Fellow-Redeemed in Christ,
You read articles all the time about people who do not want to get involved. They stand idly by or turn away or run off rather than render assistance when it is necessary. More than once others have compared them to the priest and the Levite of Jesus’ parable.
There is the temptation to reduce Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan to just another story about lack of concern for others. Jesus’ lesson to the “expert in the law” is much more than that, however. While there is the obvious application to help others in need, Jesus’ parable was not just a morality play, telling us What Would Jesus Do, or what we should do.
The point Jesus makes here is that everyone is my neighbor. I am everyone’s neighbor. I cannot choose when and where I show mercy. I must be all-inclusive in my mercy because God has been all-inclusive in his mercy to the entire world in Jesus Christ.
This account follows our sermon last Sunday nicely. Recall that Paul compared the glory of the law with the surpassing glory of the new covenant, the gospel. The man who came to Jesus was an expert in the Law. While Jesus’ words here are pure Law, Jesus used them to prepare the man for the good news that would empower him to “Go and do likewise” as the Good Samarian had done.
This parable is another comparison between the work of the law and the work of the gospel. We see that No One Can Justify Self. The law cannot justify us. God’s mercy alone justifies us.
We cannot peer into the man’s heart to detect his real motives. The Holy Spirit tells us through Luke’s pen the reason for his first question. “On one occasion an expert in the Law stood up to test Jesus.” What would this prophet, who was preaching salvation through faith, say about the Law that says eternal life comes through obedience? The man wanted “to justify himself” based on his obedience so he asked Jesus a follow up question.
The first question the expert in the law asked Jesus was this, “Teacher what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Why didn’t Jesus give him the same answer Paul and Silas gave the jailer at Philippi, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved?” There was a big difference between hearts of this man and the jailer at Philippi. The jailer was terrified because of his sins. This man was confident in his own righteousness. The first feared God’s judgment. The second had no fear of God at all.
It is true that the law would justify us were we able to keep it perfectly. The man knew the law says you will have eternal life if you “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, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”
He revealed the kink in his armor of self-righteousness. Rather than looking into the perfect law of love and seeing his failure to keep it as God required, justifying himself he asked, “And who is my neighbor?” His question is along the same lines as Peter's when Peter asked Jesus just how many times he had to forgive others. The implication of both questions being that there is a choice or limit involved.
The expert in the law had loved in the past. He fully expected Jesus to approve of his selective applications of mercy. Jesus immediately with the parable debunks the man’s idea of such choosy compassion as actually keeping the law. Our Lord used the extreme, almost unheard of, example of a Samaritan assisting a Jew to make his point that the one who shows mercy to all is a neighbor to all.
No one can justify self because the law cannot justify us because no one of us can obey the law of love perfectly. The man got Jesus’ message. He learned that a neighbor is the one who shows mercy like the Good Samaritan showed mercy. A neighbor is someone who shows mercy to another no matter what the circumstances. That mercy does not come from the Law although the Law guides it. Jesus does not mention explicitly but implicitly the love that compels us to love
Jesus told the expert in the Law and tells us to be Good Samaritans. He tells us to “go and do likewise.” We apply the likewise not as much to the Good Samaritan as to our loving God. It is God’s mercy to us in Jesus Christ that is the why we show mercy to others who all are our neighbors. Jesus is the Good Samaritan when it comes to our forgiveness and salvation. Jesus is the One who found us not half dead but completely dead in our trespasses and has taken care of us lost sinners.
Jesus came into this world and took care of our sins and their damage. He did not pay for our care with silver coins but with his holy precious blood, and his innocent suffering and death on the cross of Calvary. God’s mercy alone justifies.
No one can justify self or needs to. As we fail to love perfectly, God’s perfect love in Christ justifies us. Then, when we see our needy neighbor, living in Christ’s love for us we cannot help ourselves but to go and do likewise. Amen. <SDG>