Luke 10:25-37, Who Is My Neighbor?

The Parable of the Good Samaritan and the Lawyer’s Test

Luke chapter 10, starting verse 25, beginning to verse 37, hear the word of the Lord. And behold, a lawyer stood up to 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 do you read it? 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 he said, desiring to justify himself, he said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor? Jesus replied, A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.

Now, by chance, a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him pass by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was.

And when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. And then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave him to the innkeeper, saying, Take care of him and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.

Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? He said the one who showed him mercy, and Jesus said to him, You go and do likewise. May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word.

Why the Question Is Really About Self-Justification

Well, when I went to seminary in California straight out of college, I was unable to get housing on campus when I first arrived. So it was up to me to find a place to live. I found a room in a house in a neighborhood called Altadena, which is just north of Pasadena, California.

Now, oddly enough, the area of Birmingham, where I had just come from, where we're living with my mother, was also called Altadena. So I went from Altadena, Alabama to Altadena, California. What I didn't know when I moved into my new room was that Altadena, California, was a horrible neighborhood, at least the part of it where I was rife with crime and drugs and gangs.

And one night as I was driving home from the seminary library, I I turned down the street where I now lived and I could see clearly in my headlights and the middle of the road for young men standing there.

Three of them surrounding one and the one young man who was behind the one in the middle had a large rock in his hand, which he raised up and bashed the guy in the middle in the head. The man in the middle collapsed to the ground.

I couldn't believe what I had just seen right in front of me. I was an eyewitness to a brutal crime. And I immediately thought, you know, what should I do? If I if I stopped, if I got out, tried to help the victim, the other three might come after me and I could run away.

But, you know, then I might lose my car. So I pulled up to the man lying on the street with him to the passenger side and I without without getting out of the car, I pushed open the door, the passenger door and told the man get in.

The three others were still nearby and they were they were walking away, but they were still nearby. And they started yelling at me to keep driving, keep driving. Eventually, the victim crawled into my car, bleeding from his head, and I took him to the hospital where they treated him.

And I made a police report, you know, gave an interview. I I never heard anything more from the police about that or or any other official about that incident. So I suppose the victim didn't press charges, which shows that it was almost certainly a gang incident or some kind of drug deal problem.

Why do you think, though, that those three guys with a rock thought that they could commit a crime like that, not only in the middle of the street, but when they knew that someone behind the headlights was watching?

You know, why do you why do you think they thought the driver, me, would just drive by? That's what they were assuming. Now, imagine they knew by the sight of my headlights that they were being watched and they thought they could bash a guy in the head and nothing would happen.

As it turned out, probably nothing did happen to them. That's because probably in all their experience growing up in Altadena, California, that's the way people were kind of a live and let die attitude.

You go about your business. You don't care about what's happening to people around you. You know, there've been incidents in big cities of people being attacked and yelling, help, up to a crowded apartment building.

And no one bothers to help or call the police or anything. Some people call it call it atomization, like every individual is a detached atom, no no bonds holding them together. And in such environments, crime flourishes because criminals, you know, they can bash people in the head and with rocks in the front of eyewitnesses and expect that no one will try to stop them or help the victim or report it to the police.

And then, of course, when crime makes life dangerous, people turn to gangs. It's kind of a tribalism. You don't want the gang to protect you from other gangs. Our tribe, our gang will protect us. Of course, the enemies of people in other gangs can be killed.

People outside the gang are not to be consorted with, not even the police, since they are a threat to our gang and our gang is life. Or maybe it's the family. My family will take care of me, so I'll take care of the family.

People outside the family then don't matter, do they? The Chinese scholar Lin Yutang describes the good Confucian gentleman who would sacrifice everything for his family. But if he walks by a lake where a child from another family is drowning, he would do nothing.

Let the child drown because he's not from my family. He's not in my business. He's not someone they think I'm responsible for. Or for some, maybe it's kind of the larger family that's their neighbor, the ethnic group, the tribe, the people who are like me racially, my people.

I'll care about them, but not others. In 1994, in the African country of Rwanda, members of the Hutu majority murdered as many as 800 ,000 people, most of them from the Tutsi minority. They were of the same nation, but they're not the same ethnicity.

In Malaysia, the Malay majority designates itself the people of the land and discriminates against minority Chinese and Indians. In 1965, they expelled one of their own states because that state was made of a majority of Chinese.

They did that probably thinking that it wouldn't be able to survive, that state wouldn't be able to survive on its own. It would come back to Malaysia, kind of begging, willing to submit to the discrimination.

The state is called Singapore, and it's done pretty well on its own. In this country, although we're supposed to be committed, as it says on our money, to e pluribus unum, out of many, one, and in our pledge to liberty and justice for all, we still have wannabe politicians like David Duke, who want to talk about white rights.

And then we have organizations like the Black Panthers, who are only concerned about their kind of people. Of course, you could be a patriotic American. You could love Americans of all races. But still, maybe you only care about Americans, about people of your nationality.

It seems people are always looking for ways to draw a circle that includes those inside. Those are the ones they'll accept or support, and they'll exclude those they don't have to care about. We see that here in the famous parable of the Good Samaritan.

What the Law Requires: Love God and Love Your Neighbor

In it, we see four basic questions asked and answered. First, what? Then, who? Third, which? And finally, how? First, what? The lawyer asks, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? It's a good question.

Indeed, it's the most important question in all of life. But sometimes even good questions aren't asked for good reasons. Luke tells us, starting in verse 25, that a lawyer, probably a scribe, an expert in the law of Moses, asked the Lord Jesus this in order to, not to learn the answer, but to put him to the test, it says.

Now, we don't know if that was really to entrap him, as they'll do later in the week before the crucifixion, you know, in the temple, when they came at Jesus with question after question, trying to get him caught in some kind of controversy, to get him to say something that they thought they could charge him with.

Here, it could just be that the lawyer is trying to kind of feel Jesus out, test where he is. Is he a, you know, in all the theological controversies they had in their day, is he a conservative, like the Pharisees?

Or is he kind of liberal, like the Sadducees? Maybe the lawyer wanted to see if he could match wits with, you know, the great teacher from Galilee. He's grandstanding. He's trying to make a name for himself.

So, he'll be the one who out-debated Jesus. Luke just tells us that the question wasn't asked because the lawyer was interested for himself in how to inherit eternal life. This isn't like the rich young ruler who really was asking for himself.

Here, for this lawyer, this is a theoretical exercise. This is just a theological debate. The lawyer probably thought he already knew the answer. He just wanted to see if Jesus had the right answer. But notice that the lawyer doesn't quite know the right answer.

At least, not how to put the question the right way. He asked, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? If you think carefully about his own words, he should know better. Who does something, who works to inherit?

You know, inheritances, by definition, are given because of a relation. We are a son or a daughter or a grandson or granddaughter or a friend or whatever. We're an heir because we're related to the person that we're getting things from.

And the person we're related to grants us the inheritance. What do we do to get it? Nothing, really. We simply are related. But the lawyer's question is entirely based on works. It's a legalistic assumption that what we do must be something to earn the blessings of here, of eternal life from God.

What must I do, he asked. Now, since this man is an expert in the law, the Old Testament, he should know the answer to that already. And some Christians think the Old Testament is all about law and wrath and the new is all about grace and eternal life.

But here, Jesus tells the lawyer to go to the law. Look at what it says, what is written in the law. How do you read it? The lawyer gives a better answer than many professed Christians to do today. You know, when you ask some Christians how professed Christians, how do you inherit eternal life?

I've heard longtime deacons and Baptist churches answer the same question with. Keep the commandments. We might expect that that would be how this man would respond. Would you kind of expect him to say something like that?

All about law keeping, but he doesn't. He actually gives a very good answer in verse twenty seven. In fact, it's the same answer that Jesus himself will give in the week before his crucifixion when a Pharisee asked him, what's the greatest commandment?

You know, in the law, what's the greatest he gives? Jesus says the same thing here, the lawyer answers. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.

So far, so good. What must you do? Love at least doctrinally in his mind. He understands that the Lord doesn't just want us to do stuff, to keep commandments, to check off a list of rules of rituals. You know, he's did the baptism thing.

It is tithing thing in the church attendance. Don't smoke. Don't you don't hang with those who do. How will you inherit eternal life? By loving God with all your being, everything that is in you. And so because of that, you'll be loving others.

And Jesus responds to verse twenty eight. You have answered correctly. Do this. And you will live. Now, if this lawyer was really interested in inheriting eternal life, you know, then he would seek he would seek to do that.

He would seek to love God with all his heart. And in so seeking, he would find that he really doesn't. You know that he's in love with his money. That's why he wants to perk up his career. Being the one who outdebated Jesus or he loved with his ego.

That's why he wants to make himself look like he's the one that, you know, better than Jesus himself. That he's the kind of guy who tests Jesus because he wants to make a name for himself. That's what he would find as he starts out trying to love God, that he would also find that there are some people that he won't regard as neighbors.

So he can not love them because he doesn't really love God at all. Certainly not with all his heart. Then he had seek having found that he would seek God to give him a new heart. Give me a new heart, create a right spirit within me.

That's what he would do if he were asking sincere questions, but he's not. So like a slick lawyer, he tries, Luke tells us to justify himself, says in verse 29. In other words, he's going to make himself look right, look smart.

So he says something probably in a very lawyerly tone. Well, define neighbor. By the way, he's thinking, look how clever I am. I've taken this verse that you simpletons thought was so clear. It's just cut and dry.

Love your neighbor as yourself. I've showed that is a lot more complicated than you think. Only smart people like me have really thought through all the issues. Who is my neighbor? That's the second question.

The Samaritan as the True Neighbor

Who is my neighbor? But is this, is this really the question here? Does the lawyer really not know who his neighbor is? Is he trying to make an excuse? Notice how Jesus responds to the question. There was a man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho.

He was attacked by robbers who not only robbed him, but beat him half to death. He's moaning on the side of the road when a priest, the highest spiritual authority in Israel, comes down the road. He steers clear, staying as far as far away from the bleeding man as he can.

You know, touching blood would make him unclean. And so he's concerned about ceremonial purity. Besides, his job is being a priest, not a paramedic. Next is a Levite. Now, he too is supposed to be a spiritual leader.

He should know the law to love your neighbor as yourself, which comes from Leviticus chapter 19 verse 18. Surely all Levites should be well acquainted with Leviticus. But like the priest, he sees the poor, bloody mess of a man.

And goes by as far on the other side of the road as he could get. Then in verse 33. Now, imagine the lawyer, whatever spectators there were have been expecting to hear what comes next, who's next? Must be it's going to be a typical Jew next, just a run of the mill Jewish person coming to the rescue.

The clergy, sure, they let us down. The spiritual leaders, they're letting us down. But we Jews, we stick together with our kind of people. That's not what comes next. Who is my neighbor? It's common sense.

You should know that. In reality, you do know that. Even if you don't want to admit it. Who comes next? It's one of those despised Samaritans. They were the descendants of foreign colonists who had been brought in to inhabit Israel, marrying whatever leftover Israelites, merging their religion together with them.

They were they were Jews thought half breeds in heretics. They were the worst. And Samaritans returned the bad feelings toward the Jews. Remember, this story comes shortly after that Samaritan village at the end of chapter nine had shut his doors to Jesus, treating him rudely.

He was going to because he was going to Jerusalem. But here it is the Samaritan of all people. Who, when he sees the victim in verse 33, has compassion. The word translated had compassion means if you even try to say it, it takes your guts to say it needs to feel in your guts to be moved deep down in your heart.

So much so that all your thoughts, your feelings are for the other person, the one that is stirring compassion, pity in you. So the compassionate Samaritan sees not an enemy, you know, not a Jew that he and his people hated.

He sees a neighbor. Indeed, so in verse thirty four, he says he went to him pouring on the oil and the wine, treating the wounds. Oil soothes the pain. The wine acts like an antiseptic, sacrificing his own valuable oil and wine.

That stuff doesn't come cheap. He set the poor victim on his animal, which meant now that he would have to walk, didn't he? He he brings the injured man to an inn to take care of him there and bandaging him, feeding him, giving him drinks, more oil and wine for his wounds.

When he has to leave the next day, he gives the innkeeper maybe in our terms, maybe about a three hundred dollars, about enough for a month's stay at that inn. Promises to take care of any further expenses.

He's been hands on, messy, taking care of this man, attentive, caring, generous, sacrificial. And the second question was, who is my neighbor? Jesus does not answer it. Think of the story, the story. The point of the story is not to answer that question.

Notice that the parable, the Good Samaritan really does not explain who our neighbor is. Since it's not an honest question, Jesus doesn't feel he has to answer it. Instead, he switches it. The grandstanding question, who is my neighbor?

In other words, who are the people I have to love, according to the commandment? And so by implication, then, who are the ones I can get away with not loving? Are they just Israelites? Are they my neighbor?

I got to love all that. Maybe just law keeping Israelites like me. Who is my neighbor? Is he white? Is he black? Is he Hutu or Tutsi? Is he Chinese or Malay? Is he an American citizen, but not foreign or surely not them?

Is he a guy getting his head bashed in? On the streets of Altadena, California. The self-justifying question was what kind of person is my neighbor? But Jesus won't even honor the question by by answering and instead he switches it to what kind of person am I?

Am I a neighbor to every person I see? Who is my neighbor? No. Who are you? The real question is the second one. Jesus asked the lawyer, you know, first he asked him, what does the law say? Second time he asked him, which of these three after the parable, verse 36, which of these three proved to be a neighbor?

Notice that which of the travelers on the Jericho Road acted like a neighbor, which of them obeyed the command to love your neighbor as yourself, the spiritual leaders of Israel who knew the law like the lawyer?

No. The Samaritan with a mixed up theology, he did because he understood. Everyone we see, all people around us are our neighbors. I mean, that's what the word neighbor means, right? Neighbor is the person next to you.

The command is put like that for a reason. Neighbor, love them, the person that's right in front of you. Notice the command is put so precisely. It's not love everybody, kind of the way people think of what it means, or it's not love humanity, it's love your neighbor as yourself and your neighbor as anybody and everybody around you, any person you can see.

See on the side of the road to Jericho, seeing your headlights getting his head bashed, see an old farm or North Hill Apartments living on Section 8 and food stamps, seeing a Chinese restaurant working 12, 14, 16 hours a day, seven days a week, see at school or at work or literally next door or a church.

It's not love humanity because people have a funny trick they play. We're all kind of the same. We play this trick because this lawyer was doing it, playing a trick. They'll say they love people. They'll define neighbor to be one particular group of people they will love and the rest, they don't have to.

They'll make excuses to not love the other people, the non-neighbors. Maybe they'll do it because they're of the wrong race. They're the wrong race. They're not my neighbor. The wrong nationality. They're not my neighbor.

They're not my family. They're not my neighbor. They're the wrong religion. They're not my neighbor. They're the wrong age. They're not my neighbor. So I'll pass them by bleeding on the side of the road.

I'll let the child drown because he's not mine. I'll just not care because it's none of my business. Those people aren't my people, they think. The command is put precisely to tell us to love, not ambiguously, not generally humanity.

You know, so that way I can feel good about myself because I have warm thoughts toward all the children of the world, but specifically to love our neighbor, the real individual human beings who are around us, sometimes get on our nerves, who wear their sagging pants and we hate that.

No matter their race or nationality or family or religion or age group. We don't try some trick to define some people around us as non-persons so that way we don't have to love them and we can feel okay because we kept the command.

Southerners did this with slavery and segregation, didn't they? I mean, how else can you excuse making people, some group of people slaves or making them sit in the back of the bus or just insult them?

You know, after all, that's not how I want to be treated. And so if we love our neighbors, including our black ones as ourselves, we wouldn't be doing that to them. But we played a trick. Race was the exception.

If you're of that race, you're not a neighbor. So we can treat you any way we want. That's what we said. That way we don't have to love you. And today, of course, we thought we solved that. Not really.

Today we do it on the basis of age, of development, of our place on the life cycle. If you're very young or very old and you can't sustain yourself, you're now, to many, not a neighbor. The official law of this country is that if you are pre-born, even though genetically you're fully human, you're definitely alive or you wouldn't be growing.

And therefore, logically, you are a living human being. But if your place on the life cycle happens to be before birth, then you are considered a non-person in modern language or a non-neighbor in biblical language.

You're just something that can be disposed of if you're inconvenient to us. Today, the very same people who often insist the most and most loudly on people's rights, they stand up for rights, they're concerned for rights, are also often the same people that, you know, the pre-born human being has no rights and so can be killed.

We call it abortion at any time for any reason. And people today dress this up in sophisticated language like the lawyer did here, thinking themselves clever. But really, they are doing the same trick as all other people who think they can draw a line through humanity and say, these are the people who are my neighbors.

They're persons with rights. Them I'll care about because they'll vote for me or they'll feel good about me. While these others are non-persons and they can be disposed of. They get in the way. But Jesus simply says, love your neighbor.

Every person who appears before you, anyone you can see, including in ultrasounds, no exceptions. And that is what Jesus just here just assumes, isn't it? It asserts in the parable. The question really wasn't who, but which.

Which of the three travelers treated the victim like a neighbor? You know, they all saw him. You notice the way, specifically the way Jesus tells the story. He mentions for each traveler how each of the three in verses 31, 32 and 33.

They saw the beaten man. He makes a point to emphasize that they saw him. So he was a neighbor to all three. That's the answer to the who question. Anyone you can see, anyone around you is your neighbor.

The real question, though, is which, which of the three, which of them? Jewish lawyer, expert in the law. I think you're so smart. Treated their neighbor like a neighbor. Which of them are you? You know, the lawyer answered probably reluctantly, probably mumbling.

The one who's your mercy. Notice that he didn't even call him the Samaritan. That'd be the easy way to answer, wouldn't it? Call him, he's the Samaritan. Now that's too distasteful. I want to admit that Samaritan of all people is the good guy.

So he'll call him about what he did. He showed him mercy. So Jesus says, you go and do likewise. That brings us to the last question. How, how do you love God? How do you inherit eternal life? You know, Jesus doesn't have to elaborate on that because he's already answered that.

The answers are in the verses that the lawyer quoted and are pregnant within the parable itself. Which one kept the command to love his neighbor? It was the despised half-breed heretic. The people whose theology is so mixed up, they don't even know where to go for work to worship.

That must have been hard for this lawyer. You know, with all, with such good theology, theoretically anyway, to admit. Now, sure, he's a bit legalistic, but he had the right answers. Reform people are known for stressing knowledge, right doctrine, precision.

Good answers, you know, memorize a catechism and get the answers down pat to all the great theological questions. That's what you need to do. That's fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough.

The lawyer's problem wasn't knowledge. He had the correct answer. It was compassion. That's stirring in the guts that the Samaritan had. His problem was his heart. Well, how do you love your neighbor?

I like the Samaritan in the story. You see a person, even if they're from a group that your group hates and you have compassion, you have pity, you are moved deep in your heart. You are connected to them.

They are your neighbor. You don't play any tricks that define them in a way as non-persons, people you are not connected to. And some Christians play this trick with the church. Now, they'll say they they love the church, the church universal, the church in the abstract, the body of believers throughout the world, church history, all that blah, blah, blah.

But they won't be connected to a church. Now, if it gets too demanding or they are, they want to try something new or the people there start to see through their facade that they're not perfect after all, not these great saints.

They thought they were for whatever reason. They'll go off to another church. Membership is legalistic, they'll say. But they love the church. No, they're just playing the same trick. Love the church you can see with imperfect people who might get on your nerves sometimes.

Sure, love all fellow Christians, but commit and give yourself to a specific church. Now, how do you love your neighbor? You sacrifice oil and wine, money and time. You're not disconnected. You know, in the pioneer days of America, neighbors would help each other in need.

They would have barn raisings when, you know, all the neighbors would gather together. One particular family needed to build a barn. They'd all come together and do it. We often think of this country as a country of rugged individualists, you know, where everyone's out on their own.

But really, we're the country that was built by neighbors. Now, in our day, we should be involved in our communities, should be looking out for our neighborhoods. We should be the kinds of people, you know, if there were enough of us, that it would be impossible for gangs and crime to spread.

We wouldn't let it. How do you love God? Remember, the lawyer's first question, first quote from the law was to love the Lord, your God. How do you do that? Well, in the same way as your neighbor, except you do that first, right?

That was first thing you do. I read an article recently about the son of the prominent Christian speaker and writer, Tony Campala, named Bart, how he became an atheist. I really wasn't surprised. You know, you would think it's big news.

Some people, an evangelical leader, son becomes an atheist. But I wasn't surprised because Tony Campala's message was always about social welfare. He's a so-called progressive evangelical. Tony Campala is a great storyteller, a moving speaker, and he can really stir compassion in you.

That was a great story about how heartbreaking it was for him to literally have to run away from a mother in Haiti who was trying to give him her baby just to give the baby a chance at a decent life in America.

But his message was almost always about that. Themes like that, you know, how you can be a good Samaritan, forgetting what comes immediately before the parable. So it's not surprising if you're raised to believe that, at least by implication, you're raised to believe that God is only there to get us to love each other more, that once we learn that lesson, you know, why not say, hey, I can do without God?

I've learned what he's about. As if all our God talk is only useful to get us to be good Samaritans. So when his son Bart told him that now he's an atheist and he'll be working as a humanist chaplain, helping people in need without any need for God, you know, just help be a good do-gooder, I guess.

Tony reportedly responded that God doesn't send people to hell for eternity for having the wrong theology. It makes it sound like not believing in God is just a minor theological debate. But the theology does matter.

Loving God comes first. And the way you love God is by loving what he has revealed about himself. That's how you love God, by loving truth, loving right doctrine, orthodoxy, by also loving his way, his way of life, how, you know, following his commands on how to live orthopraxy, loving his presence, loving the sense of his majesty in worship, orthopathy, by loving his people.

And then out of that, loving your neighbor. And you do that, love God in the same way as your neighbor, from your heart, out of your guts, move to the core of your being with all of your heart and soul and strength and mind.

And you do that first. So how do you inherit eternal life? By loving God like that in a way that causes you to love your neighbor. But we don't love God like that, at least not naturally. That's why we are constantly, you know, playing this trick, maybe even play a trick with here with this command.

Imagine he's debating on how you inherit eternal life and he's not really interested in the answer. He's interested in making himself look good. Like tricks like that with theology here. Here we play tricks with defining some people around us as non-persons, non-neighbors.

So we don't have to love them. And we do that because we don't really love God, at least not not left to ourselves. We don't. We have to inherit eternal life. We have to first be considered by God, his sons or daughters, the people he has decided to connect himself with and to those God has God has committed that he will have compassion.

He will be moved to sacrifice himself for them, even to the cross to give us what we need. He's committed. Does his people and not just abstractly, you know, kind of committed, just makes a plan of salvation available for anyone who wants to take it, but but he's giving himself for specific people, the people he sees, the people he has foreknown.

His his people, his church and for those for us, he will deal with our sins so they don't stand in the way anymore. He will heal not just our bodies with oil and wine, but our spirits, our hearts with the spirit and the word so that our dead hearts that used to hate him.

And our neighbors will now love him. And then our neighbors, how we will love. Because he first loved us.