Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on The Parable of the Good Samaritan from Luke 10:25–37
“On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he asked, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ ‘What is written in the Law?’ he replied. ‘How do you read it?’ He answered, ‘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 replied. ‘Do this and you will live.’ But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’ In reply Jesus said: ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.
A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him.
The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. “Look after him,” he said, “and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.” Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?’ The expert in the law replied, ‘The one who had mercy on him.’ Jesus told him, ‘Go and do likewise.’ ”
This is the Word of the Lord.
Although I have not field-tested the thesis, I suspect it is true the best-known parable of Jesus today in the church and even outside is the parable of the good Samaritan. Yet, what most people know of it, both Christians and non-Christians, is the bare story. In our text, not all of verses 25 to 37 but just verses 30 to 35, the bare story itself.
Not the setting. Not the interaction with this teacher of the law. Most stories, however, are intrinsically a bit ambiguous. Until they’re placed in a particular context, the story can mean quite a lot of things to quite a lot of different people. For instance, if this parable is ripped out of its context, so that you pay no attention to the surrounding chapters and no attention to the back and forth between Jesus, inevitably we start reading it within our context.
In other words, once we rip it out of its context, automatically we’re dropping it into our context. Then we might think the story is telling us something like how to be a Christian (“Go and love your neighbor as yourself”), or maybe it means, “This is what basic Christianity is: make sure you’re like the Samaritan.”
But is that what the Bible’s context is doing with this story? Even a few moments of close reading will show such an inference is simply far removed from the concerns of Jesus as he interacts with this teacher of the law and is far removed from Luke as he tells the story in a certain kind of context. In other words, contemporary inferences about the meaning of the parable of the good Samaritan, once that parable has been stripped out of its context in the Bible itself, end up prostituting the Word of God to accommodate current agendas.
A text without a context becomes a pretext for a proof text, and I suppose that’s why this church is going to have a whole year’s Christian education emphasis on how to read the Bible. It’s a good thing to learn. We will try to think our way through this parable in its immediate context and then in its slightly more extended context in Luke, and after we’ve done that, then we’ll listen to the biblical and pastoral implications for us today in Fox Valley Bible Church in 2009.
1. The parable in its immediate context.
If you read again through these verses I have just read (verses 25 to 37), you’ll hear the account provides two matching dialogues. In both cases, the lawyer asks a question, Jesus responds by asking his own question, the lawyer answers Jesus’ question, and then Jesus answers the lawyer’s question. That’s the way it works, and it happens twice. Look, first of all, at verses 25 to 28.
The lawyer, the expert in the law, stands up to test Jesus, and he asks the question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” That’s his question. Jesus asks his question. “What is written in the Law?” The lawyer, this expert in the law, this teacher of the law then answers Jesus’ question (verse 27), and only at that point (verse 28) does Jesus answer his question. Do you see how it works? He asks a question. Jesus asks his question. The lawyer answers Jesus’ question. Jesus answers the lawyer’s question.
Then the pattern is repeated (verse 29). The lawyer wants to justify himself so he asks his question. “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus, then, asks his question, and it is in that context that Jesus tells the parable of the good Samaritan. He tells the parable of the good Samaritan to set up his own question. He tells the parable, and then he asks his question. “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
Then the expert in the law replies, answering Jesus’ question. Then Jesus answers his question. In other words, unless you see the parable is fit into this to-and-fro, this back-and-forth of dialogue, it is unlikely you will understand what the parable is doing in the context in which it is actually found in the Word of God.
Let’s follow the first dialogue. Verse 25: “An expert in the law …” In some versions a scribe or in some versions a teacher of the law. The law is the law of God. It’s what we would call either the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament or what we would call the whole Old Testament.
He was not a lawyer merely in civil law. He was what we would call a theologian or a Bible scholar, but because the law was, in many respects, supposed to operate in the land, then he had some of the qualifications of what we would call a lawyer. He was sort of a lawyer-theologian or a lawyer-Bible teacher. In other words, not only a legal expert but a religious figure.
The text says he stood up to test Jesus. In those days, teachers sat and students who were around listening, when they had a question, stood up as a mark of respect for the teacher. Although he himself is a lawyer, he goes through the public courtesy of standing up to ask Jesus a question, but his motives are crooked. Do you see what the text says? “On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus.”
In other words, he formally stands up and offers a certain kind of respect in so doing, not out of genuine respect but to mask his hypocrisy to test and to examine the teacher. That sort of thing happens often enough in real life. Sometimes you get students who are asking questions not to find an answer but just to show off or, worse yet, to try to embarrass the teacher. The aim is to try to trap him, and that happens often enough in Scripture itself.
There are some glorious instances later on in the book, such as in Luke, chapter 20, verse 20, “Keeping a close watch on him, some of his opponents sent spies, who pretended to be sincere. They hoped to catch Jesus in something he said, so that they might hand him over to the power and authority of the governor.”
Not every question is an honest question. The same today when people ask questions about God or about truth or about suffering or about evil or about Jesus. Not every question is an honest question, but the question he asks is, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” In some ways, the question is bizarre. To inherit eternal life? If you inherit something, it’s not because you’ve done something. It’s because you belong to the right family.
What are you supposed to answer to the question, “What must I do to belong to the right family”? Choose your parents, maybe? The question is intrinsically slightly bizarre. Clearly, what he wants to know is, “How can I have eternal life? How can I be accepted by God?” But to word it this way, inheriting eternal life or inheriting life, that by itself is a coherent notion. You receive something from your father because you belong to the right family.
That’s intrinsically coherent, but “What must I do to inherit it?” is slightly strange, and that’s why Jesus answers not by answering his question but by asking his own question, to force him to rethink his categories. In fact, this makes a very good study in itself. Sometime, when you have a little free time to read the Bible, read right through the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) and observe every time Jesus answers a question by asking a question.
That can be really annoying, but when Jesus does it, in every case it’s because he’s trying to clarify something intrinsically slightly bizarre in the question itself, something so out of line with the way Jesus looks at things he’s trying to get the questioner to see there are underlying assumptions that are not valid or not coherent or not godly, intrinsically leading the discussion astray.
Jesus does it a good number of times, and that becomes a really excellent teaching device. So also here, then, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it? What is your understanding of what the Bible says is needed, despite the bizarre features of your question, to have eternal life? What do you think is the answer to your own question? You are, after all, a lawyer,” and that would have been obvious even by the clothes he wore.
The lawyer’s answer (verse 27), “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind …” That’s the first quotation. It’s from Deuteronomy 6. “… and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ” That’s from Leviticus 18 and 19. It’s worth pausing here for a moment to remember something those of you who read your Bibles regularly will instantly recall.
Jesus himself elsewhere brings these two Old Testament passages together on another occasion. You can read about it in Mark 12:28 and following. On another occasion another lawyer asks Jesus the question, “What is the greatest commandment in the Law?” That’s a different question. “What is the greatest commandment?” Not, “How do I inherit eternal life?” but “What is the greatest commandment?”
Jesus answered, “The greatest commandment in the Law is ‘Love the Lord your God with heart and soul and mind and strength.’ ” Then he threw in number two: “The second greatest is ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ” Thus, Jesus himself gave the same two texts (Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 19) that this man is giving but in a very different context.
In that case, Jesus is laying out what is the most important commandment. This man is playing back these answers. In fact, he may have heard Jesus preaching and thought, “Okay. Let’s play this one back, too, Jesus,” but now not in order to answer the question, “What is the greatest commandment?” but to answer the question, “How can one inherit eternal life?”
Jesus didn’t bring those two together, ever, in order to stipulate how you inherit eternal life. (“Love God with heart and soul and mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself.”) It was this man who was bringing them back together for that purpose, so Jesus answers now the question of the lawyer. Verse 28: “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.”
In other words, “Indeed, anyone who meets this sort of standard doesn’t need grace, doesn’t need to inherit anything. If you really do love God with heart and soul and mind and strength, and if you really do love your neighbor as yourself, you don’t need forgiveness, you don’t need grace, and you don’t need to belong to the right family. Go ahead. Do it and live.”
Whenever you get a religious context, like a local church, which spends all of its time preaching law, telling you what you have to do, inevitably it produces two kinds of really sad people. Inevitably. It produces some people who think arrogantly, almost unbelievably. “Oh, yeah. I can do that. I can do that. I’ll follow the stuff. Most of the time, anyway, I’ll love God. I’ll love my neighbor. I belong to Kiwanis, and I’m pretty good with my neighbor. I love my neighbor. I’m really not a selfish person like some people, you know.”
Thus, the constant preaching of law takes some people and makes them arrogant. “I’m not like those horrible sinners over there; I mean, the scumbags of society. The people you can’t really respect. They don’t try hard. They’re not generous. They’re narrow-minded. They’re bigoted. They’re racist. They’re greedy. I’m quite generous with my money, you know, because I love God and I love my neighbor as myself.”
Thus, the constant preaching of law can somehow get twisted in people’s minds until somehow they really think this qualifies them to inherit eternal life, and they might even quote this text. “ ‘Do this and live.’ Okay. I’ll do it, and I’ll live,” failing to see the context in which it is being developed.
The other kind of sad person who hears that kind of sermon all the time is the one who hears it and a good deal more percipiently, a little more penetratingly, recognizing deep down how woefully inadequate is his or her own obedience, begins to feel nothing but despair. There might be moments of epiphany in a lovely worship service where I really do feel I begin to love God truly, but to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength all the time? You know as well as I do, if that’s the standard, we don’t qualify.
To love our neighbor as ourselves? Give me a break! All the hours of the day we think about ourselves and our self-image, from the cradle to the grave. Is a 2-year-old generous with other people? Is a 5-year-old generous with other people? Is an 8-year-old intrinsically generous? Oh, there are moments of generosity but.… “Mine! It’s mine!” Is a 13-year-old intrinsically generous?
How about a second-year college student? Oh, there are moments of generosity. They might even spend a week or so helping victims of Katrina and feel really very holy because of it, but as they’re thinking about their self-image and how they’re getting on with their friends and what other people think of them and fear all the time that people don’t give them enough respect and thinking about their own future and their own understanding and the jobs they’ll get and whether they’ll get into graduate school, are they really loving their neighbor as themselves?
How about when you’re 30? Have you become more generous at that stage? Okay, 60? Have you become more generous? Well, of course, you have a few more obligations then. Children, maybe grandchildren. You do think of them a wee bit and so on, but your neighbor as yourself? You start hearing this sort of demand and you think, “It’s a bit over the top. It can’t really be done.” If that’s the standard for getting in, there aren’t a whale of a lot of us who are going to make it, as far as I can see. Jesus says, “All right. You understand what the standards are. Go ahead. Do it. Do this and you’ll live.” That’s the first dialogue.
Then the second dialogue. The lawyer probably does not see how far he fails from following the first commandment. Many conservative Jews in Palestine in Jesus’ day thought they really could love God with heart and soul and mind and strength by following the formal exigencies of the law.
He probably thought to himself, “I’m pretty good at observing the kosher food laws, and I follow the prescriptions of the great feasts and go to the temple at the appropriate times, and I understand the law. I study it. I’ve memorized the entire Old Testament.” A man like this in Jesus’ day would have memorized the entire Old Testament in Hebrew and a body of tradition about twice as long all over again.
He was a diligent student, so he probably thought, “On the loving God side, I’m not bad.” On the neighbor side, even there he began to have at least a few twinges of conscience, so we are told, “Wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘Who is my neighbor?’ ” Do you realize how much of our fallenness, our brokenness is displayed in our self-justification? It shows up in thousands of ways, doesn’t it?
Justifying ourselves when we lose a game. Justifying ourselves when we don’t get the grades we wanted. Justifying ourselves when we’re not as pretty as the next person or as macho or have as much money or as emotionally stable or as influential. Self-justification. Self-justification, because it’s part of self-love.
That goes all the way back to the fall. When God confronts Adam and Eve, the first thing out of Adam’s mouth is, “Not my fault! The woman you gave me …!” Not the last time a man has blamed his wife. She’s no better. “Well, that serpent, he deceived me.” Self-justification. It’s intrinsic to our self-deception, to our lying inability to face the intrinsic self-focus, idolatry, and selfishness of our lives which de-Gods God and means we will justify ourselves. “We don’t need God to justify us. We will justify ourselves!” And we are lost.
The very beginning of salvation, of a genuine right relationship with God, is that we’re justified by somebody else. God justifies us. He doesn’t come to Don Carson and say, “You really are pretty good! I’ll accept you.” He says, “You really are a rebel and a sinner. You really are morally defective at the most inner parts of your being, but I declare you not guilty. I declare you righteous in my sight because someone else has paid your price for you. I’ll let you have his righteousness, as it were, and he has your sin.”
That’s the heart of the gospel. This man understands nothing of it. He’s trying to justify himself, so he asks the question, “Who is my neighbor then?” He was an expert in the law, so he knew where this commandment came from to love your neighbor as yourself. Leviticus 19 has two interesting encouragements to love at the horizontal level. The first is in Leviticus 19:18.
“Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” Here, neighbor looks as if it’s someone among your own people, but a little farther down in verse 34, we read, “The foreigners residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”
Here, then, we are to love not only those around us, our own tribe, as it were (our own clan), but even the foreigners and the aliens as a neighbor. You can imagine what’s going on in his mind. “Well, I’m not too bad at loving those close to me, but you know, there is an exegetical question that is raised by the text here, ‘Who is my neighbor?’ ” But even there it’s not because he is trying to find out what the Word of God truly says. He is wanting to justify himself.
Just as he asked the first question to test Jesus, in the second question he’s asking his question to justify himself, and that’s when Jesus asks his second question, but to set it up he tells a story. That’s when we get the parable of the good Samaritan. Before Jesus asks his question by way of response found in verse 36, “Which of these three [the priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan] do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” he tells the story we call the parable of the good Samaritan in verses 30 to 35.
Let me unpack it a wee bit. It’s about a 17-mile walk or ride from Jerusalem to Jericho, mostly downhill in very, very rugged terrain. This man was set upon by robbers who beat him and stripped him and left him half-dead. The details are important. He was stripped. First-century society was highly structured. Different groups could be identified by different language, different accents, and by different clothes.
For example, priests could speak Hebrew. The peasants spoke Aramaic. Along the coast, some still spoke Phoenician. Up in Galilee, many spoke Syriac and Greek. If you were a government official from the Roman side, you spoke Latin. It was a very multi-lingual society, so your accent, your speech, and your language helped to identify you.
In the same way, who you were meant you wore certain kinds of clothes, so you could tell what part of the country a person came from, from what economic stratum, from what role in society largely by just observing this person’s clothes. Priests were usually well-to-do. Almost certainly, this first priest wasn’t walking this 17-mile distance. Almost certainly, he was riding. He had transport. Now he comes across this man by the side of the road, and he’s stripped, so there’s no way of reading how important he was. He might just be a piece of white trash.
Moreover, if he has been set upon and robbed, then the obvious inference is, “There are thieves in the neighborhood. You don’t want to linger here too long. Thank you.” If you’re a priest, there are issues of purity. In those days, many priests went back and forth to Jerusalem. They had to work their own farms and so on, but they were on duty on occasion back up in Jerusalem. In some cases, if you were pretty high up the pecking order, you were two weeks in Jerusalem and two weeks back home, so you traveled back and forth to the family plot.
But there were strict rules about contamination. You’re not supposed to touch a dead body, for example. If you touch a dead body, you could be contaminated for quite a period of time, and that could put off your whole cycle of service. This chap may have been a foreigner anyway. He was stripped. You couldn’t know what he was, so the priest decided to just move to the other side of the track and press on. Then a Levite, with very similar reasoning.… The Levites were assistants to priests.
Then along comes a Samaritan. The Samaritans in those days were pretty much despised by Jews in the South. Historically, they were half-breeds. When the nation of Israel had been, in successive waves, taken off in exile and the poorest of the poor were left in the land, others were brought into the land and they intermarried, and they produced a kind of half-breed religion. They were half-breeds themselves genetically and ethnically, and religiously, they weren’t following all of what we call the Old Testament anymore.
In fact, they had actually set up their own temple in the Samaria area which had been destroyed a century and a half earlier by conservative Jews in the South who thought this was a terrible affront to the temple in Jerusalem. There was no love lost between these two groups. The Samaritans thought they had the truth of the matter, the Jews thought they had the truth of the matter. They wouldn’t even eat together. They had no associations, but this Samaritan is now going down the road, he sees this stripped man unconscious, left for dead, and he stops.
He pours oil and wine into the man’s wounds, used in those days for medicinal purposes, and puts him on his own donkey, so now he’s doing the walking. When he gets to an inn.… Don’t think Marriott here. This isn’t much more than a hovel. It’s not really a clean place, but it’s the best you could do, and the best inns had, at least, some clean straw.
He covers this man’s expenses for a week or two. That’s about what two denarii would cover. Then he says something very important. “If he is not better by then, whatever expenses he incurs, I’ll pay. I’ll be back this way.” If the man still lingered beyond the time paid for, legally in those days, the innkeeper could have then sold him as a slave, so the Samaritan is picking up all costs indefinitely so there is no way he can be manipulated by the innkeeper and sold off as a slave.
Having told the story, Jesus asks.… What would you expect him to ask? Remember the context. The context was the lawyer’s question, “Who is my neighbor?” but now what is Jesus’ story asking? Is it asking, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus doesn’t answer the man’s question. He asks his own question, and his own question is not, “Okay. Who is my neighbor in this story?” Rather, he has told a story which prompts him to ask the question, “Who was the neighbor to somebody else?”
The story has put the whole thing on its head. Not, “Who is my neighbor, so I know whom I have to love?” but “Who is the neighbor in the story to somebody else?” That’s why Jesus asks the question. It’s why he didn’t answer the lawyer’s question right off. “Who is my neighbor?” “Well, let me give you 14 categories of neighbor.”
Instead, he asks another question, because Jesus detects the man’s question is self-justifying. He’s not getting at the heart of the issue, so he tells a story to set up his own question, and the question is, “Who has served as a neighbor to the man set upon by robbers on the Jericho road?” The man replies, “The one who had mercy on him.” The lawyer can’t even say, “The Samaritan.” You don’t want to take on a filthy word like Samaritan if you’re an expert in Jewish law.
It’s hard to find an exact analogy today, but maybe the priest is equivalent to a great and learned, nationally famous theologian, and maybe the Levite is equivalent to a Baptist minister, the equivalent of a pastor in a local Bible church somewhere, and the Samaritan may be an imam in a local Muslim sanctuary. Who served as the neighbor? Well, you don’t want to say the Muslim. “The one who showed mercy.” Keep the language kosher.
Jesus says, “Go and do likewise.” You see, in the sequence of the whole narrative what Jesus is really saying to the man who wants to justify himself is, “Now will you justify yourself before people? Now will you justify yourself before God?
2. The parable in its extended context.
Unless you think I’m reading this too cynically, now look at the parable in its more extended context. We looked at the parable in its immediate context (verses 25 to 37). Now look at some of the surrounding verses. I don’t have time to lay out the whole flow of the argument, but let me pick up some of the surrounding verses.
The previous chapter, chapter 9, verse 44: “ ‘Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you: The Son of Man is going to be delivered over to human hands.’ But they did not understand what this meant. It was hidden from them, so that they did not grasp it, and they were afraid to ask him about it.” Down in verse 51,” As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven …” By means of the cross, death, resurrection, and exaltation. “… Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.”
In other words, Jesus had already begun to explain to his disciples he had not just come as a sort of glorious, messianic, hope-engendering king; he was also coming to be handed over to those who would beat him, torture him, and finally, crucify him, and his own disciples didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. That’s found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They still didn’t have a clue.
Do you remember the famous passage in Matthew, chapter 16, where Jesus asks his own disciples about halfway through his ministry, “Who do people say I am?” and they reply, “Well, some say this, and some say that, and some say something else”? Jesus says, “That’s interesting. What do you say?” Peter replies, “You are the Christ. You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus says, “You’re blessed, Simon son of John. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you.”
That is, “This has not come by ordinary human means, but my Father who is in heaven has revealed this to you. You understand truly that I am the promised Messiah.” When Peter confessed that Jesus is the Messiah, though he confessed truly and though he was blessed by Jesus, do you know what? Peter didn’t quite mean what you and I mean today when we say Jesus is the Messiah or Jesus is the Christ. Even then, he didn’t quite get it. Do you know why?
Because we live this side of the cross and resurrection. We cannot say Jesus is the Messiah or Jesus is the Christ without recognizing he’s the crucified Christ, that he’s the risen Christ, that he’s the sin-bearing Christ, that he’s the exalted Christ. Peter just didn’t have a category for that yet.
By Christ he meant rightly that Jesus is the promised son of David. He’s the anointed one. He’s the promised King. He’s the one who would bring relief. He’s the one who would introduce the kingdom. But at this point, he still didn’t have a category for “He’s also the sin-bearer, the one who reigns from the cross, the one who was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities.”
The proof is what happens next in Matthew 16. From that time on, we’re told, Jesus began to explain how he the Christ had to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things and be set upon and finally crucified and the third day rise again. When Peter heard that, he thought, “Well, I’ve scored theologically once. Let’s have another go. I think Jesus at this point has his theology a bit twisted. I mean, Messiahs don’t die, do they? Especially when you can perform miracles like Jesus can perform miracles. How are you going to kill him?”
So he says, “Never, Lord. This shall not happen to you.” Jesus rounds on him and says, “Get behind me, Satan. You don’t understand.” Do you want more proof? Even after Jesus is in the tomb, after he has been crucified, after he has been buried and we find the apostles in an upstairs room, what are they doing? Are they up there having a quiet sing-song, saying, “Yes! I can hardly wait till Sunday”?
No. They have the doors locked for fear that the police will be after them. They still don’t have a category for a crucified and resurrected Messiah, but in the theology of Luke’s gospel, already it has been introduced. In Luke 9:44 and 45, as we’ve just seen, Jesus has already been talking about how he must go to Jerusalem and be handed over, and his disciples don’t understand.
In Luke 9:51, there Jesus resolutely sets his face to go to Jerusalem knowing this is the trip that will bring him to the cross. In other words, Luke’s gospel as a whole is already preparing the way for what all the Gospels do. Namely, they take us to the passion of Jesus Christ, to his death and suffering.
These are not books that simply give you nice little moralizing stories that tell you how you can become nice Christians. They are stories about who Jesus is and how, as the God-man, he goes to the cross to bear our sins in his own body on the tree. The parable of the good Samaritan is given after that point has already been laid out in the book in chapter 9 in the context of a narrative that builds and builds and builds.
Before our passage which begins at verse 25, in Luke 10:1–23, Jesus appoints 72 in a kind of trainee mission and they go out. They have been given authority to preach and to teach and announce the dawning of the kingdom and to heal people and cast out demons. They return. They return with great joy, with an immense sense of privilege. “Even the demons submit to us in your name.” (10:17)
Verse 18: “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However …” (20:20) “… do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
In other words, Jesus said, “Your cause for rejoicing as my followers should not be because I have vested certain authority in you as my disciples.” In this case, disciples and apostles for the Twelve and disciples for the larger 72. No. Your ultimate cause for rejoicing is that your name is written in heaven. It’s not the exercise of power. Rather, it’s the place of privilege, that you’re known by God, loved by him, accepted by him, and headed for heaven by his own grace.
Some of you may know the name David Martyn Lloyd-Jones. He was probably the most famous preacher in the English language in the twentieth century after Billy Graham. From a local church perspective, preaching with a thorough theological understanding to thousands in his pulpit in London across decades, he became a model for an entire generation of young preachers.
When he was dying of cancer himself and relatively few people had access to him, the man who became his family authorized biographer, Iain Murray, would visit him pretty often, and on one occasion, he asked him this question: “Dr. Lloyd-Jones …” He was always referred to as the doctor, because he was a medical doctor first.
“Dr. Lloyd-Jones, over the decades you have preached the gospel of Christ to countless tens of thousands. You have been instrumental in founding with others entire institutions [Tyndale House, a center in Cambridge] rejuvenating the British equivalent of InterVarsity which served as a mother to so many, the Westminster Fellowship for Ministers, starting the Banner of Truth Trust [a publishing outfit], and your own sermons are still being transcribed and being put into books that bless people all over the world.
Now you’re an old man and you’re dying of cancer and it takes all of your energy to get up, put on your three-piece suit …” Which he continued to do. “… and sit in a chair and edit a manuscript for a while before crawling back into bed. How are you coping now that, basically, you’ve been put on the shelf?”
Wasn’t that a great question? Do you know what Lloyd-Jones said? He quoted this passage from the King James Version, of course, because he was from that vintage. “ ‘Do not rejoice that the demons are subject to you in my name but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.’ I am perfectly content.”
Because, you see, here was a man whose self-identity was not bound up, in the first instance, with his work, even gospel work. Here was a man whose self-identity was not bound up in the former fruitfulness of his life, even though that fruitfulness was very large. Here was a man quite unlike some older men who actually begin to tear down what they have built up because they’re a little resentful now of a younger generation coming along behind them.
His self-identity and, thus, his contentment were bound up, in line with Jesus’ own instruction, with the fact that his name was written in heaven. Chosen by God, known by God, saved by God, accepted by God, secured with his name written in heaven. “I am perfectly content.” That, too, you see is in Luke’s gospel in chapter 10 before you get to the parable of the good Samaritan.
Then after the parable of the good Samaritan (immediately after, in 10:38) we read, “As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, ‘Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!’ ”
If you constrain everything in the Bible by the parable of the good Samaritan ripped out of its context, then what Jesus should have said was, “Hey, Mary! Stop listening to me. Show that you love your neighbor as yourself. Go help Martha.” But what does Jesus answer? “Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
What had she chosen? To be enraptured by the teaching and presence of Jesus. Now tell me in the context of Luke that the parable of the good Samaritan, ripped out of its context, really has as its primary point just to say how to become a Christian by being nice to people.
3. Some pastoral reflections.
A. Eternal life is, indeed, inherited.
It’s a theme that shows up pretty often in the Bible, nowhere more strongly than in the epistle to the Hebrews. It turns on Jesus and his cross, and to inherit it you must belong to the right family. It cannot be earned. The whole flow of Luke’s narrative makes the point.
The pretentiousness of this lawyer is appalling. At the superficial level, it is bad enough. He asks his initial question to test Jesus, and he asks his second question to justify himself, but at a deeper level, it’s more appalling yet, because in the light of all that Scripture says, he actually thinks he can qualify to inherit eternal life. It simply cannot be done.
That suggests at the deepest level itself, outside this story world of the parable of the good Samaritan, the only ultimate Good Samaritan is Jesus himself, because he comes to us stripped down, beaten up, broken, needy, and pays our price, bears us to a place of safety such that we don’t have to bear anything at all, and gives us life.
That’s not quite what the point of the parable is in this context, but you cannot help but draw the inference when you read the book as a whole and see how Jesus comes, in fact, to do at the most profound level for all of the broken people whom he saves exactly what the Good Samaritan did in the physical realm for one broken, unidentified, unidentifiable, half-dead Jew.
B. Nevertheless, Jesus clearly does expect his followers to behave as he himself does.
After all, Jesus is going to the cross (that’s true) to bear our sins (yes, that’s true), and he pays our price (that’s true). Then he says, “If you want to be my disciples, you have to take up the cross and follow me.”
In some sense, though he goes to the cross, he expects his followers to go to the cross, too. Not to pay the price for others, but it’s part of following Jesus. We die to ourselves as he died to his own personal wishes, which prompted him to cry in the garden, “If it’s possible, take this cup from me! Yet, nevertheless, not as I will, but as you.” Part of becoming Jesus’ followers is dying to the kind of self-interest that generates endless self-justification. We die to ourselves and follow him.
Moreover, that point is made so many ways in the New Testament. In 1 Peter 2, for example, we’re told in the strongest terms Jesus’ death is unique in some respects. “He bears our sin in his own body on the tree.” That’s true. Yet, in another sense, he says, “And you are to follow in Jesus’ steps. You, too, go to the cross.” The cross is not merely exemplary, but it is exemplary.
That’s why Jesus can say of his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, “By their fruit, you will know them.” It’s not that their fruit saves them, but “By their fruit you will know them.” It’s why the apostle Paul can write to the Corinthians and say, “Listen! This is what you were.” Then he gives a long list of public sins. “This is what you were, but you have been saved. You have been justified. You have been sanctified. No one who continues to practice these things will enter the kingdom because the gospel does transform people.”
It’s what Jesus says in John’s gospel when he talks about the new birth. He’s looking for analogies to talk about what the new birth is like, and he senses the wind blowing through the streets of Jerusalem around him, and he knows full well, of course, both in Hebrew and in Greek, the word for wind and the word for Spirit are the same word. It depends on the context.
He thinks, “Oh, this is a good occasion to use an analogy,” so he sees the wind pushing along a tumbleweed on the ground or maybe a sycamore leaf blowing back and forth, and he says to Nicodemus, “Let me tell you what the new birth is like. Do you see the effects of the wind, this sycamore tree swaying? Tell me, where does the wind come from?”
In those days, they even knew less than we do about meteorology. Nobody was sitting around thinking, “Well, there’s a high in the Arabian Peninsula. This is a cyclonic wind. There’s a depression moving in from the southeast.” Nobody was thinking in those terms. The wind came. You couldn’t explain it all that well, but you couldn’t deny its results. You can see the tumbleweed dancing across the ground.
Jesus says, “So it is with everyone who is born of God.” You may not be able to explain the mechanics of the new birth very well, but you see the results. You can’t deny it. “So it is with everyone who is born of God,” which is why it is always troubling when someone professes orthodoxy and Christian faith and membership in the local church and all the rest and you can’t see any sign of genuine spiritual transformation or any genuine morality or any genuine love of God or any self-denial. You can’t see any change!
Why on earth should we think they’re a Christian? “So it is with everyone who is born of God.” That’s what the text says. “By their fruit you will know them.” That’s what the text says. Where you have to be very careful at this stage is precisely at this point, for there are some people with very, very sensitive consciences, then, who start looking inwardly.
They start thinking, “Well, have I shown enough fruit really to know that I’m saved? I know we’re supposed to change, and I haven’t changed enough. I can’t really believe this is the grace of God in me.” They live their lives in fear, but listen, the ground of your acceptance before God is your name is written in heaven. It’s what God has done. It’s what Christ performed on the cross. That is the fundamental basis of all of your assurance.
It’s never, ever, ever your good deeds that save you. Never, never. Even after you’ve done a lot of good things because you’re now a very good, mature Christian by all social standards, yet, you know the contamination of your own life and imagination, and you still say, “I am still an unprofitable servant,” and you begin to sympathize with one of the great sayings of John Newton.
Did you see the film Amazing Grace when it came out? Is this a congregation that doesn’t go to movies? They got some parts of it right, but they got some parts of the story really wrong. They did capture one of John Newton’s very famous sayings. Do you recall it? “I know two things: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great God.” They got that one right, but they left out one of his best.
He had been a slave trader. He woke up at night with the sweats all the rest of his life knowing he had himself personally transported 20,000 slaves across the Atlantic, but he was converted, and he became pastor of a little church in Olney where he served faithfully for decades and produced with William Cowper the Olney Hymns.
He wrote, “I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I want to be. I am not what one day I will be, but I am not what I was, and by the grace of God, I am what I am.” That is the biblical, theological framework in which the parable of the good Samaritan does come to us and asks us, “To whom have you been a neighbor?” Because we follow Jesus who went this way first.
C. All this means is as we put this parable into practice it must be as a function of grace.
It must be with a clear understanding of what the gospel itself is. Christ came to save sinners. I don’t know you. Some of you may be here for the first time. Some of you may have been fighting what the gospel of Jesus Christ is for a long time.
Let me tell you, the only way you get eternal life is by bowing the knee in repentance and faith to what God has already done in Jesus. He bears our sin. He takes our curse. He makes us acceptable before God, and we bow before him motivated by his Spirit working powerfully within us so we ourselves cry out from the inmost depths of our beings, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
You may cry that in your own heart right now, and all of the days of our lives and all into eternity, we want to follow this Christ in learning how to become good Samaritans to others because he was, first of all, the ultimate Good Samaritan to us. Let us pray.
Help us, we pray, to be honest about our own sin, honest above all to you. We confess it, and we turn again to the Lord Christ who alone makes us acceptable before you, but we beg of you, also, to work in us so that we want to be conformed to Christ and we want to avoid this endless self-justification, knowing we are justified by another and out of this freedom to follow him. O Lord God, may it be so for every trueborn child of God in this assembly this morning. For Jesus’ sake, amen.
