The Good Neighbor

While the newness Jesus brought awakened hope in so many, it aroused the suspicions of the religious leaders even more. Under the guise of dinners in his honor or chance encounters along the road, they provoked him to speak about all things sacred and sensitive, hoping to trap him in some inescapable blasphemy they could use to arrest him. (Luke 11:53–54)

Around then Jesus decided it was time for him and his disciples to make their way back to Jerusalem. As they traveled, one of the teachers of the law came to test him.

The teacher asked, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

Knowing the man’s motives, Jesus replied with a question of his own. “What is written in the Law?” (Luke 10:25–26)

Though the teacher of the law did not know it, Jesus had a trap of his own. Jesus knew the answer would be effortless for the teacher, and he knew the answer would be correct, because the religious leaders of the day had rightly distilled the entire Law of God down into two basic principles—a love for God and a love for mankind. But Jesus also knew the manner in which the lawyer gave his answer would betray that to him the Law of God held no color, no life, and no power. It was a subject to study with statutes to be employed, but not something itself to love.

The lawyer said, “Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

Jesus studied the man for a moment before saying, “That’s right. Do that and you will live.” (Luke 10:27–28)

Jesus wanted the teacher to see that being an expert in the Law of God did not tame the Law of God one bit. Jesus wanted the lawyer to be moved by his own correct answer. He wanted this command to love God with every fiber of his being to awaken humility in the teacher’s heart— an honest recognition that while his doctrine was precise, his heart was far from his Lord.

But from the teacher of the law’s perspective, he felt justified. Had he loved God with every fiber of his being? He had given himself to a life of careful study of God’s statutes. Surely there lay his proof. Had he loved his neighbor? As for his countrymen, Israel, he had given his professional life to serving them. Was it not loving to impart his expertise to them in matters of faith and practice?

To justify himself even more, the teacher of the law asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29)

But instead of giving the expected answer, “All the children of Israel,” Jesus sat down to tell a story.

The Pass of Blood, the desolate route following the Wadi Qilt from Jerusalem to Jericho, was notorious for the crimes committed there in the crags and nooks of its desert walls. Everyone in the area knew it as the place where robbers lay with impunity, waiting to steal, kill, and destroy anyone foolish enough to pass alone.

One day, Jesus told them, a certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he found himself surrounded by robbers who beat him, took everything he had, and left him for dead.

As he lay there, clinging to life, a priest passed by. When the priest saw the man, rather than helping him, he moved to the other side of the road. Though people might have expected compassion from a priest, the beaten man found none. Not too far behind the priest came a Levite. Levites were an upper-class clan among the Israelites. Theirs was a life of honor and privilege. The Levite, too, ignored the dying man.

Jesus did not explain why these spiritual leaders passed by the beaten man, just that they did. At this point, since the priest and the Levite were clearly foils in the story, the only person left for the teacher to relate to was the man lying beaten in the road. Unless someone else came along, picked him up, carried him out of his mortal peril, bound up his wounds, and covered the cost of his healing, the man lying in the road would perish. There had to be another coming. Before Jesus could finish the story, the teacher of the law already knew the neighbor would be the man who would do these things.

Jesus played to the irony of the moment. The teacher of the law was attempting to justify his love for his neighbor while he was fully engaged in the process of trying to publicly humiliate Jesus, who was not only a fellow Israelite, but one who shared his very profession.

Then Jesus sprung his trap. A Samaritan came along, he told the crowd. This man, they all knew, had good reason to pass by without helping. Seven hundred years earlier, the northern kingdom of Israel had been carried off into exile by the Assyrians. During that period of exile, many of those Israelites intermarried with their captors. After the exile, they returned to their Promised Land as a mixed race who became known as Samaritans. To the southern kingdom of Israelites, who endured an exile of their own but had not intermarried, the Samaritans had done the unthinkable—they had defiled the bloodline of Abraham. To many, Samaritans were worse than full-blooded Gentiles—they were half Gentile, half Israelite, and this by choice.

For the Samaritans’ part, there was no love lost. They could be just as disrespectful and indignant toward the Jews as the Jews were to them. They lived in a nationalistic world; individuals represented the nations from which they had come. It did not matter if a particular Samaritan had wronged a particular Israelite. One Samaritan represented all Samaria, and one Jew all Israel. So it was to great dramatic effect that the Samaritan was the one who stopped to help the man dying in his path. He not only stopped to help, he also changed his course to make sure the man would be cared for not only in that moment, but in the days and weeks to come, so long as he was still mending.

The Samaritan took the dying man on as his own burden. Eventually he would go on about his business, but not before providing for this man and promising to return to look in on him later to settle any outstanding debts. What a humbling moment that must have been for both when the Samaritan lifted the bloodied, half-dead Israelite onto his own horse.

Jesus asked the teacher of the law, “Which of those three proved to be a neighbor to the dying man?”

The teacher, unable to say the word “Samaritan,” answered, “The one who showed mercy.”

It was the act of compassion that answered the teacher’s question; beyond race, beyond class, beyond religion, your neighbor is anyone in your path.

Jesus said, “You go and do the same.” (Luke 10:30–37)

The lesson Jesus taught this teacher of the law belonged to the same truth his disciples struggled to understand when they saw God do mighty works through their hands in Jesus’s name: God’s power, his presence, and his love are inseparable. Theological knowledge without love is nothing but a clanging cymbal. (1 Corinthians 13) And offers of his love that are not grounded in the truth of who he is lead to nowhere. Though he may try, man will never isolate the power of God as an impersonal force to be wielded by the will of man. To know God is to love him, to yield to his commands, and to delight in his law. This cannot be done without loving others in reply.

When such love is present, the mercy and grace that flows from the heart of God through the hands and feet of his people—those hearers and heralds—is as offensive as it is astonishing.

About the Post: This post is an excerpt of chapter 17 of my 2015 release Behold the King of Glory: A Narrative of the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

About the Art: Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) The Good Samaritan (after Delacroix), Saint-Rémy, oil on canvas, 73 x 60 cm, May 1890.

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