Our Bible passage today is one of the most celebrated and renowned of our Lord's stories, the parable of the Good Samaritan. Well-known as it is, though, I believe it has a point that's easy to miss. Let's give it a close look, and see if you agree.
Our passage begins in Luke 10:25 when a lawyer asked Jesus, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" That's a big question. It's the question that religious people have always asked whenever the subject of eternal life has come up. However, it is built on the assumption that our deeds--the things we do or don't do--are the things in our lives that our most important to God. We believe that He most cares whether we DO the right things. Now, this is a most natural assumption to make because it's what WE care about the most. You may have all kinds of nasty thoughts in your mind, but as long as you don't say them, you can stay out of trouble. It's also what our law cares about. The reason for this is not hard to find. The law passes judgment on our actions because we can control them. The law tells us not to steal from the couple next door. It doesn't care if we obey because we like our neighbors, or because we're afraid of getting caught, or because we're too snobbish to want what our neighbor has anyway. We can't control our thoughts or our motives. Our law has the good sense not to require of us things we can't control.
This lawyer, of course, is concerned about God's law rather than human law. So the Lord asks him what he thinks God's law requres, and the maybe the guy was pretty sharp, for he says the same thing as Jesus: "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 (see Matthew 22:37). But wait! There's a problem. Right at the heart of God's Law is the command to love, but love is one of those things that cannot be commanded. It's not what you do but why you do it. Someone can tell you to cover your mouth when you sneeze. You can do that because your actions are at least partly under the control of your will. The same thing applies when they tell you not to break into your neighbor's car and steal her purse, or not to say bad things about your boss. If you try, your will can control your hands and your tongue. However, the attitude you have toward your neighbor or your boss--what you think about him or her when nobody's around--that's just something that occupies your heart no matter what your will says. I believe that the Lord was giving this lawyer the opportunity to perceive the paradox contained in the command to love, I imagine Him smiling sadly and perhaps slightly emphasizing the "do" when he says, "You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live."
If that is the Lord's intention, though, the lawyer completely misses it. He's too interested in finding a loophole--"And who is my neighbor?" I guess the first part of the command was no challenge! In response, Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. It begins as realistic fiction. A man traveling down the Jerusalem-Jericho road is waylaid by bandits and left for dead. If it were a freakish occurrence, it would be more likely to provoke pity. Sadly, though, we become numb even to life-threatening brutality if it happens routinely enough, and that road was notoriously dangerous. So when we hear of a priest. God's representative to the Jews, spying the victim and passing by on the other side, we do not need to think of him as some great hypocrite. Like anyone else, a priest probably wouldn't want to be a standing target in that place. Also, if he did stop to help and the victim recovered, then all would be well; however, if the victim died, then the priest would be unclean (because he touched a dead body) and would have to go into quarantine for several days. That would put a major crimp in his business, and if he did not have important business, he would not be on that road. Of course, all these observations apply to the Levite in the story as well.
Now our story turns into a fantasy tale. A Samaritan comes by and sees a half-dead Jew-Jews and Samaritans despised each other, by the way--lying on the ground. What happens? Our English Bible says, "he had compassion". A more literal translation of the Greek word would be, "his inward parts were moved." A good English paraphrase might be, "he felt it in his gut." Have you ever felt something in your gut? It's more than just thinking that you should help someone, isn't it? You don't decide what to do; you do it. (Read verses 34-35) Three things stand out to me about the way the Samaritan acts:
1) He acts without regard to personal danger. He knows there are bandits in the area, yet he stops. He ministers to the helpless man and then puts him on his donkey. All these things take time--time spent with his back turned to possible attackers. Also, he can't move very fast carrying his load, and that's dangerous too.
2) He acts without regard to cost. Not only does he expend oil and wine on the helpless man, not only does he get a room at an inn, but he basically gives the innkeeper a blank check. I doubt that all innkeepers were honest back then any more than now. On top of all this, he loses a good part of a day taking care of this man. Many of us are willing to spend a little money to help someone out, but time is something you don't get back.
3) He acts without regard to reward. I know some people who say they would quite ready to take care of a helpless person like this. Maybe you're one of those people; however, do you also hope that the recipient of your attention will be at least a little grateful? Do you imagine them saying something like, "I don't know what I would have done without you?" The Jew in Jesus' story will never know who his benefactor was. If they ever meet again, he will be more likely to spit at him than to say something nice.
Finally, having told this story of utterly unselfish giving, Jesus turns the lawyer's question back around. Instead of being a question about the definition of a neighbor, now it's a question about how to act like a neighbor. The answer, of course, is "the one who showed him mercy". "You go and do likewise," says the Lord.
Now, let's suppose this lawyer took Jesus' words 100% at face value. Say he quit his job and began patrolling the Jerusalem-Jericho road looking for beaten-up victims, and as soon as he found one he began imitating every one of the Good Samaritan's actions. Oil and wine, check. Load body on donkey, check. Blank check to innkeeper, check. Would he have been like the Good Samaritan? NO! He would have performed all those actions, not because he "felt it in his gut", but because he wanted to "inherit eternal life". His motive would have been selfish. What a quandary we are in! Do anything in order to gain eternal life, and you do it selfishly. Do it selfishly, and you don't do it out of love. Don't do it out of love, and you have failed at the one thing God desires above all else.
You see, that's why eternal life has to be a free gift. There's no other way to be freed from the cycle of futility in which all our religious hard work will only take us further and further away from God's heart. We had to be saved--and know we are saved--so that our eyes could be taken off ourselves, and we could give our attention to the person next to us. If anyone asks if it matters what we do--of course it does. The Lord did not have the Samaritan in His story cry some tears and then ride away. Compassion that does not produce action isn't godly compassion at all; it's just a mirage. However, anyone who thinks that Christian life is just a matter of doing a bunch of right things and not doing a bunch of wrong things is greatly mistaken. Over the years, many Christians have devoted a lot of time to making litmus tests for "real Christianity". "Doesn't drink" and "Doesn't dance" are items in some tests. "Doesn't own a gas-guzzling vehicle" and "Doesn't eat beef" are items in other tests. I had a friend once who fell afoul of such an approach to faith. When he was 19, he came forward and accepted Jesus at an evangelistic event. A well-meaning older church member promptly drew him aside and explained that this young man had to stop drinking now that he was a Christian. My friends face fell because he had been an alcoholic for 7 years, and one thing he knew for sure was that he could not stop drinking. He did not darken a church door for another 20 years or so. Then he discovered the Christ who, when He enters one's heart, transforms it and makes possible things that had been impossible. Then his behavior began to change. What makes "real Christianity" is that heart transformation--something which must be done to us, for we cannot do it to ourselves. Only He can make God's kind of compassion grow inside us.
Therefore, if anyone hearing this message is one of those insecure people who worries sometimes whether he or she is really saved or is merely self-deceived, STOP IT!!! Your salvation does not depend on you but on the faithfulness of Him who said, "whoever comes to me I will never cast out (John 6:37)." If you want a sign that God has chosen you, just ask yourself if you have come to Christ. Don't start quibbling about whether you have come to Him perfectly; if His promises depended upon us doing anything perfectly, they would be useless to us. Either believe that He accepted you when you came to Him, or call Him a liar and walk out the door! Your salvation depends on His truthfulness, which is a far firmer ground than all our efforts could ever be. All your uncertainty will only get in the way of His love filling your heart the way it is meant to. Believe Him. Accept that He accepted you when you first asked Him to. Seek the love that fulfills the Law (Romans 13:9-10).
Finally, instead of using the parable of the Good Samaritan as a model of how to act, let's use it as a mileage marker. As believers, we are all on a journey. The Holy Spirit is carrying us to a point where we will be capable of the kind of compassion God desires for us to have. Looking at the Samaritan in Jesus' story tells us that we have a long way to go. That's okay. We know two profoundly encouraging things. We know it's a beautiful, wonderful place that we're headed for, and we know we'll get there because we know Who is driving us. Thanks be to God for His surpassing grace!
