As Jesus is teaching his disciples, a Jewish lawyer suddenly comes up to him and starts a conversation:
“25 And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” 27And 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.” 28And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.””
(Lk 10:25-28)
A “lawyer” is an expert in the Old Testament Law of Moses and the Jewish religion. Just because the lawyer calls Jesus “Teacher”, it is not necessarily a negative thing that he is “testing” Jesus. Rather, it may be that he was genuinely curious about whether Jesus could be the Messiah that the Old Testament testifies is to come. Moreover, discussing eternal life and the meaning of the Law of Moses was a common topic of conversation for legal scholars in Jesus’ day.
But the lawyer’s question about what he should “do”[i] to receive eternal life reveals that he has not yet understood that eternal life is a gracious gift from God that is received through faith in Jesus.[ii] There is nothing we can “do” to earn eternal life.
How to have eternal life is not a secret knowledge that only Jesus can impart, it is written in the Old Testament. By asking a counter-question and asking the lawyer to tell him how he himself would answer that question, Jesus has the opportunity to explain to the lawyer from his own perspective and understanding.
If you boil down the whole message of the Old Testament, the bottom line is that you should love God with all your heart[iii] and your fellow man as yourself.[iv] This twofold love for God and fellow man becomes a kind of response to man’s sin against God and fellow man, as we read in chapters 1 and 2.
Jesus replies to the lawyer that he has answered correctly, now he just needs to live as he himself has said to do.
Loving God with all your heart means believing in the Lord, following his commandments, and living a life of prayer, Bible reading, discipleship and love.
Loving our neighbor as ourselves means that we should take care of our fellow human beings in the same way we would take care of ourselves. Or, as Jesus put it in Matthew’s Gospel, “whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them”.[v]
Jesus and the lawyer seem to agree that a believer should love God with all his heart and his neighbor as himself. But then the follow-up question arises:
“29 But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?””
(Lk 10:29)
The Israelites often interpreted the commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” as applying only to fellow Israelites, not to foreigners. The biblical passage on which this commandment is based states quite correctly:
“17 “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. 18You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”
(Le 19:17-18)
One could therefore interpret the second commandment of love as applying only to love for neighbors of the same people. If it were not for the fact that only a few verses later in the same chapter, it says:
“33 “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. 34You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”
(Le 19:33-34)
In Jewish tradition, there was a belief that you should love your neighbor but hate your enemy.[vi] But Jesus is clear that you should not only love your own countrymen, you should also love your enemies[vii] and therefore everything in between.
The law-abiding man seems to assume that he is already following the first commandment to love God with all his heart. But by asking Jesus who his neighbor is, the lawyer reveals that he has not yet fully understood the first commandment. Loving God goes hand in hand with loving your fellow man:
“20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
(1Jn 4:20-21)
For a person who wants to justify his own actions when he sees that they do not correspond to the Bible, it is easy to change the meaning of the Word of God rather than change his actions. By trying to change the meaning of “your neighbor” and excluding those you don’t want to love, you can fool yourself that you are living up to that commandment even though you hate your fellow man.
But Jesus doesn’t get into this word-trickery, instead he challenges the lawyer’s idea of who his neighbor is through an educational story about a Samaritan helping a Jew:
“30 Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. 31Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. 32So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. 34He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’36 Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” 37He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.””
(Lk 10:30-37)
The road between Jerusalem and Jericho was 27 km long and known to be a very dangerous place. It was called the “Road of Blood” because of all the murders and assaults that took place there.
Israelite priests were descendants of Aaron and performed religious sacrifices at the temple in Jerusalem. Levites were members of the Levitical tribe and assisted the priests at the temple. Both priests and Levites were thus religious people who could be expected to be more pious and merciful than ordinary people.
Why didn’t the priest and the Levite stay to help the injured man? It is quite possible that when the priest and the Levite saw the battered man lying there on the road, they became afraid for their own lives. Perhaps they looked up at the high cliffs along the road and thought someone was lying in an ambush. When they saw the beaten man, they might have thought: “What will happen to me if I stop and help him?”
Both the Old and New Testaments are clear that religious sacrifice is meaningless unless one lives a life of mercy at the same time.[viii] Loving God through religious sacrifice and loving your fellow man through mercy go hand in hand.
Jesus shocks the lawyer by contrasting the two pious religious Jewish leaders with a Samaritan, i.e., a hated stranger.
The Samaritans were a mixed people who arose after the Assyrians had defeated the northern tribes of Israel in 722 BC. The Assyrians displaced the wealthy Israelites to other parts of the Middle East and moved other peoples into Israel instead. These new peoples mingled with the poor Israelites who remained and eventually became the Samaritans.
The Jews and the Samaritans were enemies and hated each other, both from a racist and a religious perspective. The Jews considered the Samaritans to be a half-pagan mixed race who worshiped God in the wrong way.
The apostles James and John seem to have had little sympathy for the Samaritans and wanted to call down fire and God’s judgment on them.[ix] Jesus, on the other hand, showed great love for the Samaritans in this text and in his conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, which you can read about in chapter 23.[x]
When the priest and the Levite passed by their battered compatriot, they did not even meet the narrow interpretation of loving their neighbor. But when the Samaritan walked past the man, he showed love and mercy to his enemy. Instead of thinking about what would happen to himself if he stopped and helped, the Good Samaritan thought about what would happen to the battered man if he did not stop and help him.
The Samaritan took off his own clothes and bandaged the beaten man. He used his own wine to cleanse the wounds and his own oil to ease the pain. He used his own donkey to help the man and he paid from his own money for the innkeeper to take care of him. Two denarii were the equivalent of two days’ wages and was enough for two months’ stay at the inn.
In post-biblical times, some churches started “hospices” based on this story. A hospice welcomed strangers who were traveling, but, like the Good Samaritan, it also cared for the sick. Over time, medical care became the more important part and hospices evolved into hospitals.
For many Jews in New Testament times, Samaritans were a hated people with no good in them. It must have been difficult for the Jewish lawyer to be told that he should go and do as a Samaritan. That the lawyer had a hard time taking this in is revealed by the fact that he can’t even answer “Samaritan” to Jesus’ question:
“36 Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” 37He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.””
(Lk 10:36-37)
Instead of thinking about who my fellow man is and trying to limit it to fellow countrymen, Jesus turns the tables and says that the question is not who myfellow man is, but how I can be a good fellow man.
Who is our brother, our neighbor, our fellow human being, is not limited to nationality, social status or gender. All people, from our compatriots to our enemies, are our fellow human beings.
Love is something that shows itself in action. You cannot worship God and offer sacrifices in the temple in Jerusalem and at the same time pass by your brother in need. You can’t go to church on Sunday and then act like a racist on Monday. You can’t say you love God and at the same time show by your actions that you hate your brother.
As a bonus, Jesus imparts the important lesson that it is not only Jews who can be a blessing to other native Jews or to foreign-born strangers, but that strangers can also be a blessing to natives.
You have read a free chapter of my book Friend of Strangers. If you like this book, please consider purchasing the ebook through Amazon. Since English is not my native language, there may be some linguistic inaccuracies. Please contact me if you find any.
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
[i] Lk 3:10–14, Lk 18:18, Ac 2:37, Ac 13:46–48, Ac 16:30
[ii] Jn 3:16
[iii] Dt 6:5
[iv] Le 19:18
[v] Mt 7:12
[vi] Mt 5:43
[vii] Mt 5:44
[viii] Ho 6:6, Mt 9:13
[ix] Lk 9:51–56
[x] Jn 4