Who Is My Neighbor?

“Who Is My Neighbor?”

The Story of the Good Samaritan is arguably Jesus’ best known parable.

It’s so well-known that it has become a cliché’.

A Good Samaritan is pretty much universally recognized as anyone who comes to the aid of another person.

And while the parable is about that, it goes much, much deeper.

At the heart of this parable is a lesson about the relationship between the Gospel of Jesus Christ and Old Testament or Jewish Law.

And the first hint of this can be found in the very first verse:

“On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus…”

An expert in the Law.

This guy had graduated from Law School but the Law he was an expert in was Mosaic Law—the Law of the Old Testament.

And he’s openly challenging the Authority and Insite of Jesus: this uncredentialed Galilean Who is causing such a stir.

“Teacher,” the lawyer asks, “what must I do to inherit eternal life.”

Jesus asks him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?”

And it appears that they both find common ground based on words written in Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18:

“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.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replies, “Do this and you will live.”

They are on the same page until the lawyer gives a follow-up question: “And who is my neighbor?”

And this is where the relationship between the law and the Gospel of Jesus Christ comes into play.

We are told that he asked this because “he wanted to justify himself.”

In this context, “to justify” means to limit the scope of who qualifies as a neighbor…

…to put a limit on the number of people he must love.

In the story of Huckleberry Finn, written by Mark Twain in 1884, Huck is telling a woman about an explosion that Huck had observed.

The woman is afraid that someone might have gotten hurt.

Huck replies, “an N-Word died but that’s all.”

To which the woman replies, “Oh, thank goodness.

I was worried someone might have been hurt.”

In other words, the black slave was not considered important, was not even considered to be “a somebody.”

Apparently many white slave owners thought like that back then.

In Jesus’ day, Huck’s answer to the woman might have gone something like this, “A Canaanite got killed, but no one was hurt…” or “A Samaritan was killed but no one got hurt.”

The only people that mattered were people from their own race, their own tribe.

The only people that mattered to the Jewish people—the only people who really were fully human, in their minds, were other Jewish people.

So, the lawyer thinks he might catch Jesus in a trap if Jesus says that this man’s neighbor is anyone other than another Jew.

That’s why Jesus uses the parable of the Good Samaritan to get His point across.

It was the only way for the man to see the Samaritan as a neighbor.

For the lawyer, the law of “love God and love neighbor” was love God and love other Jews.

Another way to put this is, that was his Gospel.

That was his entry into eternal life.

And you can’t really blame him.

That’s what he had been taught since he was feeding from his mother’s breast.

That’s what was ingrained into his mind.

That’s what his university professors had taught him.

That’s the answer that enabled him to pass the bar.

The Law was the end all and be all.

That’s what he believed.

And so did Jesus, right?

Well, yes and no.

What Jesus taught was that the law is a means to understand the ways of God.

But it must be put into context.

It must not be limited.

It must not leave anyone out.

We are told in John 3 that “God so love the world that God sent” Jesus to save all who will believe.

It doesn’t say that Jesus only came to save part of the world or one particular race.

When Christians seek to live as if the law is the gospel, we set off down a road that begins to look very little like the Christ of the New Testament.

And we are all susceptible to living as if the law is the gospel.

There is a bit of the lawyer me, how about you?

Taking the law as gospel means that we seek to take refuge in rules, glorify in boundaries, to quantify norms and put a litmus test on discipleship.

The lawyer’s question to Jesus: “Who is my neighbor” seeks to set a limit on who the man must love.