The Good Samaritan or “The Lawyer’s Question”
“Master, what shall 1 do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 10:25).
The Parable of the Good Samaritan was given in response to an extremely critical question raised by a certain lawyer. It is the answer to this question which is the focus of the parable. The parable could just as easily be called “The Lawyer’s Question.” The query was: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (NIV)1. The lawyer was searching for a fundamental principle. In our community we would define this as a “first principle,” i.e. a concept, rule or commandment that is absolutely vital to salvation. Therefore, it is imperative that we appreciate the answer given to the young man’s question, for it is vital to our own salvation.
Lawyer will answer own question
Jesus could have answered the question with a simple direct rule, preferably engraved in stone! But the Lord God had already tried that approach in Sinai and it had not been respected. Now the Lord Jesus Christ required the young lawyer to think for himself and find the answer to his question from the depths of his own conscience.
It was, and is, a masterful teaching technique; one from which we can gain great benefit, whether in preaching the gospel, or in teaching Sunday school or Bible classes. How could the lawyer deny the answer that he eventually was forced to confess from within himself? Jesus never answers the question directly, neither for the lawyer, nor for us.
We also need to listen to this parable and be guided by Jesus to the answer. Moreover, we must apply the principle we learned to our own “walk” so that we might “inherit eternal life.”
Jesus challenges the young lawyer: “What is written in the law? How readest thou?” (Luke 10:26, KJV). Since he was a lawyer by profession, there can be no doubt that he knew the Law of Moses in detail. His quick retort shows that he probably had committed the whole of the Law to memory. This may seem like an amazing feat to us today, but it certainly was not in ancient times. Troubadours of old could sing ballads that would cover hundreds of pages of modern text. The ease today of storing the “Word” in so many other forms (printed media, audio and video tape, as well as in the computer on which this article is being written) has dulled our sense of memory.
Who is neighbor?
The answer given is concise, but it sums up all the ten commandments and hence Jesus endorses the response. But remarkably this did not satisfy the lawyer: “He wanted to justify himself.”
I have wondered at this reply for a long time. Why wasn’t he satisfied that Jesus had endorsed his original response? In other words, why didn’t he quit while he was ahead, as we would say today? The reason seems to be that the obvious answer, taken straight from the Law, was too general to suit the young man. In the traditions of the Jewish rabbis, considerable writing had been added in various commentaries that qualified the definition of “neighbor.” In a sense, the lawyer was testing Jesus to see what limits he placed on “who is my neighbor?” Surely, Jesus would not consider the Roman military and governing officials as neighbors!
As in other instances, the question had political as well as personal implications. If Jesus said that the definition of neighborliness extended to the Romans, then he would lose respect in the eyes of the Jewish people. However, if he said it did not, then he was endorsing hatred of the Romans and this was only a hairbreadth away from inciting rebellion.
The logic here is identical to the question of taxation raised in another context and again our Lord Jesus Christ gives a totally unexpected answer. He answers the question in the context of the Samaritans, not the Romans. Before we can truly grasp the meaning of this parable, we have to go back and recall who the Samaritans were.
Background on the Samaritans
The reader can look up in any standard Bible dictionary the word for “Samaritan” and trace through their story while looking up the associated Bible references2. We will briefly review the situation between the Samaritans and the Jews as it stood at the time of Christ, in order to understand the setting of this parable and gain an appreciation of how a first century A.D. audience would have reacted to the story.
Successive Assyrian kings from Sargon (721 B.C.) through Ashurbanipal (669-626 B.C.), had imported foreigners to repopulate the northern Israelite kingdom after the captivity of the ten tribes of Ephraim (II Kings 17:24,25). Not all of Ephraim had been deported and these foreign elements gradually intermarried with the remaining Israelites. Eventually the Assyrians sent back a captive priest (II Kings 17:27); no doubt he was one of the priests of the apostate Yahweh worship originally set up by Jeroboam.
The people of Samaria were hence of mixed racial stock, worshipped a paganized form of the “true” religion and accepted only the five original books of Moses, the Pentateuch, as being authentic. They regarded the rest of the Old Testament as being unsanctioned additions to the true word of God. They did not respect the temple at Jerusalem and instead offered sacrifices at an alternative holy site on Mt. Gerizim (as the few hundred remaining Samaritans do to this very day).
Ezra and Nehemiah had forbidden the participation of the Samaritans in the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple, and had apparently included them in the instructions to separate from foreign spouses.
Jewish hostility to Samaritans
By the time of Christ, “The Samaritan was publicly cursed in their (Jewish) synagogues; could not be adduced as a witness in the Jewish courts; could not be admitted to any sort of proselytism, and was thus, so far as the Jew could affect his position, excluded from eternal life.”3. Most of the pagan forms of worship had disappeared from Samaritan practice by the time of Christ (as it had also from Judaism after the return from Babylonian captivity).
Jesus’ attitude wholly different
It is interesting that at one point Jesus was accused of being a Samaritan and a devil (John 8:48); apparently the terms being used virtually as a curse against him by his antagonists. While Jesus explicitly denied being a devil, he took no notice of being called a Samaritan (John 8:49). Furthermore, Jesus had dealings directly with certain Samaritans during his lifetime even though he specifically proclaimed he was not sent to the Gentiles. Consequently we can not regard the Samaritans as being in the same category as the Gentiles. For the Gentiles the door would be opened to them only after his resurrection. When Jesus healed the ten lepers we are told only one came back to thank him, a Samaritan (Luke 17:12-16)! Thus we know that Jesus did not hold back his divine powers from working miracles on Samaritans. It was also to the woman of Samaria that he preached the Gospel message – in fact it is clear from the passage that Jesus had gone deliberately to Samaria: “And he must needs go through Samaria” (John 4:4-9). We are specifically told that the mission of the Lord Jesus Christ in his lifetime was strictly to the Jews: I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. 15:24).
Treated by Jesus as part of Israel
Given the direct dealings he had with the Samaritans, we come inescapably to the conclusion Jesus must have regarded them as part of the whole house of Israel! Certainly the Jews did not agree with him. They probably knew of his travels through Samaria, perhaps even heard he had some followers there, and accused him of being one of them, a charge he did not bother to refute. One can only wonder if we would behave as did the Jews toward the Samaritans, or would we have recognized the wider application of the definition of the people of God?
Given this background the parable becomes much easier to interpret. The choice of a Samaritan was perfect. It was meant to expose the hypocrisy of the lawyer’s position. If the despised Samaritan was to be regarded as a neighbor worthy of all respect and love, who then could be refused?
A person in need
We are told that a “certain man” went down to Jericho. The man was not necessarily a Jew; at the least Jesus leaves us completely in doubt as to his origins. When someone is beaten up, battered and bleeding from a mugging, it may indeed be difficult to identify him! The decision to help could not be made by identification as to the person, but rather by need alone. Do we decide who to help, and who to ignore, by whether or not we know the man? If we are socially close to some in the ecclesia, we have a tendency to be more generous toward them than to those we barely know. We might “pass by” when they are in need simply because we do not know them well enough to realize they figuratively, or even literally, might be by the roadside, beaten and in danger of spiritual death.
They avoided involvement
First came a priest down from Jerusalem to Jericho along the harrowing Roman road which stretched 24 miles through rugged terrain with many opportune places for a mugger to conceal himself. Priests generally were responsible for service in the Jerusalem temple and it is written of the priesthood that to them was committed the oracles of God. Thus being a priest meant he had even a greater degree of responsibility than the ordinary rabbis who served only as teachers in the synagogue, even as elders in the ecclesia bear a higher degree of responsibility today.
Next came a Levite. They were responsible for assisting the priests in the temple service. Just as with the first holy man, this Levite also ignored the situation. Again the ravaged man was left to suffer at the roadside as the Levite refused to get involved. Unfortunately, this Levite’s lower position had engendered no sympathy for the downtrodden. Instead he followed the example of his elder. A characteristic that is exemplary when right action is emulated, but disastrous when wrong conduct is followed. God will hold every man accountable for his own works; blind leaders of the blind lead to both falling in the ditch! This places great responsibility upon elders to lead effectively and upon younger brethren to be sure to examine the word of God and not blindly follow.
It is a tragic circumstance of the human condition that if a person perceives a risk of danger to himself, he will, more often than not, ignore the plight of the suffering party. That is why millions of Europeans were able to look the other way as the Nazis perpetrated the holocaust on the Jews. It is also why 38 eyewitnesses to a murder in progress failed to call the police in a notorious case in New York City in the 1960’s. It is also why we sometimes allow wrong to persist in our ecclesial community; because we are afraid of the trouble it will cause if we get involved, we look the other way as the “body of Christ” lies bloodied and beaten on the roadside (cp. James 4:17).
A first principle in practice
Finally, the despised Samaritan came along and showed compassion. The apostle Paul says: “if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Rom. 13:9). Hence we see the Samaritan obeying one of the first principles of the word of God while the supposed keepers of the Law had flagrantly ignored it. Even though this principle of neighborliness is not specifically mentioned in our Statement of Faith, we are surely held accountable for believing and practicing it.
The Samaritan not only bound up the wounds of the man with expensive ingredients, (olive) oil and wine, that he must have brought with him for his journey, but also put the victim on his own beast while he proceeded to walk alongside him to the inn. The robbers who had waylaid the “certain man” could still have been in the vicinity and now attacked the Samaritan, who was slowed down with his burden. Historically, it is said that at that time there was only one Roman inn lying somewhere halfway between Jerusalem and Jericho. Thus the two of them may have traveled some distance before reaching safety.
After a night’s sleep the Samaritan paid all the bills and, in effect, left an open credit card voucher to cover any additional expenses the injured stranger might happen to incur. How many of us would do the same – even for a brother? When there is need, are we so generous and do we give of ourselves, even without any expectation of payback?
Who was neighbor?
Finally our Lord Jesus Christ asked the young man to answer his original question, but now considered in the light of the parable that he had just heard.4. He put the question to the lawyer: Which now of these three was neighbor unto him? (Lk. 10:36). What could the young man say? What can we say? Originally the young man had no objection to loving his neighbor as himself as long as he could apply a very narrow definition of the word neighbor! He certainly would not have considered the Samaritans as his neighbors, but now he was forced to do so by the very power and logic in the parable that he had just heard. Who indeed is our neighbor?
To the Jew, “neighbor”5 implied the same sense of kinship as Christadelphians use for the term “brother.” Hence the young man could not bring himself to even mention the name “Samaritan” in giving Jesus the answer. Instead, probably choking on the words, the young lawyer answered indirectly: “And he said, He that shewed mercy on him.”
Who do we as Christadelphians consider as our neighbors? As our brothers? How narrowly do we define these terms? Is our usually restricted sense of definition of neighborliness, or of brotherhood, truly in keeping with the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ in this parable? I leave this for each reader to decide for himself. But take care how you answer, because it involves a first principle that will decide the “inheritance of eternal life.”
- The phrase “shall I do” in the KJ V is translated from the Greek word poieo The root meaning of poieo is “to do or to make” which does not have any conditional sense (Cp Strong’s or Thayer’s Bible concordances) The NIV translates this as “must do,” which seems to catch the exact sense in terms of 20″ century English usage
- For example Nelson’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Thomas Nelson Publisher, 1986
- New Unger ‘s Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1988
- There is a rather complex interpretation of this parable originally put forth by Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A D ) which attaches a symbolic meaning to every detail of the story For example, Augustine equates the “thieves” to “the devil and his angels” and so on His Interpretation upholds orthodox Catholic doctrine but obscures the main point of the parable on brotherhood
- The word for neighbor is plesion which means “a neighbor, i e fellow (as in man, countryman, Christian or friend) The Greek word is related to the meaning of the word “brother,” (cp Strong’s #80) This is consistent with the meaning of the Hebrew rendered “neighbor” in the passage the lawyer had in mind (Lev 19 18) In the passage, “neighbor” is from the Hebrew rea or reva, which Strong’s states means “brother, companion, fellow, friend, husband, lover, neighbor”
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