There are a few times in the gospels when people confronted Jesus
and asked what they needed to do to be saved, or to inherit eternal life
and so, what Jesus says in response to these questions should be of the utmost importance
in determining what we should believe, and how we should live our lives.
But how many of these situations can YOU name right now?
Oddly enough, the encounter that is most universally remembered is one with a man who did NOT ask that question...
although it may have been implied.
I am talking about the secret, late night meeting between Jesus and Nicodemus.
What Jesus said that night clearly IS important
but it has been chosen because it was the easiest answer to distort.
I have addressed that distortion in a video called "The Most Famous Verse in the Bible."
But there is another equally famous response that Jesus gave
and this one WAS in answer to a question on how someone might find eternal life.
It's just that we are never told about it in that context.
It is seen as just another interesting story that Jesus told
and then it is swept up together with 99% of everything else that Jesus said
and put into a box labelled "law"... "Old Testament"... "not necessary for salvation".
Have you ever noticed that?
The false grace, do-nothing Calvinist doctrine of salvation
rubbishes all of the teachings of Jesus as being non-essential for salvation...
EXCEPT a few isolated verses... verses like John 3:16
which they THINK they can distort to support their anti-Jesus doctrine.
Anyway, in this video I am going to look at this other story... the story of the Good Samaritan.
And I am going to trumpet the fact that it was told in answer to the most important of all questions:
"What must I do to inherit eternal life?"
The initial answer to the question (before mention of the Good Samaritan) is also famous.
Jesus asked this expert on the Old Testament
to tell him what single command best summed up the overall message of the Old Testament
and this guy hit the nail on the head.
He gave not just one commandment, but two similar ones:
To love God with all your heart, and to love your neighbour as much as you love yourself.
Whenever I have asked people all over the world to tell me ten or fifteen things that Jesus told his followers to do
most of them remember this one, but they are stumped soon afterwards, and so they excuse themselves by saying
"It doesn't matter; as long as I love God with all my heart, and love my neighbour as I love myself, that covers everything else."
And they are right.
That IS what you need to do to have eternal life.
Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbour as much as you love yourself.
But when was the last time you heard THAT (loving God and loving your neighbour)
being taught in a sermon or in a tract on salvation?
What church says that, if you don't love your neighbour as much as you love yourself, you are going to go to hell?
And what church says that you must love your neighbour as much as you love yourself if you want to go to heaven?
Most of what I hear in evangelical circles are preachers telling you that just loving your neighbour counts for nothing to God.
It's good works... works of the flesh...
and God will send you to hell in a flash if all you do is love him and love others.
Just look at all these rich evangelical preachers around the world.
How many of them are sharing equally with the poor?
What evidence is there that they share equally with anyone.
Their neighbours can suffer and die without these preachers losing a minute's sleep over it.
Their neighbours can starve to death and the preachers themselves will still build multi-million dollar houses
or fly in million dollar private jets without a single pang of conscience.
How can they do it? They do it by preaching another gospel... a more comfortable doctrine.
A man-made doctrine, of course, about how they don't HAVE to love their neighbour to get eternal life.
Totally anti-Christ, of course. A complete contradiction of what Jesus taught. But who cares?
It's what the people want to hear, and it'll bring a lot of money into the offering plates.
So the story of the Good Samaritan just falls under the category of romantic Bible fiction...
about as real as the poem on a birthday card.
The religious leader who first asked Jesus what it takes to get to heaven, however
was not so quick to dismiss what Jesus said.
He didn't like it, but he was not prepared with the various excuses that we have been taught by our denominations
and so he challenged Jesus by asking for clarification on just how far this neighbour thing needed to be taken literally.
"Who is my neighbour?" he asked, and that is when Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan.
A certain Jewish man had been beaten and robbed on a lonely road, and left for dead.
Two Jewish religious people saw the man's need, but excused themselves from helping
whereas a heretic... a much-despised Samaritan, stopped and helped the man, bandaging his wounds
and putting him on his donkey, to be transported to the equivalent of a hospital
where the good Samaritan even left money with the people in charge, to cover the cost of his care.
And then Jesus asks, "Who was the good neighbour?"
The answer, of course, is obvious.
But the religious leader choked on it a bit, because Jesus had picked someone who was so obviously wrong theologically and doctrinally.
Kind of like Jesus trying to tell us a similar story today
with a Mormon or a Buddhist or maybe even a gay person being the one who showed love for his neighbour.
How would that make you feel?
Could you embrace those two important lessons from the story of the Good Samaritan?
One is that it is love which God is looking for when he starts handing out tickets to heaven
and the other is that he doesn't care about your religious affiliations at all, when doing so.
Those are scary thoughts for people who have surrounded themselves with religious associates
who all agree that members of OUR denomination, our church, our religious community are the ones going to heaven...
because of our doctrines and our theology, while the others... especially those who break certain rules that we count quite highly...
they are all going to hell.
We need to do some serious re-thinking on these matters... NOW... before we stand before God on judgment day
and learn that it's too late to do it His way.
Please pray about this, and about your underlying assumptions about what it takes to get to heaven.
There is a lot riding on you getting it right.