Imagine a man, who thinks he is an expert on God, coming to tempt Jesus. This man is a leader. He knows religion backwards and forwards. He has been to the right schools. He is prestigious and respected in the community. His whole life, he has been rewarded for sounding certain.
He scornfully asks Jesus, “Master, how do I inherit eternal life?” This is bait. Rather than answer, Jesus asks him a question: What is your understanding of the Law?
Jesus’ question has to feed the ego of this man because this is his subject. He knows more about this than anyone. He is an expert on the Law of Moses. He has spent his entire life becoming a skilled master of the Law of Moses. Jesus has just asked a genius how he understands the subject he specializes in.
And like a professional, the lawyer quotes back the Law verbatim to Jesus, like he has recited it a thousand times. The lawyer gets it. This guy is orthodox. You cannot get one past him. He is clean, and his theology is perfect. He has got God in a nice tidy box. This is easy stuff. He has heard “Love God, love your neighbor as yourself” for a long time.
But from the start, his question is based on a faulty view of God. He’s asking what he needs to do to inherit eternal life. This puts him in the position of earning his way into eternal life. It would allow him the opportunity to boast before God, which is impossible (Rom. 4:2). Even worse, his understanding of God is based on condemnation.
The lawyer wants to get particular. He thinks he knows how to love God and himself, but it’s this neighbor thing. Who exactly is my neighbor? He asks it in a way to help pat himself on the back.
He thinks he is doing pretty good. He has built a career out of being sure he is on good terms with God and his neighbor. He thinks he’s on good terms based on following the Law. Legalism is deceptive (Rom. 8:11). Or he is looking for a loophole. How far does he have to take this love-your-neighbor stuff?
Jesus’ response to his question is surgical and humiliating because, again, he does not answer the man directly. He does not say, “Look, this guy right here is your neighbor.”
Instead, Jesus tells a story about a “certain man.” And through this story, he traps the lawyer in his own moral self-image and exposes him for the hypocrital bigot he is. Jesus shows the lawyer how he loves his status and moral superiority and how little he loves his God, himself, and his neighbor. Religion is a performance to this lawyer, and Jesus is conducting a performance evaluation.
This certain man was traveling and was attacked, robbed, wounded, and left for dead. By chance, a priest is going down the same path.
Stop here for a second. Jesus is now introducing who the lawyer thinks is going to be the hero of the story. The priest sees the man. He cannot miss the half-dead man on the road. But he cannot stop. He goes to the other side of the road. He is busy. Because the professional religious life is a machine that cannot be interrupted. The Law keeps you on the hamster wheel of religion.
Jesus is telling him that it’s folks like him who are the ones passing this half-dead man on the road. Nothing can inconvenience the legalistic life.
If it wasn’t obvious, then Jesus says another minister came to this place, saw him, and went to the other side.
Jesus is pointing out something that is happening inside the legalistic mind. They see the man and cannot stop. If you cannot be compassionate and merciful toward yourself, you will not be compassionate and merciful towards others. There are those who stop, and then there are those who go to the other side of the road and keep going. “Love your neighbor as yourself” exposes. There is a self-hatred baked into religious elitism.
Imagine the lawyer and the esteemed religious community hearing this from Jesus from the perspective of how the fundamentalists look at Jesus. Jesus does not have the pedigree the lawyer has nor the education. Jesus’ earthly father doesn’t have the prestigious career, does not claim it is his baby, and his pregnant fiancée is a virgin. No one is buying this story. Jesus is basically a hillbilly from a hick town with questionable parentage who is often accused of being a glutton and a drunk and of not keeping Sabbath correctly. He does not fit the mold. But he speaks with authority, confidence, and boldness. Jesus talks big without the education.
Jesus, inferior in the mind of the religious community, is publicly, personally, and professionally insulting a respected member of the community to his face. He is saying: You are the type of person who would walk past the dead man.
Shockingly, Jesus is saying ministry is the thing here that is not stopping. The Law will keep you busy. None of the experts stop to help the man. Professional ministry will leave the wounded dying on the road.
It gets worse for the lawyer because Jesus is about to introduce the antihero, and it is someone the lawyer would hate and look down on ethnically and religiously.
In Jesus’ story he intentionally chooses a Samaritan as the next man that goes down the road. God chooses the foolish and the despised things to shame the wise. The Samaritan and Jesus are despised, foolish things.
Samaritans are unclean. Samaritans are “those people.” They are not insiders. They are on the outs. They are inferior. They are the kind of person you would assume is wrong before they opened their mouth. This is someone who is beneath the lawyer. Someone whose theology is not wrapped up in a nice little bow. Someone he would not fellowship with. He goes to that temple that does not have the right theology. Someone he would think would be God’s enemy. Someone he would think is on the outs with God.
The hero in Jesus’ story is a despised person who outclasses the professionals at their own game. Jesus has more in common with the Samaritan than the lawyer, both in pedigree and in practice. Jesus truly loves himself and God, as does the Samaritan, based entirely on how he treats the certain man.
Jesus goes to great lengths to show the care and generosity this Samaritan has for this half-dead man. The generosity of the Samaritan is effusive compared to the leaders just walking by, ignoring it, leaving him for dead. The Samaritan is personally and financially inconvenienced. The others are cheap.
The Samaritan is clearly outperforming this lawyer. No one hearing this story would leave confused about how awful one group is compared to the Samaritan.
The question is, Who is his neighbor? Instead of telling the man who his neighbor is, Jesus again asks a question: “Which of these three was a neighbor to him that was robbed?” Who was that man’s neighbor? It’s another easy question.
The genius has the right answer, the one who showed him compassion. Notice he cannot bring himself to say Samaritan, and by refusing to say it he is still revealing his prejudice.
The man on the road’s neighbor was the Samaritan, but the priest and Levite did not see the wounded, beaten, left-for-dead man as their neighbor.
The lawyer still does not know who his neighbor is.
The lawyer has two neighbors. Like the man who fell among the thieves, the lawyer’s neighbor is the despicable Jesus who is going to show him compassion. One way you find your neighbor is to look for who is compassionate toward you. That is what a neighbor looks like.
After the lawyer affirms to Jesus who the certain man’s neighbor was, the compassionate Samaritan, Jesus says: Go and do likewise.
Jesus responds by saying your neighbor is also the one you need to show mercy and compassion to. The person the lawyer looks down upon. Whoever the lawyer needed to be merciful, forgiving, and compassionate toward is the neighbor.
