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- [D.A. Carson] I suppose if we took a poll, we would discover that the best
known parable that Jesus ever told was the parable of the Good Samaritan.
But I suspect that some people who know the rough framework of the parable of the
Good Samaritan forget that the parable is told within a larger conversation
between Jesus and a lawyer who's trying to pick him up. In fact,
it really is worthwhile taking your Bibles and watching how the dialogue goes back
and forth. This lawyer asks Jesus a question. The question is,
"What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Then Jesus, instead of answering
the question, asks his own question. He says, "What do you read?
How would you answer?" And then the lawyer gives his answer and
then Jesus gives his answer. And then the lawyer doesn't like that,
so he asks another question and the same pattern is repeated.
"And who is my neighbor?" he asks his question,
and Jesus is going to answer with his own question. But to set up his question,
he tells what we call the parable of the Good Samaritan. He tells the story of this
man who goes down from Jerusalem to Jericho and is set upon and so on,
you know the account. And then at the end of the account,
he then says, "And who is neighbor to this poor chap?" That's his question.
Then the lawyer responds with his answer, and only then does Jesus give his answer.
Now, that means that the parable of the Good Samaritan is not to be read
outside of this context. It's not saying this is how people get converted,
they have to be nice to their neighbors, or anything like that.
It's really a story that furthers the dialogue between the lawyer and Jesus
in order to ground Jesus' question, "Who is the neighbor to this chap?"
Now, there's another part of this account that is sometimes misunderstood.
You recall in the first interchange between Jesus and the lawyer,
the lawyers asks, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" And Jesus says,
"I'd like your opinion. How do you read?"
And the man replies by quoting two Bible verses. He says,
"Love the Lord your God with heart and soul and mind and strength," and
"Love your neighbor as yourself." Now Jesus uses those same two
verses elsewhere, but never to answer this question, "How do you gain eternal life?
How do you inherit eternal life?" This man thinks that he's going to gain
eternal life by loving God with heart and soul and mind and strength,
and loving his neighbor as himself. Now at very least, that shows he is not
very self-aware, very self-critical. But Jesus says something which initially
strikes you as a bit surprising. He says, "You've answered correctly. Good on you.
Do this and you'll live." Now, some readers without a sense of humor
think that Jesus is giving a serious response here. He's saying, in effect,
"That's how you gain eternal life. Just keep those two commandments and you
make it." But if that's what Jesus is saying, then why is he on the road
to Jerusalem and to the cross? The gospel show that the way you gain
eternal life is because of what Jesus secures and affects on the cross.
And in fact, if you read this account seriously, you can almost overhear the wry
humor in Jesus' words, you can almost see the twinkle in his eyes.
It's as if Jesus is answering like this, "Well, if you think that you
can get to Heaven by obeying law, you're right. That's it. Go right ahead.
You've given the right answer. Love God with heart and soul and mind
and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. That's all you've got to do.
You're in." Now what that ought to do is crush the man. And the man realizes he's
been nobbled, which is why the very next verse says he wanted to justify himself.
In other words, he realized he'd been got at. Which one of us really can say we
really do love God with heart and soul and mind and strength? We may have odd moments
at a great conference or something, or in private devotions where we really do
love God with our whole being, but it does not characterize us. And as for
loving our neighbors as ourselves, good grief, it almost never happens.
And even when it sometimes does happen and we feel really, really very loving
toward another party, then we instantly spoil it by patting
ourselves on the back because we've loved somebody really nicely.
And this man realizes he can't win this way. He wants to justify himself.
That's a common sub-theme in Luke's Gospel. Sin is so often bound
up with us justifying ourselves. Whereas in the Bible, salvation is bound
up with God justifying us. I'll come back to that a little later
in this sequence. Here, the man tries to justify himself by asking
the question, "And who is my neighbor?" So Jesus tells the parable of the Good
Samaritan to turn that question on its head. Stop asking, "Who is my neighbor
and do I love him enough?" Ask instead, "Will you be a neighbor to the person who
is broken and battered, and in need of your help, and stop making excuses?"
Because at the end of the day, those whom God really does save,
those whose sins are forgiven, those who place their faith on this Christ,
in this Christ who is on the road to Jerusalem to bear the sins of his people
in his own body on the tree. Those who come to know him find their
lives so transformed that they begin to ask the question,
"How can I be a neighbor to someone else?" Which is why this whole section begins
with the question, "What can I do to inherit eternal life?"
But ends up after the parable of the Good Samaritan by saying, "Go and do likewise."
Genuine Christians will find their behavior so changed that it will not seem
strange, simultaneously, to say it's not by obedience that we are saved,
as if our obedience earns our salvation. But the gospel, the gospel of this Christ
on the road to Jerusalem, so transforms us that obedience characterizes all true
children of God. For we hear the Master saying, "Go do likewise."
We follow in the feet of Jesus, who is full of compassion toward the broken.
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