes that Jesus is fully in control of the situation
and that He knows the answer. To Jesus’ compliment, “You have answered
correctly; Do this and you will live.” He likes Jesus’ compliment but there
is something in the Lord’s answer that troubles this theologian. This
theologian wants a list of rules that people can keep. Jesus prescribes a
relationship to God that shapes life. Eternal life is not earned by works; it
is received in a heart relationship with God. The word that bothers this
theologian is “neighbor.” Therefore,
he asks the question, “And who is my neighbor?” This is the fundamental
question. This is no longer an intellectual game of cut and thrust. The
discussion has become intensely personal and the questioner finds himself the
one under scrutiny. The Jews lived in a circular world: he placed himself at
the center, surrounded by his immediate relatives, then his kinsmen, and
finally the circle of all those who claim Jewish descent and who were converts
to Judaism. The word neighbor has a reciprocal meaning; he is a brother
to me and I to him. The Jewish rabbi taught that one’s neighbor is a fellow
Israelite. Some Jewish scholars saw even further limits. The command, they
said, applied to full proselytes, but not Samaritans or foreigners. “A
rabbinical saying ruled that heretics, informers, and renegades should be
pushed into the ditch and not pulled out.”
It
is easy for us to be critical of this kind of attitude, but it is far more
common than we care to admit. Our newspapers are full of people whose plights
are ignored by passers-by. We live in a world drowning in human needs—the
hurting, the homeless, the unemployed, those who just lost their jobs, and the
hungry. What are the limits to your love? How far does your responsibility go?
Who is not my neighbor? Who do I not have to love? These are hardly irrelevant
questions in a world where “compassion fatigue” has reached epidemic
proportions. Jesus’ answer to the man’s question, “Who is my neighbor?” Not in
the form of a lecture, but as a now familiar and famous story.
II. THE PORTRIAT OF LOVE VV. 30-35
According to the story Jesus told,
a man was going down the Jericho road. Whether he was rich or poor is not said.
He was robbed, and because he resisted, he was beaten mercilessly. Stripped of
his clothes, he was left half-dead alongside the road. Soon after the crime was
committed, a priest came by on his way home to Jericho. He took one look at the
wounded man, and passed by on the other side. Most of the priests lived outside
of Jerusalem, and many lived in Jericho. If he were riding a donkey he did not
bother to get off. He denied the man any help or hope. Presumably, he has been
involved in some form of temple service; almost certainly, he has engaged in
temple worship. A little later a Levite did exactly the same thing—one look and
he went on. Jesus does not tell us the rationale behind the lack of compassion
of these two religious people, the priest and the Levite. However, many
conjectures abound. The first man after all, is a priest. Contact with a dead
body would render him ceremonially unclean (Lev. 21:1-4), and this victim is
near death. The priest has been away from home for a period of time, and the
ritual of cleansing was costly and time consuming. At the very least
involvement with this half-dead man would require a return to Jerusalem and the
interruption of his plans. Involvement with “problem people” often entangles us
in embarrassing, difficult, and even dangerous situations. We may not feel good
about choosing the other side of the road, but we feel a lot safer. Besides,
others are better qualified. “I am a priest, not a paramedic.” The pries and
the Levite are not “bad” men. No, not bad, but busy. For them, and too often,
for us, people in need are problems, interruptions, nuisances, and they intrude
awkwardly on our privacy. By this time Jesus’ has the rapt attention of His
audience in this parable. They love it when preachers turn out to be the bad
guys in the story. They can always guess who the hero would be—a “layman,” an
ordinary citizen, one of them. Certainly they could never expect the twist the
parable takes with the words “but a Samaritan.”
Along
comes a merchant, whose clothes identify him as a Samaritan. He stops and looks
at the man, helplessly and lying in his own blood. The Samaritan is filled with
compassion. If he had been in the wounded man’s place, he too would have
expected relief. He approaches and gently lifts his patient. He tears some
linen into strips, applies oil and wine, and cleanses and binds up the man’s
wounds. Then, the Samaritan goes the second mile, so to speak. He places the
man on his own donkey, and, steadying him, brings him to the nearest inn. There
he nurses him for the rest of the day and night. With his pressing business, he
has to leave the wounded man the following day; but first he pays the innkeeper
two silver coins and gives instructions to look after him. And he tells the
innkeeper if more money is needed, he could simply charge it to the Samaritan,
who would pay him on his return trip. By this time, Jesus' audience including
this theologian could not believe in their ears what they were hearing. We call
this the parable of “The Good Samaritan,” but to first-century Jews there was
no such thing. This was unthinkable as the good Hamas member to the Zionist,
the good IRA member to a North Irish Ulsterman, the Good Al Qaeda to the US
Army, and the Ku Klux Klan to the Black Panthers. The animosity between Jew and
Samaritan was intense. The Jews believed that the Samaritans have defiled the
temple, distorted the Torah, and degraded divine worship. For their part, the
Samaritans' hostility was reciprocal.
Jesus
is deliberately and carefully shocking His audience. His hero is a despised
Samaritan, a man who does not pass by, whatever the pillar of Jewish religious
society might do. However, it is not his nationality that sets him apart, but
his compassion. He does not see anything the other two did not, but he
feels something they did not. “He took pity on him.” All the normal hostility
between Jew and Samaritan is swept away as he allows what he sees to affect his
emotions and actions. Strikingly, the word that is used here as “pity,”
“compassion” is used elsewhere in the Gospels only of the Lord Jesus. He, above
all others, is the model of compassion. However, compassion is expressed in care.
The Samaritan deals with the victim's immediate needs by bandaging his wounds
and pouring oil and wine. Another characteristic of the Samaritan is commitment.
This victim is a total stranger, and man of perhaps another race and religion.
He is stripped and penniless. Yet the Samaritan’s compassion leads him further
still, to assume responsibility for the man’s future needs and debts (v. 35).
The Samaritan is freely expressing undeserved and unexpected love to a person
in need, who is also a total stranger.
III.
THE PRACTICE OF
LOVE VV. 36-37
After Jesus has finished the
Parable, He skillfully and intentionally asks the question, “Which of these
three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the
robbers’ hands?” With Jesus’ question in verse 6, the story ends and the
lesson begins. In a few short, well-chosen words, Jesus asks and answers not
one question but several, each of which deserves our careful attention. One
question that Jesus answers is the question that aroused the story, the
theologian’s question, “Who is my neighbor?” The answer is clear. My
neighbor is not simply my fellow Jew, my fellow synagogue member, and my fellow
worshiper. My neighbor is that person who is in need, whose need I can see, and
whose need I can meet. This is where many Christians make the mistake. If they
see a need they could meet, they tend to push it to the church to meet it. They
do that simply because they pay tithe, but one thing they forget is that the
church cannot meet every need. Your neighbor on natural terms may be your
bitterest enemy. Your neighbor may be your religious opponent, the person with
whom you have profound theological differences. Your neighbor may be a complete
stranger who comes to you bloody and needy. Helping with his problems may be
time demanding and expensive, yet he may be unable to repay. And you meet him
by chance (v. 31), not by appointment.
It
is a misrepresentation to suggest that theological and religious matters are
irrelevant because we are all brothers and sisters. Christians and Muslims are
not brothers and sisters in the Lord. Although we are not all spiritual
brothers and sisters, we are all neighbors. Our need is not to define who our
neighbor is, but to care for him/her.
Another
question that this parable asks and answers is “What is love?” Love is
not sentimental feeling. Rather it is sacrificial action. It means interrupting
your schedule, expending your money, risking your reputation, ruining your
property, even for a stranger, so that you can do what is best for him. Love is
the compassion that feels, the care that involves, and the commitment that
endures. Love originates in the giver of love, not the object of love. Love
initiates, taking the first step in reaching out to those in need. Love pays
the ultimate price—going to extraordinary lengths to help the hurting. Love for
people is the overflow of love for God. The reason the priest and Levite passed
by was because the love of God was not truly controlling them. Our willingness
to become involved in the needs of others is the evidence of our experience of
the love of God in our lives (I John 3:17). Loving your neighbor is the
evidence of your relation to God.
When
Jesus finished His parable, He asked the 'big short theologian,' "Which of
these three men was a 'neighbor' to the man who was beaten and left for
dead?" The word Samaritan was distasteful to the lips of the theologian so
now humiliated he simply answered, "The one who showed mercy."
I
wish you and I were there to see the facial expression of this defeated
theologian! He came to Jesus with an air of superiority but he left with defeat
and a sullen countenance. He thought his answer to Jesus' question would
suffice. Nevertheless, Jesus applauded his response and commanded him to go and
mimic or emulate the compassion and commitment of the Samaritan. Who is your
neighbor? Now you know the answer, but before you can emulate the compassion of
the Samaritan, you need a heart transformation from Jesus Christ.
