The Good Samaritan
This parable is introduced to its readers by a question from an "expert in the law" (Luke 10:25). He stood up to test Jesus (who was seated, as he was teaching), revealing that he was not genuinely looking for information but for some statement that would enable him to make an accusation against Jesus.
In Luke 10:27 we see that the lawyer showed insight; Jesus himself summed up the law in much the same way (Matt. 22:37-40). See WLC 102. Jesus responded to the lawyer's answer in Luke 10:27 saying, "You have answered correctly Do this and you will live" (Luke 10:28). Two readings are possible: (1) Perfect love for God perfectly fulfills the law and requires no forgiveness, but since such love is impossible no one can live. (2) Love for God implies faithful reliance on God for forgiveness, which results in life.
Jesus then proceeds with the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37). This parable answers the question, "Who is my neighbor?" and not the question, "What must one do to be saved?"
Hughes recounts the story:
Jesus, knowing the lawyer knew the answer, countered, "What is written in the Law . . . 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" [Deuteronomy 6:4, 5]; and, "Love your neighbor as yourself'"[Leviticus 19:18]. 'You have answered correctly,' Jesus replied. 'Do this and you will live'" (Luke 10:26-28). The lawyer looked foolish, having been made to answer his own question and then being kindly told to practice the answer he had just preached. How embarrassing!
The lawyer was flustered and wanted to save face. "But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, 'And who is my neighbor?'" (Luke 10;29). His response itself was deeply telling. He obviously had been thinking about the breadth that is implicit in the demand to love others as oneself. Certainly it must be restricted to Israel, and even further to those who are of character, he thought to himself. "We can't love everyone! Where do you draw the line? What about tyrants? What about blasphemers? Really, Jesus, who is my neighbor" His questioning was reasonable enough. But it also shows that "wise and learned" as he was, he was not completely tracking with Jesus.
A Priest
The first person to discover the poor man on the Jericho road was a member of the cloth: "A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side" (Luke 10: 31). Jericho was one of the main country spots where priests lived. So the priest was likely returning from performing holy service in the temple. If the man lying on the roadside was dead and the priest touched him, the priest would be ceremonially defiled (cf. Leviticus 21:1ff.). So rather than risk defilement, he passed by on the far side of the road. To preserve legal cleanliness, he heartlessly transgressed the entire second table of the Law. Oh, was he pure!
A Levite
"So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side" (Luke 10:32). Levites were not as high-ranking as priests, though they were highly privileged. They were the temple liturgists. They oversaw the temple cultus and services. The language of the text gives the sense that he actually went up close to the man to see him, and then passed by on the other side.
As Jesus told the story, the lawyer and his hearers were expecting something other than what they got. They expected the threefold rhythm of the Semitic story form to reveal that an Israelite layman came by and helped the man. Many people were unhappy with the clergy, and they expected Jesus to say that an average good-guy Jew came along and showed the clergy up. That would be a slap at the establishment, but many, perhaps most, would applaud it.
The Samaritan
No one expected Jesus' to finish the story the way he did: "But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him" (Luke 10:33). A Samaritan? Not long before, James and John had urged the Lord to call down fire from Heaven to destroy some inhospitable Samaritans (cf. Luke 9:54). The hatred between Judea and Samaria went back over 400 years and centered around racial purity, because while the Jews had kept their purity during the Babylonian Captivity, the Samaritans had lost theirs by intermarrying with Assyrian invaders. In the Jews' eyes the Samaritans were compromising mongrels. Also, the Samaritans had built a rival temple on Mount Gerizim only to have it destroyed by the Jews in Maccabean times.
So in Jesus' day the hatred was ingrained and utterly implacable. The rabbis said, "Let no man eat the bread of the Cuthites (Samaritans), for he who eats their bread is as he who eats swines flesh." The ultimate insult came in the arsenic-laced Jewish prayer that concluded, " and do not remember the Cuthites in the Resurrection." Add to this the fact that in Jesus' day some Jewish travelers had been murdered in Samaria, and that some Samaritans had defiled the temple with human bones, and you can begin to imagine the shock of Jesus' introducing a Samaritan not as a villain but as a hero! Indeed, if the Jew in the story were not half-dead, he would probably push away the loathsome Samaritan.But the hated Samaritan's pity and compassion was extraordinary:
"He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins 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'"(Luke 10:34, 35).
How beautiful this was! The Samaritan applied ancient first aid, humbly gave his donkey to the Jew and walked alongside, gave the innkeeper two silver coins (enough for twenty-four days' food), and promised to pay the whole bill when he returned. Instead of being the battered Jew's worst nightmare, he was his best dream!
So, in simple terms Jesus came to save his enemies. He finds them when they are dead in trespasses and sin - unable to help themselves. He tends to their wounds. Instead of condemning them - he sets them on his donkey - kings they are. He brings them to the inn - a place of resting in him. He pays their full price of their continual growth and stay and promises to return.
The driving power of Jesus' parable can only be felt in light of the pervasive influence of the Shema - the command to love God with the totality of one's being. It was recited every morning and every night by every faithful Israelite. The priest and the Levite in the story had intoned it that morning before they bypassed the half-dead fellow Jew, and they said it again at sunset. Their neglect of their neighbor was sandwiched between pious declarations of their love for God. Do we ever do the same?
The moral (or actually, immoral) dissonance roared, and the lawyer who had asked the question could hear it loud and clear. He was not a secular lawyer. He knew the Mosaic Law, the Torah. His forehead displayed a phylactery (a small, black calfskin box that contained the words of the Shema) - symbolic obedience to the challenge immediately following the Shema:
These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads (Deuteronomy 6:6-8).
His very appearance was a statement that he was devoted to loving God and fulfilling his Law, at least the first half of it. So he could feel the dissonance in the parable. Jesus radical teaching, which included loving ones neighbor as oneself (Leviticus 19:18), made perfect sense since such neighbor-love fulfilled the second half of the Law. But Jesus' parable made it painfully clear that the lawyer fell short.
A CLOSING QUESTION (Luke 10:36-37)
Jesus presented a pinpoint application in his closing question: "'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'" (Luke 10:36, 37). The hated Samaritan - not the priest or the Levite (and by implication, not the question-asking lawyer) - the Samaritan was the keeper of the Law. He loved those who came his way as himself, and this showed that he loved God with all his heart.
Jesus' command, "Go and do likewise" was the answer to the lawyer's question - the only answer. But it was an impossible one - unless one truly loves God with heart, soul, body, and mind, which will happen if we let him make our heart what he meant it to be.