The Good Samaritan

We hit the parable of the Good Samaritan today in Luke, and it occasioned a few thoughts, some new, some old.

The scribe asks Jesus (tempts him; the Greek indicates he was testing him to cause him to fail) what he should do in order to inherit eternal life. In response, Christ asks him what he finds in the Law; the answer, rightly given, is "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" (Lu 10.27).

What is terrific about this response is that the lawyer realizes that he has condemned himself—he has admitted that he has failed and will not inherit eternal life. How do we know? "But he {that is, the lawyer}, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, 'And who is my neighbor?'" (Lu 10.29).

Two things might be said here. First, that the lawyer wouldn't desire if to justify himself had he not just condemned himself. Second, he has skipped past loving the LORD with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength and gone straight to loving his neighbor. I surmise from the white spaces that he does this because he recognizes the absolute futility of trying to live up to such a command. The heart, soul, strength, and mind represent a totality of his being: his emotional, spiritual, physical, and mental exercise.

In passing by the first command to the second, he also reveals the eventual course of all legalistic practice: the redefinition of the command or of the sin in order to exonerate oneself. The sinless perfection crowd generally does two things: they redefine sin, and that failing (or sometimes even succeeding) they redefine perfection. The consequence is a devastation of grace and the Cross—the sins that Jesus Christ died for are sin no more, and the purpose (result) of his death is diminished.

The gospel is bound up in a proper definition of sin—if we cannot see our sinfulness for what it is, we will never appreciate the superlative nature of the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord.


In the parable itself, it seems that Jesus echoes the ineffectiveness of the Law to do man any good. Again, I'm reading a bit of the white space here, but the Levite and the priest who pass by may have done so because it would have made them unclean according to the law (Nu 19.11ff; cf Ez 44.25, Nu 6.6ff). (Of course, the law would penalize them for knowingly ignoring a man's distress, so the interpretation here really depends on how badly the man was beaten.)

The Samaritan, estranged from the fellowship of Israel, is "permitted" to aid the man because in a sense he is already judged under the Jewish law. I think in some respects this mirrors the way that Jesus took our own burdens; he was condemned for us, and his condemnation is what restores us from death.

I see him also in the Samaritan's pledge to the innkeeper: "Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back" (Lu 10.35). There is such comfort in knowing that Jesus Christ did not just provide for a part of our sin, but the whole of it. He does not pay for a part of the recovery, but all of it.


I know this is already a bit long, but there is a parallel here to the story of the rich young ruler (Lu 18.18ff). The question is the same (in fact, it's identical in the Greek, as near as I can tell). As with the lawyer, Jesus causes the young man to understand that while he has adhered to the commandments (if we take him at his word, v21), he has nonetheless still failed to keep the law (v22).

In answering these questions, Jesus leaves no wiggle room: we cannot achieve what is demanded in the law. Even in asking the question we condemn ourselves.

A fitting conclusion fails me at this point, as it does in many of my writings. I was not expecting to hear this today (I obviously didn't read ahead), but I'm glad I did. While my upbringing was not legalistic, and I was taught well (I think) about grace, it is the experience of it that has made me appreciate passages like these more.

Grace is great until you recognize your need for it—and that is precisely when we (I) turn to "What must I do," instinctively trying to make amends on our own rather than through the cross. It is good news indeed that we cannot justify ourselves.