Luke 10:25-37

Last week we kicked off our series Street Lights, which is about shining the light of God’s love in Jesus Christ right where He has placed us: our neighborhoods, our schools, our workplaces. Our anchor passage is Matthew 22:37-39:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Sounds good, right? Love God. Love people.

But loving people is hard, because some people are hard to love. Think about the neighbor with the loud dog or the messy yard, the coworker with different political beliefs, the obnoxious kid at school, or your own brother or sister. It’s easy to say “Yes, I’ll love my neighbors” on Sunday, and then pick and choose who gets that love the rest of the week.

We start to wonder if Jesus really means everyone. Maybe there’s an exception somewhere in the fine print.

In Luke 10, someone asked Jesus exactly that: “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus answered with one of the most famous stories in the Bible. Many of us hear “Good Samaritan” and think, I know this one. Be nicer. Help people in need. But there’s far more here. Before this is a story about giving mercy, it’s about discovering mercy ourselves.

We justify ourselves by lowering God’s standard (vv. 25-29)

Then an expert in the law stood up to test him, saying, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What is written in the law?” he asked him. “How do you read it?” He answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,” and “your neighbor as yourself.” “You’ve answered correctly,” Jesus told him. “Do this and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Don’t picture an attorney. This man is an expert in the Torah, the Old Testament. He knows his Bible, and he stands up to test Jesus.

Now look at his question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” It’s a strange one, because you don’t earn an inheritance. You receive it. I wondered whether something got lost in translation, but the Greek makes it worse. The word for “do” is in a tense that means one single act he can complete. He’s asking, What’s the one thing I have to do? He’s focused on his efforts and performance.

That’s how we naturally think about God, isn’t it? What do I have to do? How good do I need to be? How do I tip the scales in my favor?

Jesus doesn’t answer directly. He asks the man what the law says, and the man gives a great answer: love God with everything, and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus says, “You’ve answered correctly. Do this and you will live.”

If you know your Bible, that might make you raise an eyebrow. Is Jesus teaching salvation by works? No. Jesus is holding up God’s law in all its fullness. Love God, and not just on Sundays or with your leftovers. Love Him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.

Where Jesus and the man differ is in the man’s optimism that he can pull this off and be justified by it. If we’re honest, we’re much better at loving ourselves. Think about how much of your day revolves around you: what to eat, what to wear, what people think of you, whether you’re comfortable. We don’t put “think about myself” on the calendar. It comes naturally. If the command were “Love yourself with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength,” some of us might have a fighting chance.

So when Jesus says, “Do this and you will live,” you’d expect the man to say, “I haven’t done that. I don’t meet that standard.” But he goes in a different direction. Look at verse 29: “wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?'”

That phrase, wanting to justify himself, is the heart of the whole conversation. He doesn’t want to admit his failure, so instead of facing the standard, he tries to adjust it.

I get that. Recently I played a cooperative board game with some friends, all of us against the game. After three hours, we lost. It absolutely destroyed us. And my first instinct? This game is poorly designed. The rules aren’t tuned right. This isn’t fair. I started proposing house rules. Maybe if we made this part a little easier…

But was the problem the rules, or the players? The players. We simply failed. Instead of admitting I didn’t measure up, I wanted to change the rules until I did.

That’s exactly what self-justification does. It writes house rules for God’s commands. God says, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and the expert says, Okay, but can we clarify who counts as my neighbor? If he can shrink the definition of neighbor, he can lower the demand of love.

We do this all the time. We explain away our anger, rationalize our selfishness, minimize our gossip, excuse our apathy. We move the goalposts until they’re in just the right spot for us to feel righteous. And we draw lines around the neighbors we’re really responsible for loving. Of course I should love those neighbors, but not them. Not the difficult ones, not the ones who see the world differently, not the ones I’d rather avoid.

So be honest: who are you hoping Jesus will give you a pass from loving?

That’s what this man wants, a line drawn around his responsibility. Jesus refuses the bait and answers with a story.

Good neighbors show mercy to anyone in need (vv. 30-37)

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him, beat him up, and fled, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down that road. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way, a Levite, when he arrived at the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan on his journey came up to him, and when he saw the man, he had compassion.”

Jesus begins with something simple: a human being in desperate need, stripped, beaten, and left for dead. Then three people come down the road.

First, a priest. Surely a priest will help. He knows God’s law of love. But he sees the man and passes by. Then a Levite, another religious man who knows the law. Again, he sees the man and passes by.

Jesus doesn’t tell us why, but it’s not hard to imagine the stories they told themselves: I’m already running late. Surely someone else will come along. I’m not the best person to deal with this. Whatever their reasons, both men saw his suffering and kept moving.

Then comes the Samaritan, and we have trouble grasping how shocking that is. We hear “Good Samaritan” and think “good person.” But to a Jewish listener, “good Samaritan” was a contradiction in terms. It sounded like “a good enemy.” Jews and Samaritans shared generations of deep religious and ethnic hostility. Jesus makes the hero the least expected person in the story to dismantle the man’s us-versus-them categories.

Notice the repetition. The priest saw him. The Levite saw him. The Samaritan saw him. What’s different? The Samaritan saw and had compassion. Maybe he thought, What if that were my brother? What if that were me? The difference wasn’t what they saw. It was what happened in their hearts.

And compassion didn’t stay a feeling:

He went over to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on olive oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him. When I come back I’ll reimburse you for whatever extra you spend.”

This is mercy: compassion in action. He goes to the man, treats his wounds, carries him, takes him to shelter, and pays for his ongoing care. It costs him time, convenience, energy, and money.

Then Jesus flips the question. The expert asked, “Who must I love as my neighbor?” Jesus asks, “Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” In other words, stop asking Who am I required to love? and start asking Am I becoming a loving person?

The man answers, “The one who showed mercy to him.” Mercy is the word Jesus has been driving toward. Not the most religious person or the most respected one, but the one who showed mercy. And Jesus says, “Go and do the same.”

That means we see needs and don’t pass them by. It starts with compassion in our hearts, and then we act. Maybe it’s bringing a meal during a hard week, or doing yard work for an older neighbor, or listening to someone’s struggles and encouraging them with the hope you have in Christ. We see. We have compassion. We show mercy.

But can we justify ourselves by doing this well enough?

Here’s where the story brings us back to the original question: What must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus says, “Go and do the same.” So can this man now go and love his neighbors well enough to justify himself? Can we?

No.

The story reveals God’s calling to love with mercy, and at the same time it exposes our inability. If we’re honest, we often don’t see, and we often don’t have compassion. In our flesh, we’re often not good neighbors. And that’s before we even mention the first commandment, to love God with all our being.

We cannot justify ourselves. The opposite is true: we desperately need mercy. We came into this story asking, Who needs my mercy? Jesus shows us something deeper: we need mercy.

Receive God’s mercy

Jesus came to show mercy to sinners. He perfectly fulfilled the law of love that we have failed to fulfill. He loved His Father and He loved others perfectly. He died on the cross and paid the ultimate cost to rescue us. He rose again in victory over sin and death, confirming that His saving work was accomplished.

Now we are justified not by trying to justify ourselves, but by faith in what Jesus has done:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:1)

So stop trying to justify yourself. Turn from sin, place your faith in Jesus alone, and receive His mercy.

Show God’s mercy

And out of that mercy, Jesus sends us: “Go and do the same.” He calls us and empowers us by His Spirit to be people of compassion.

Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful. (Luke 6:36)

We don’t do this to earn His mercy. We do it in response to the mercy we’ve already received. The love of Christ compels us.

So see your neighbors. Don’t just see the houses; see the people. Care about what’s happening behind their front doors, and let it touch your heart. Then let that compassion become action, even when it costs you something, and grow to love extravagantly.

Because God’s mercy makes us neighbors who show mercy to anyone in need.

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Reflect this week:

• Where have you been writing “house rules” for God’s commands?
• Who is one neighbor you’ve been tempted to pass by on the other side?
• What would it look like to receive Christ’s mercy today, before you try to show it to anyone else?