September 23, 2025 • 57 mins
Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan isn’t just about kindness—it’s a salvation issue: inheriting eternal life means loving enemies and being a neighbor, not deciding who is or is not our neighbor.
We’ve all heard the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37). It’s taught in Sunday School, quoted in politics, and even written into “Good Samaritan laws.” But in Jesus’ original setting, this parable wasn’t a simple moral lesson. It was explosive—a radical redefinition of salvation, mercy, and what it means to belong to God’s people.
In this episode of What the Bible Actually Says, we dig into:
· Why the lawyer’s question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” sets the stage for a salvation issue, not a kindness tip.
· How Jesus flips the question from “Who is my neighbor?” to “Will you be a neighbor?”
· The shocking history of the Samaritans, and why making a Samaritan the hero would have felt like dynamite.
· The meaning of “gut-level compassion” in the Greek text—and why Luke reserves it for moments that reveal God’s heart.
· Why this parable is really about loving your enemies and crossing boundaries we’re trained to guard.
This parable challenges us not just to show mercy, but sometimes to receive mercy from those we least expect. And it confronts our own boundaries: politics, race, religion, class, even personal history.
If you’ve ever wondered what the Good Samaritan really means, this episode will give you more than a moral tale. It will challenge you with Jesus’ revolutionary vision of salvation, eternal life, and costly love in a divided world.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:15):
What's up everybody, Welcome to the What the Bible Actually says
podcast. I'm your host Tyson put off and
I'm glad to have you here today.Whether you have been here
before or your first time listener, I just can't tell you
how much I appreciate your support and you listening to
this podcast. So First off, really good news
after 20 long years of praying about and thinking about and
(00:40):
researching the Life and Times and messianic campaign of Jesus,
the three volume project that I've put together with Hey Call
Publishing Co is now out. All three volumes are published
and I can't tell you how excitedI am about the way they turned
out, about the practicality of using them to study the gospels
and study the life of Jesus, about the insights that have
(01:03):
come out of this 3 volume project.
All three volumes are now available in ebook and in print.
I'll put those links on the web page.
And I'm, I'm truly grateful for your support of this podcast up
to this point. And I am truly grateful for
those of you who've reached out for your support for the
conversations I've had. I'm grateful because in all of
(01:25):
the hate and the violence and the division and the confusion
over who Jesus really is, which side he's on, things like that,
it's absolutely incredible. It's so awesome to see so many
people out there who have a genuine heart for the Jesus
revealed in Scripture in the Gospels and the Jesus who really
lived and walked and breathed and talked and launched A revolt
against the world's powers 2000 years ago.
(01:49):
Thank you for your heart for Jesus.
Thank you for your willingness to set aside your disagreements
with others and just love peopleand just love Jesus like he
commanded us to do and like he showed us to do.
So thank you. I also want to thank you for
your patience with me. All right, this is a lot longer
intro. If you're new to this podcast,
(02:09):
then I tend to give. I like to just jump in, get
straight to the point. But it's been a while.
We've taken an unexpected hiatusfrom putting out more episodes
over the course of this summer. With the kids being home
whenever we're not at basketballand running around and running
and sports and workouts and thensome trips.
We were able to squeeze into themix this summer.
(02:31):
Big life changes in our family in terms of careers and work,
plus teaching and publishing this summer just sort of
unfolded in some unexpected ways.
And I can't bring myself to put out the content that doesn't
meet a certain standard. So I made the decision to use
this summer kind of the margins between all of these moments to
(02:51):
do a few things in preparation for the fall, for gearing back
up and getting back to recordingepisodes.
So thank you for your patience with me.
And I can't tell you how excitedabout what we've got in store.
I am. And for this next phase in the
podcast, it's it's going to be exciting.
We've got a lot of good things happening, so thank you again
(03:12):
for your support. Thanks for sticking with me with
this long introduction. Let's get into it.
All right, let me ask you a question.
What if the most dangerous thingJesus ever said about love was
that your enemy might be your neighbor?
Think about that for a moment. I'll ask it again.
What if the most dangerous thingJesus ever said about love was
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that your enemy might be your neighbor?
Now we've all heard the story ofthe Good Samaritan.
It's one of those parables that seems to have spilled out of
Sunday school and into just about every part of culture.
Politicians use it. Hospitals and nonprofits are
named after it. You hear it on the news any time
someone stops on the side of theroad to help a stranger change a
(03:56):
tire. We even have Good Samaritan laws
that protect people who try to help in emergencies, sort of
like the one that Jerry and Elaine and George and Kramer
break in the final season of Seinfeld back in 98, my senior
year in high school. And so when you hear this
parable, the Good Samaritan, most of us instantly think this
(04:18):
story's about kindness. Be nice, help people in need,
just be a good person, even if it's inconvenient for you,
right? And I mean, sure, that's not
wrong, OK? It's not wrong.
That element is built into the story.
Problem is, if we stop there, weactually miss what's going on in
this story completely. In Jesus's day, this parable
(04:42):
wouldn't have come across as a little more lesson about lending
a hand to someone who just needsneeds a boost, needs a little
help. It would have come across as a
political and a religious explosion.
That's what I want us to see here today, because when Jesus
told this parable, he wasn't just saying help people.
He was redefining what it means to belong to the people of God.
(05:05):
He was talking about a salvationissue.
As we're about to see. He was blowing up the categories
of who's in and who's out. He was turning a test question
about eternal life into a radical redefinition of love,
neighbor, mercy. To get there, to get to where we
need to get to understand this story, we, we have to step back
(05:27):
and, and understand the setup. Who's asking the questions?
What do they mean by neighbor? Who are the Samaritans?
Why would this story have shocked or offended the people
who heard it? So this moment takes place in
the fall or winter of 28 AD OK, according to the chronology that
(05:48):
I that I lay out in the Jesus books and throughout this
podcast series, it's late in Jesus campaign and it's between
the feast of booths or Sukkah and Hanukkah where his opponents
are going to try to stone him. So it's in the I holiday season,
in the Jewish calendar, in the fall slash winter, and I've
placed it in scene 19 of my books.
(06:09):
So it's not far from Jesus's final confrontations in
Jerusalem, where in just a few short months he's going to be
arrested and crucified. So this is this is getting to
the end. He's well known in the Galilee,
he's well known in Judea. By the time he's got a lot of
friends, he's got a lot of enemies, a lot of followers, a
lot of opponents. And Luke places this parable in
chapter 10, Luke chapter 10, right after a pretty significant
(06:33):
moment, which is going to be critically important for
understanding the meaning of theGood Samaritan parable that I've
literally never heard talked about.
And that is invaluable to understanding its true meaning.
Jesus had just sent out a group of 70 or 72, depending on which
manuscript you're looking at. Disciples, OK?
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They went out to heal the sick, to announce the Kingdom and
depend completely on the hospitality of strangers.
And this is in Luke 9. Remember, the Good Samaritan
parable is in Luke 10. Jesus sends out these disciples
in Luke 9. So they went out to heal.
They went out to announce the Kingdom and they were supposed
to depend on other people's support.
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They didn't have anything with them.
So they come back excited, saying that even demons submit
to us in Jesus names. And Jesus rejoices and he tells
them that God has hidden things from the wise and the powerful
and the and and has revealed these things to the little
children. So it's in that atmosphere, OK.
It's on the tails of that episode, that event when Jesus
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is flipping expectations upside down.
And at that point, that's when alawyer stands up to test him.
So when Luke says lawyer here, don't picture a modern day
attorney. This isn't someone suing people,
drafting contracts. This is an expert in the Torah,
in the Jewish scriptures, especially the first five books
of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and
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Deuteronomy. He would have been trained to
interpret the law of Moses and apply it to life.
So remember that in the Bible, this is a kind of a Christian
misunderstanding of what the theLaw of Moses actually is.
We here talk about the law of Moses and we automatically place
it into a religious category. We think, oh, Law of Moses,
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religious laws, eating laws, whoyou can contact, who you cannot
contact, laws that relate to your religious life.
But in the ancient world, the world of ancient Israel and in
Jesus world, the Law of Moses was the actual law.
You were punished based on violations of Moses's laws.
So if you violated A purity law,you could get in trouble
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legally, not just religiously, right?
It was all mixed in together. So this lawyer comes to Jesus
and he's less like a preacher and less like a lawyer that we
think of today. But he would, he's like a
theologian and a legal scholar rolled into one.
So he's an expert in the law. And Luke tells us that he stood
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up to test Jesus. That word test is important.
It means that this wasn't just acasual question.
He, he didn't have an honest question in mind.
He wanted to probe Jesus and andtry to trap it.
So the question that this lawyerasks teacher, what must I do to
inherit eternal life? I want you to hear the question
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and just stop and think about actually what he's asking.
Don't gloss over it. Don't Christianize this,
teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
OK, there's two things that you need to understand here.
One, he's asking a question about eternal life.
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When I was growing up and in thethe Christian world that I'm
surrounded by, there are a lot of debates about primary issues
versus secondary issues in Christian theology.
Primary issues have to do with salvation.
Things that are crucially important toward where you go
when you die, if you're a believer, if you're a follower,
if you're, if you're 1 of Jesus's or not.
(10:11):
Secondary issues are not salvation issues.
They're not critically importanton that level.
They're important because Jesus talked about them, Paul talked
about them, the Bible talks about them here, there, but
they're not the salvation issues, right?
In the Christian world, you'll hear talk about those are issues
where a denomination can differ from another denomination in
(10:33):
this or that secondary belief because they're not salvation
issues we're dealing with. The lawyer here asks Jesus an
overt, explicit question about eternal life.
What must I do to inherit eternal life?
So he's asking a salvation issue, which means that we have
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to rethink automatically before we even get to the Good
Samaritan parable, the category we place it into.
So we've got this this set of drawers and we place these types
of questions and issues and Bible verses into them based on
what category in the Christian system they belong to.
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We've got salvation issues in one.
We've got politics in another drawer, social issues, moral
issues, business issues, how I run my business, that's in
another drawer, and this one's in that kindness drawer.
That acts of kindness drawer we tend to place it in, but Jesus
takes it out of that and he putsit into a different drawer, into
the salvation issue drawer. And that's what the lawyer is
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actually asking. What must I do to inherit
eternal life? So that's the first thing.
Second thing, he doesn't say what must I believe but what
must I do? And Jesus doesn't correct him.
I think this is important especially for American
Christianity to understand. We have this, especially in the
evangelical world that I'm a part of.
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It's all about belief. People literally can go and do
and be horrible to other people,but as long as in so many
circles they say the right things and they say that they
believe the right things, none of that matters.
And Jesus says, uh, uh, that's not how it works.
And just a little caveat, we canget into this at a different
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time. I'm not saying you earn your
salvation by doing certain things, but Jesus here makes it
very clear as we're about to find out that there are certain
behaviors that he expects to seefor those who want a claim on
eternal life. So it's a salvation issue.
Behavior all of a sudden does become part of this equation and
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not just belief what you believeyou do.
A lot of people, for example, say they want to win at
basketball, but then they don't Co practice, they don't go put
in the work. We talk about this with my kids
all the time. Do you really want to win or do
you just want to win because theeffort you put into it is going
to show? And my kids really want to win
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at this point because they get up at 5:00 in the morning and we
go to the YMCA before school andwe work on their skills.
And then they go to practice in the morning.
And then they go to practice in the afternoon and they work on
their skills. And then they come home and they
work on their skills. And that tells me that it's not
just, yeah, I'm saying I believethis, that I want to win.
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They're putting in the effort, the outward action they're doing
the do that suggests and demonstrates that they truly
believe it inside. So this lawyer comes up to Jesus
and he says, not what must I believe?
But he says, what must I do? Because he's just skipping to
the point because he knows. And Jesus knows action proves
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belief when it comes to salvation.
But then I think what Jesus doeshere is he shifts the focus of
what types of action demonstratesomeone's true belief in him
away from these interpersonal issues.
And we're going to get to the Good Samaritan parable in a
second where Jesus does all of this.
But I want you to notice something.
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If it's a matter of doing that proves what I believe, then what
do? What do we typically hear in in
Christian sermons, in Christian books, in Christian
conversations? Well, how are you doing in your
personal life? How are you doing in your
thought life? How are you doing in your
feelings life? We interpersonalize it and we
privatize it and we make it all about how I'm doing inside.
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And Jesus is saying, huh? And this lawyer's asking, and
he's trying to trap Jesus into saying something that he doesn't
want to say. So Jesus is very clear as to
what he says someone must do, how their behavior must look,
and what category of behavior they need to focus on in order
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to inherit eternal life. And note too that eternal life
in Jesus world wasn't just aboutgoing to heaven when you die.
It wasn't just about saying a prayer, living on the way you
live, and then going to heaven when you die.
It was about participating in the life of the age to come, the
life of the world to come. You'll see that in ancient
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Jewish writings all over the place, the time when God would
set the world right, defeat evil, and renew creation.
There is this continuity betweenlife now and life in the future.
Eternal life meant living under God's reign, the Kingdom here
and now, even in this life, and extending that into the future
when God would make everything right, recreate everything, make
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it all really good. All right, with that background,
let's look at how Jesus answers the question.
Jesus answers this question withanother question which is very
rabbinic of Jesus and it's very Jesus like he says, what's
written in the law? How do you read it?
Lawyer knows. So the lawyer, he replies by
quoting 2 key texts. First from Deuteronomy 6, Love
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the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with
all your strength, with all yourmind, The Shema.
And the second one from Leviticus 19.
Love your neighbor as yourself. So these were already seen in
Jewish tradition as central to the law.
Jesus didn't make this up. Everybody knew Deuteronomy 6 and
Leviticus 19 were critical in. How?
(16:22):
Someone behaved if they were a member of God's people, they
were central to the law. So when the lawyer puts them
together, he's given a solid answer and Jesus agrees.
Jesus says you've answered correctly, do this and you're
going to live. So do this and you're saved.
He says so. Then the lawyer, he doesn't
quite get what he wants. He doesn't quite get that trap.
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Situation for Jesus. Because he says it, Jesus
confirms that he's got it right,Luke says.
But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, And who is my
neighbor? So that little phrase wanting to
justify himself tells you a lot about what's going on here.
The lawyer isn't really looking for a definition of neighbor.
He's looking to narrow the definition.
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He's not looking to expand that definition because he wants to
help someone that he doesn't know if he can help or not.
He's looking to draw lines and limit who his neighbors actually
are. He wants Jesus to say your
neighbor is your fellow Israelite, or maybe your
neighbor is your fellow law keeper, another lawyer.
That's your neighbor. The neighbor in your gated
neighborhood, The neighbor in your synagogue.
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Something neat and manageable. Because in the traditions of
Jesus's time, neighbor didn't actually mean everyone, at least
how it was interpreted. It meant the people inside your
covenant community, your own people.
And Leviticus 19 says do not seek revenge or bear a grudge
against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor
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as yourself. And the phrase your people is
important. Most assume that that means
Israelites, and so the lawyer's question is basically, OK, fine,
love your neighbor, but let's beclear, who counts, who
qualifies, and who can I leave out?
So that's the setup for the parable, and it's important we
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feel that tension before Jesus starts telling the story.
So one more aspect is criticallyimportant here.
Before we talk about the parableitself, we've got to pause and
talk about one of the key players in the story, the
Samaritans, because if we don't understand who they are, we
won't feel the punch of what Jesus is saying.
The Samaritans weren't just generic outsiders.
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They weren't pagans in the senseof worshipping Zeus or some
random Canaanite gods. They were much closer to home,
and that's what made this tension so fierce.
So I've heard a lot of bad takesabout who the Samaritans were.
They were these awful people. They were terrible.
They were wicked and Pagan and just horrible culture.
And that they couldn't be any farther from the belief system
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and the behavior system, some ofthe true people of God.
But that's just not true. OK, so here's a quick historical
rundown. So you remember King David, King
Solomon, they united, the tribescreated what's called the United
Kingdom. That's when the northern tribes
and the southern tribes all united under 1 banner.
Well, after Solomon wrecked the place and his sons and the
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descendants and the kings took over, the Kingdom became divided
into two. The northerners were the
Israelites and that was the Galilee and Samaria, and then
the southerners were the Judaites, the southern Kingdom,
and they centered around Jerusalem.
So over in Mesopotamia, which ismodern day Iraq, the Assyrians
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and the Babylonians battled backand forth.
Well, the Assyrians, when they were in power, they came in to
try to conquer the northerners and the southerners in the land
of Israel and Judah, and they were successful in the seven
hundreds BCE. They came in and they destroyed
the northern Kingdom. So they destroyed the Israelites
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who were living in the Galilee and Samaria.
At the time. And they took a bunch of them
into exile. Which means they took a bunch of
them back to Assyria and then they put their own people in the
land of Samaria. They basically repopulated it.
When you conquered a land, you would put your own people there
so that you had loyalties there and and people knew the system
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that you wanted to impose on those newly conquered peoples.
And that's what they did. So the Assyrians, when they
resettled this land, they replaced the native Israelites
with their own people. And over time the native
Israelites who stayed there intermarried with these Assyrian
folks and became this distinct people group, what we know now
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as the Samaritans. They still worshipped the God of
Israel, but they had their own distinct traditions.
They believe the true holy site wasn't Jerusalem like the
Judaites, but Mount Geraldine inSamaria.
They accepted only the Pentateuch, which is the first
five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers in
Deuteronomy, but not the prophets, not the Psalms, not
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the other books of the Old Testament, of the Hebrew Bible,
And they saw themselves as the true heirs of Israel's faith.
This also helps to contextualizeJesus's encounter with the woman
at the well in Job 4, if you go read that.
So meanwhile, the Judaites in the South centered around
Jerusalem and we'd later know and refer to as the Jewish
people. They saw the Samaritans as
compromised, as as basically half breeds or heretics.
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And there were centuries of hostility.
Remember, this took place in seven hundreds BC, so 700 years
before Jesus's lifetime. And by Jesus's day, there'd been
a lot of violence that had takenplace between the Jews and the
Samaritans. Josephus, the 1st century Jewish
historian that everybody talks about, he actually tells stories
of Samaritans attacking Jewish pilgrims who are traveling
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between Jerusalem and the northern lands and then Jews
retaliating in the same way. And the hostility wasn't a
polite religious disagreement. It was deep.
It was social, ethnic, religiousand political.
So when we hear Samaritan, we might think outsider, or some of
us might even not think that far.
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We might just think, oh Jesus isusing this person as an example
of how to treat people well. But for a.
Jew in Jesus world in the 1st century, this meant something
much sharper. It meant enemy.
And not an enemy far away in some distant land, but someone
close enough to be a daily immediate threat to your own
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survival. It's the difference between
having an enemy living across the ocean in a different
country, or having an enemy living in the house next door to
you. The Samaritans and the Jews live
next door to each other, and they hated each other, so they
each saw each other as a threat to each people group's own
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survival. It was a big deal, a big
rivalry. So when the lawyer asks, who is
my neighbor, he's expecting a discussion about insiders versus
outsiders, maybe a debate about whether proselytes or converts
can count people who convert to the faith.
But he's not expecting Jesus to make the hero of the story none
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other than a Samaritan. Nobody is expecting this, so
Jesus begins this parable. This is in Luke 10.
Check it out. Last thing I want you to do is
to think I'm spinning things in one.
Direction or another? So I want you to have the text
with you, and I want you to dig into it.
So Jesus begins a parable. A man was going down from
Jerusalem to Jericho when he wasattacked by robbers.
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They stripped him, beat him and went away, leaving him half
dead. So if you've ever been to
Israel, it helps to picture the geography.
The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was famous in the
ancient world. Not in a good way.
Jerusalem sits in the high Hill Country.
It's about 2500 feet above sea level.
Jericho lies in the Jordan Valley, more than 800 feet below
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sea level. Remember the Jordan Valley and
the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth?
So that's a drop of over 3000 feet in just about 17 miles.
So that is a steep and rocky andtwisting descent from Jerusalem
to Jericho. And that's where this story,
this parable takes place. And because of that terrain, the
road had a terrible reputation. So you think of a narrow
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mountain pass or an alleyway. You're warned not to walk down
at night. Ambushes were common.
Bandits could hide in the rocks and leap out at travelers.
If you're going uphill, you werealready exhausted just from the
incline. Even as late as the 19th
century, people wrote stories about attacks on that same
exact. Road.
So when Jesus starts his story in this way, his audience,
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they're like, yeah, man, I know.I've been there.
I've heard about it. I've seen it with my own eyes.
This happened to me before. This happened to my buddy.
They know this road, they know it's dangers, they know it's a
difficult. Trek to make.
Both uphill and downhill, they've heard the stories.
And they've seen them. The traveller in Jesus parable
is jumped, stripped of everything, beaten and left half
(25:00):
dead. And that half dead part, it's
important. He's not clearly alive.
He's not clearly dead. He's in this sort of Gray zone.
Then comes the first passer by, a priest.
So if you're in Jesus audience, a 1st century listener, this is
promising. Priests were the religious
leaders. They were descendants of Aaron.
They served in the temple, they offered sacrifices, LED worship.
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They were respected, honorable holy figures of society.
They weren't poor by any means. They didn't take a vow of
poverty. They were well off and very
powerful. And if anyone is going to stop
and help, surely it's a priest. So Jesus says he, the priest saw
the man and he passed by on the other side.
Then comes a Levite. Levites weren't priests that
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they were priestly. They're in that priestly
religious class and they assisted in the temple.
They were respected for their service.
They were representatives of Godhimself, just like the priests
were. Once again, listeners in Jesus
audience would have expected himto do the right thing.
And again, what's Jesus say? He saw the man and passed by on
the other side. So why'd they pass by?
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Jesus doesn't say. Some interpreters speculate they
were worried about purity laws. If the man was dead, touching
him would have made him rituallyunclean, which would disqualify
a priest or a Levite from templeservice until they went through
the proper purification. Others say maybe they were
afraid the robbers were still lurking nearby and stopping
would put them in danger. Others point out, though, that
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in the parable, Jesus says that they are traveling down from
Jerusalem, not up. So they're leaving Jerusalem
toward Jericho, not going from Jericho to Jerusalem.
So that would mean that they're not headed to do temple duties.
They're leaving them because they've already completed them.
So purity is not even the issue here.
Whatever the reason is, Jesus doesn't say.
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But they don't stop. They pass by on the other side.
So then comes the twist. Jesus says.
But a Samaritan, as he travelled, came where the man
was, and when he saw him, he took pity on him, took pity.
The Samaritan took pity on the beaten man.
That's the moment when the crowdwould have gasped.
We've already talked about who the Samaritans were, the rivals,
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the enemies that those people ofthe 1st century.
And for Jesus's audience, the Samaritan was not the hero of
any story. In fact, if you were telling a
parable that began with a priestand a Levite, the natural third
character would be an ordinary Israelite layperson.
That's kind of the rhythm. The priest, Levite, Israelite.
That's the way this sort of three fold setup went in Jewish
(27:36):
storytelling. It's kind of like a priest, a
rabbi, and a minister walked into a bar.
There was a rhythm to it, and Jesus deliberately breaks the
rhythm. So instead of an Israelite, he
inserts none other than a Samaritan.
The last person on earth you'd expect this is the enemy.
And what does the Samaritan do? Jesus says he went up to him and
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bandaged his wounds, pouring oiland wine on him.
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'll reimburse
you for any extra expense you may have.
(28:20):
So the details are over the top.Oil and wine aren't cheap.
These are common remedies in theancient world, but they're not
free. Carrying the man on his donkey
means the Samaritan is walking while the wounded man rides.
At the end, he doesn't just drophim off, he cares for him
himself. Then he pays extra to denarii.
That's basically two days wages for a laborer, which is enough
(28:42):
to cover a couple weeks at the end.
And on top of that, he says openup my tab, put anything else
that he needs on it. I want you to think about this
when, when you or I drive by a homeless person on the street or
someone on the street asking formoney, what's our first
response? What bad decisions did he or she
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make to get in the situation they're in?
Oh, they don't look too homeless.
They, they, they have a little pudge in their cheeks.
I would absolutely not give themmoney because look at those
shoes they're wearing, right? Or we ask questions like
actually, I've actually had thisrationale explained to me by
someone very respectable in one of the communities that I used
(29:26):
to be in. And they said I, I make it a
personal policy that I don't give to homeless people because
I don't know what they're going to do with that money.
And I think a lot of us probablyshare that.
Oh, they're going to go buy drugs.
I'm not giving them money. I'll give them maybe a
Chick-fil-A, I'll bring them a meal.
We don't ever do that, but we say that's what we'll do because
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we don't want to just leave an open tab because we don't know
what got them into their situation.
Why did this man walking on the road get himself into the
situation? What did he owe someone money?
Did he burn some bridges and they beat him up and took his
stuff from him and left him for dead?
We asked these questions. The Samaritan didn't ask this
(30:07):
question at all. He took care of him and he said
I'll pay for anything he needs, just open my tab.
It's generous. It's sacrificial, it's risky.
So imagine you're driving your car late at night and your car
breaks down. Let's say you're on a trip.
You're by yourself. You don't have cell service.
(30:27):
You're in a place out far away from any major cities or towns.
You break down the roughest, roughest place you can imagine
and a couple passes by. They look like nice people.
They look just like people from your small group, but they keep
driving. Same thing happens couple more
times, gets late into the night and the one who stops walks up
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to you and you're terrified because you've been taught that
this is the type of person, thisis the color of person.
This is the demographic that you're supposed to hate.
But they're the ones that come up and ask you if you're OK and
they help you. They pay for your hotel.
They check back the next day to make sure you're OK.
Turns out to be the one person you'd least expect.
It's someone you've been taught to distrust, someone you've been
(31:14):
taught to fear. Someone you've been taught is
dangerous. Someone you've been taught is
evil. Someone you've been taught to
demonize yourself. That's the feel of Jesus's
parable. The Samaritan doesn't just help,
he goes way beyond. He shows mercy that actually
costs him something, and he shows that mercy in spite of the
fact that in this story, he's the demon.
(31:37):
He's the bad guy in the listener's eyes.
And here's another small detail.But it's really important.
So remember how I said the man was half dead?
So if you were lying there unconscious, he doesn't have
clothes on. It would have been nearly
impossible to tell at a glance whether he was Jewish or
Samaritan or whatever he was. So ethnic identity in that world
often showed through clothing, what you wore, or your accent.
(32:00):
Remember, Peter is identified when he denies Jesus by his
accent. Community ties would identify
you. But here's a here's a guy
without clothes. He's lying on the side of the
path without words. He can't speak, so you can't
identify him by how he speaks. He's beaten beyond recognition.
He's anonymous and that means that the Samaritans compassion
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isn't about recognizing a friendor an ally.
It's about seeing a human being in need and responding.
That's it. He's not basing his compassion
on the fact that this half dead man is a Republican like he is,
or a Democrat like he is, or a citizen is, of of his own nation
like he is, or of his own ethnicgroup, or of his own social
(32:41):
group or economic class, or member of his church or his
synagogue. He sees a hurting man and he
responds with pity, Luke says, or with deep compassion.
He doesn't ask questions like, what the heck did this joker do
to get in such a terrible situation in life?
He just sees a guy who's been handed a terrible card, whether
it's his own fault or not, and he says I'm here to help.
(33:03):
He's the only character who actually does something
constructive. The priest and the Levite are
doing what they've been taught to do.
They're defined by avoidance. Their identity is in what they
aren't and what they don't touch.
As representatives of God, they've created a system in
which they're defined by purity holiness.
(33:23):
So we don't touch what we think would put a stain on God's
holiness. And as we talked in the previous
episode, go back and listen. God's holiness is not scared of
being defiled. The priest and the Levite act
like it is. The Samaritan acts like it's
not. They pass by on the other side.
The Samaritan goes and gets his hands dirty, gets his hands
(33:43):
bloody, and he gives himself in service to the hurting human
being that he finds on the road.So Jesus has flipped the script.
It's not the religious leaders and the insiders who stop.
It's not the enemy outsider who avoids.
It's the other way around. The enemy outsider is the one
who actually stops and helps thebeaten man.
And he doesn't just do the minimum.
(34:05):
He shows radical, extravagant care.
Now before we think this is likean exception in the stories of
Jesus and the rest of the stories about how we protect
ourselves from the enemies out there, this is not a one off
story. The Good Samaritan story fits
within the entire narrative of the Bible from Genesis to
Revelation. It embodies everything the
(34:27):
Kingdom of God is about. It embodies everything it is for
us to follow Jesus, to believe in Jesus, and to be saved.
Jesus doesn't pull this parable out of thin air.
This is woven into the fabric ofIsrael's scriptures, into the
Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible,and into Jesus's entire
messianic identity and campaign.Look at the Old Testament.
The lawyer quoted Leviticus 19. Love your neighbor as yourself.
(34:50):
That verse sits inside a larger section about holiness in
community in the Bible. You can go read that in
Leviticus and it clearly says donot seek revenge or bear grudge
against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor
as yourself. And for most interpreters in
Jesus's day, neighbor meant onlyyour people, only those who are
(35:11):
like you. Love your neighbor, yes, but
don't love your enemies because we have a responsibility to
protect what we are and who we are and what we have.
And that's God's holiness. So that's why the lawyer presses
Jesus, and who is my neighbor? He's trying to clarify
boundaries. Notice that he's not looking for
ways to break down boundaries. He's looking for ways to build
(35:32):
them. So I talked to a young man, I'll
refer to him as young man a while back.
I get a lot of insights into life from the many, many, many
conversations I have and papers I read and stories I hear from
my students. It's changed, changed my life.
I hope to have an influence on my students, but they truly
(35:54):
influence me because I get to interact with people that I
would never get to come into contact with otherwise.
And this young man, I talked to him.
We were having a great conversation and at one point he
he started telling me about his job in particular.
He just couldn't understand how his Co worker, whom I'll call Co
worker who's a homosexual, is sokind to everyone.
(36:16):
Nicest person he's ever met, he says.
So as we talked this young man, he goes through all of the bogus
theological reasons he's always been taught in sermons and in
small groups and from his familywhy he's supposed to hate
homosexuals and keep them at a distance.
And he just can't wrap his mind around how his Co worker could
(36:37):
be such a kind and caring and genuine person.
It really bothers him. He's been taught that those
people are hateful and they're enemies and they're that those
people and he just, he can't wrap his mind.
It's like 2 worlds colliding. So one point in this
conversation I just asked him flat out, why does this bother
you so much? I don't preach to him, I don't
(36:58):
say anything. I just want to hear his side and
here's what he says. Because I'm a Christian and I've
always been taught that homosexuals are the enemy.
So he messages me a few weeks later to thank me for our
conversation and it turns out that one night after work his
(37:18):
car doesn't start. He and his Co worker are the
only ones closing the car won't start.
He's frustrated, he's not from around here so he has no family.
And lo and behold, the one who comes to his rescue is none
other than his Co worker. His homosexual Co worker.
And get this, this young man explains to me that his Co
(37:39):
worker not only gives him a ridehome that night, but he picks
him up the next day for their shift and early shift with
coffee, breakfast burritos for him to eat after their shift
that following day. He takes the young man where he
needs to be to get a new batteryinstalled, make sure
everything's OK, goes completelyout of his way to ensure that
(38:00):
his well-being is taken care of from start to finish.
And in that experience, this young man tells me his world
changes completely. He stops listening to the trash
about who are our enemies, aboutagendas, about gatekeeping and
how to build barriers between usand them.
Those evil people out there who don't think like us, who don't
(38:23):
live like us, who don't love like us, who don't vote like
this. And instead he starts to see
everyone as his neighbor. Those were his words, looking at
ways to break down the barriers that he'd always been taught to
build. Just a little update before I do
this episode. I reached out to him and just
said, hey, can I tell this story?
(38:44):
I won't mention names, he says. Absolutely, he says.
But I do have an update to give you after that.
Couple days later, I talked to my dad on the phone.
So he was speaking with his family back home and he was
telling him what happened. And he said at one point his dad
got silent in their conversationon the phone.
And he says that his dad got really angry with him, with the
(39:07):
young man. How in the world could you
accept that kind of help from a homosexual?
And the young man says that at the moment, obviously it was
tough to hear and confusing because he had just had a life
changing moment where the lens through which he saw other
people, people who weren't like him, where he used to
(39:29):
immediately build boundaries between them, this life changing
experience shattered that framework in his life.
And he no longer felt like that's how he should treat and
view people. And his dad said otherwise.
And he said, but you know what? I knew that that's how Jesus
wants us to love. So when Jesus tells this story,
(39:52):
makes the enemy the hero, he's doing something radical.
He's saying, you've read Leviticus too narrowly.
Neighbor love isn't limited to your in Group.
God's Kingdom presses that definition outward even to those
you think are beyond it. And.
Notice how Luke. Sets us up in his own gospel
just a chapter earlier. Remember we talked earlier in
this episode about how Jesus sent 70 or 72 of his disciples
(40:15):
out and they went out leading upto this?
Well, Luke describes that scene in a little more detail.
So we're in Luke 10 for the Samaritan parable.
Luke 9, verses 51 to 56 describes how Jesus had tried to
pass through a Samaritan village, but the villagers
refused him hospitality. And James and John, you remember
(40:36):
this, they got angry and they wanted to call down fire from
heaven and destroy him. Remember that because in that
day refused refusing someone hospitality is basically saying
you are the evil enemy. Go away.
And in a world where if you traveled and you couldn't just
expect to go and stay in a Holiday Inn and you couldn't
sleep out in the wild because itwas dangerous, you relied on the
(40:59):
hospitality of of strangers. These villagers refused to Jesus
hospitality. So it was essentially a threat
on their existence. And James and John want to bring
vengeance on them. And what's Jesus do?
He says, heck yeah, let's do it.No, he says, shame on you, James
and John. He rebukes James and John.
He doesn't even rebuke the Samaritan villagers.
(41:21):
That's the backdrop to this parable.
The Samaritan village rejects Jesus.
His own disciples want revenge. And then a chapter later, Jesus
turns around and makes the Samaritan the model of mercy.
The model not just of mercy, butof salvation.
This is what it looks like if you're 1 of mine.
I mean, that's a Ouch, right? That's no accident.
Jesus doesn't let the rejection of his so-called enemies harden
(41:45):
him into bitterness. He keeps pressing past the
barriers. The Samaritan woman in John
chapter 4 gives us another angle.
Again, Jesus crosses lines. He meets a woman at Jacob's well
in Samaria. Remember, she's shocked that he
even talks to her because she says Jews don't associate with
Samaritans. And Jesus not only talks with
her, but he actually entrusts toher one of the most profound
(42:08):
self revelations that he gives anyone in the entire Gospels,
that he's the Messiah. And she becomes the very first
one to announce his Kingdom to her village in Samaria.
So put those pieces together. Leviticus's command regarding
neighbors, Luke's story of rejection in Samaria, and John's
account of the Samaritan woman, all of that shows a consistent
(42:30):
theme. Jesus is redrawing the map of
love. He's redrawing and rethinking
what it means to be a neighbor and what it means to be an
enemy. He keeps pointing past the
assumed borders, past the ethnicand religious rivalries, past
the safe categories, past demographics, past skin color,
past political allegiances. In his Kingdom, the neighbor is
(42:52):
not the one who looks like you, are worshipped like you.
The neighbor is the one who shows mercy and the one to whom
you show mercy. That's what it means to follow
Jesus. That's what it means to be
saved. So I want to look at a couple
more details because some of thesmall words matter when it comes
to exegeting and understanding these texts.
Remember. So first, the Greek word Luke
(43:14):
uses for the Samaritan's response is something like to
feel deep compassion. NIV translated has pity, but
it's it's not a word we use in English, but it comes from a
Greek word, splanchnoi for guts or inner organs.
In that culture, your gut was where you felt deep emotions.
The way we say. I felt it in the pit of my
(43:35):
stomach. So this is gut level compassion.
It's not pity from a distance. It's it's not a polite sense of
concern, but a visceral physicalstirring that moves you to
action. And Luke uses this verb almost
exclusively for Jesus himself orin parables where someone acts
in a God like way. So like the father in the
parable of the prodigal son feltdeep compassion when he saw his
(43:58):
son returning home. So when Jesus puts this word in
the mouth of the Samaritan's actions, he's saying this enemy,
this outsider, is the one who embodies the very heart and
compassion of God himself. Second, look at the way the
lawyer responds at the end. Jesus is finished with the
story, and then he asks, which of these three do you think was
(44:21):
a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?
So notice how the questions flipped.
The lawyer asks, who's my neighbor?
Or in other words, who qualifiesfor me to love?
Jesus reframed it, he says, which one acted as a neighbor.
So the issue for Jesus isn't whoqualifies as my neighbor, He
says everyone does. The issue for Jesus, though, is
(44:44):
whether I myself am willing to live as a neighbor.
A lawyer wants a definition. Jesus gives him a challenge.
And look at how the lawyer answers.
He gives the right answer, he says, the one who had mercy on
him. Notice what he leaves out,
though. He hates the Samaritan so much
he can't even say it was the Samaritan, he says, the one who
(45:05):
had mercy on him. He can't say the Samaritan.
He he has such utter disregard for the very existence of the
Samaritans that he can't even say Samaritan, the one who
showed mercy. It's almost comical, but it's
also tragic. He knows the right answer, but
he's still so horribly racist and prejudice and hateful and
(45:27):
angry and bitter and vindictive that he can't even say Samaritan
in his mouth. Third thing, the setting of this
parable isn't random. We talked about that in Luke 9,
where Samaritan village rejectedJesus.
So that rejection episode, that account is fresh in the
background. So Jesus is not just talking to
the lawyer, the disciples, Jamesand John and the others who were
(45:50):
with Jesus and all of the followers.
They've been talking about what happened in that Samaritan
village, I guarantee. And they're probably like, man,
I wish Jesus would have let me go up and bust some heads.
I wish Jesus would have just destroyed them all because they
rejected Jesus. They are not one of us.
Does that rhetoric sound familiar?
And Jesus says, Nope, that's nothow I operate.
(46:12):
They can reject me and I'm not here to start a holy war.
In fact, Jesus goes and he knowsall of that chatter is going on
in his crowds. He uses that as a teaching
moment. He could have stoked the fires.
He could have said, you know what?
You remember you all talking about it, what happened to us in
Samaria and they rejected me. Burn them to the ground.
(46:34):
Get revenge on them. But he doesn't, because a good
leader doesn't do that. And he tells a parable instead
about a Samaritan being the heroand being merciful to one of
their own people. And he's saying it's not that
they are your enemies. It's not that you should just
help your enemy. It's that your enemy might be
(46:54):
the one who saves you at some point.
So maybe it's time to start rethinking whom it is we carry
hatred for in our hearts and oursocial behavior, in our politics
and in the name of God. Jesus had the chance to start a
holy war against people who rejected him, people who hated
him, people who actually tried to cause harm to him.
(47:14):
In rejecting hospitality to him,they left him in a dangerous and
vulnerable position. And you know what he did?
He said, Nope, that's not how webehave.
These exegetical details are important because they drive
home the same point. The Samaritan isn't a convenient
example of kindness. He is the enemy who embodies
God's compassion. And that forces the lawyer and,
(47:37):
and I think it forces you and meto rethink questions about love,
neighbors, enemies, mercy from the ground up.
At its core, this parable says love isn't about drawing
boundaries, it's about crossing them.
The lawyer wanted to narrow lovedown to make it manageable.
Who exactly counts as my neighbor?
And Jesus blows that question wide open.
(47:57):
He flips it from who qualifies for me to love to what kind of
neighbor will I be? And that's the challenge.
Because one thing to help someone or you already like, or
someone who looks like you, samecolor of skin, someone who votes
like you, some situation that's kind of close to you that you
know about, and it just tugs at your heart.
(48:18):
It's another thing entirely to show mercy across the lines that
divide us. The lines of politics, race,
religion, class, even personal history.
Think about it. The Samaritan in this story
didn't just act kindly, he acteddangerously.
He stopped on a road known for ambushes.
He's standing over a man. Possibly this man was like a
(48:39):
Brig and he didn't know. Maybe this man was a criminal
and whoever caught him beat him up because he stole from them,
and this Samaritan could have been associating with someone
who could have gotten him in danger down the road.
He didn't know. It didn't matter.
He didn't ask those questions. He risked his own safety.
He gave away oil, wine, money, time.
(48:59):
He cared for a man who, if theirpositions were reversed, might
never have done the same for him.
It didn't matter. That's not safe charity.
What he was looking for. That's Jesus caliber of love.
And here's where it gets really uncomfortable.
As if this parable isn't alreadyuncomfortable enough in our day
and age, the parable also challenges us not only to give
(49:23):
mercy, but also to receive it. In Jesus's story, the wounded
man has no choice. He's helpless.
His only hope comes from the last person he'd expect, his
enemy. That's part of the sting.
What if the person though that you and I have been taught to
avoid, to despise? The person we demonize, the
person that we sit and we listento our cable news pundits say
(49:45):
these are the worst people in the history of humankind.
We need to avoid them. We need to eliminate them from
the face of the earth. We need to strip them of their
rights because they are evil. What if it's that person that
turns out to be the one God usesto save you?
The question Jesus is posing in this parable is, would you be
(50:06):
willing to receive it? And I know there's a lot of you
sitting there saying, man, I wouldn't.
I'd rather die than let my enemysave me.
I'm a tough guy, man, I saved myself.
Let me ask it this way then, because I don't like to ask for
help either, not even from people I know.
But I get that. But let me ask you this.
What if it was your child who needed help, and the only person
(50:30):
on earth who could help with someone you hate?
Would you be willing to receive it then?
That's the Kingdom vision here. Real love isn't sentimental.
It's not selective. It doesn't stop at boundaries,
it crosses them. It risks reputation and comfort
and safety, and it forces us to see our enemies not as
categories to avoid, but as humans we might need and who
(50:54):
might need us, because we're allin this together.
So let's circle back to where westarted.
What if the most dangerous thingJesus ever said about love was
that your enemy might be your neighbor?
That's the sting. That's the challenge of this
parable. It's easy to admire it from a
distance, to treat it like a nice moral tale about being
kind, which is the way we talk about it, the parable of the
(51:16):
Good Samaritan. But Jesus meant it to be more
than that. He aimed it at the attorney who
is asking him questions, at his audience who had hatred in their
heart. And he's aiming it at us, too.
For some of us, the challenge isto admit that we've drawn lines
too tightly. We've defined neighbor as people
in our circle, people we're comfortable with, people we
(51:37):
trust, people who vote like us, people who watch the same cable
news shows as us, People who worship like us, People who look
like us, People with the same color of skin, people with the
same amount of money. But as we've talked a lot
throughout this podcast, Jesus always presses us beyond our
comfort zone. He never allows us to stay
comfortable even if our comfort is in doing good.
(51:58):
He always presses us to the nextlevel.
Who's the Samaritan in your world?
Who's the person or the group you instinctively avoid fear,
despise that your leaders are currently telling you is the
enemy, our evil, are trying to brainwash your kids, are eating
dogs, are trying to take over and destroy your existence.
(52:21):
Who are those people in your life that in Jesus world was a
Samaritan? And it turns out that Jesus took
that Samaritan. He placed that Samaritan at the
center of his Kingdom and said this is what salvation looks
like Now What would it look likefor you and me not only to help
that person that we view as an enemy, but to see them as
someone God might use to help you or me?
(52:42):
For others, this story offers comfort.
I think a lot of people have been made to feel like the
Samaritan, like the outsider, like the one who worships the
wrong way, who lives in sin because of some decision they
made, because of who they are, because of their identity, the
one who just doesn't belong. Maybe that's you.
Maybe you've actually been told,or it's just been made very
(53:05):
clear through culture, through the verses that are cited and
quoted and misunderstood on social media or at church.
Now, if you go and get cleaned up, yeah, come on in, You're
welcome into the house. But not until then.
Maybe that's you. I want you to be encouraged.
Because just like he always doeshere, to Jesus places the
outsider at the center of his Kingdom, He shows that mercy and
(53:27):
compassion and neighborliness are not tied to your status or
to others approval of you in God's Kingdom.
You are the one Jesus says will stand at the front and the
center before God's throne, worshipping God for eternity,
not the people who keep you out.So the invitation to you and me
is simple, but it's demanding, especially in a climate in which
(53:48):
leaders and friends and cable news and politicians are saying
to reinforce the boundaries between you and me and our
enemies. Like Jesus is calling you to a
holy war, that it's time to get revenge, that it's time to
eliminate the enemy and take back this country and this world
for Christ. Jesus doesn't say any of that.
And in fact, he says, don't do that.
(54:11):
And instead Jesus is an example and Jesus command is the exact
option. He says, go and do likewise be
like the Samaritan, go and show the mercy that we we all talk
about as Christians, we all talkabout it, right?
Grace and mercy. We sing about it.
We read the verses, especially in Romans and we talk about it.
We sing songs. Can we celebrate God for showing
(54:33):
us in Jesus's life and death andresurrection that he doesn't
care who we are. We all belong with him.
And it's at this point we don't get to go do that and then go
treat people like they're not welcome.
We don't get to do that and go treat people like they're the
enemy. So you know how there are some
theological points that are hardto apply in real life?
(54:54):
We hear an awesome sermon at church.
Then we go out to lunch after the service and we're talking at
lunch. Like, man, that was an awesome
sermon. I just feel so inspired, man.
You remember that quote and thatstory he told.
And then we start to think, and we'd be like, I don't really
know what to do with this. This theologic point is awesome,
but what do I do with it? Like, where's the So what?
Where's the How do I apply this in my life?
(55:16):
This one is simple. The Good Samaritan parable is
actually simple. It's not easy.
It's the hardest thing probably you and I can ever do.
But it's simple. Identify those we see as enemies
and go and put our life on the line for them.
No questions. Asked.
If there's someone in your or mylife who is an enemy, there's
(55:38):
someone like a politician or a cable news pundit or social
media is telling me that is my enemy.
They are demonic, they are evil.Stay away from them.
That's the person that Jesus is saying you and I have a
responsibility to go and serve them, not convert them, not
(56:00):
shout at them because of all thebad things that they are, that
they represent or that they think, not try to argue them
into submission for disagreeing with you or me.
Just go and love them like the Samaritan did.
That's it. That's the message and that's
the action of Jesus's story of the Good Samaritan.
Simple, but not easy. But still, that is what it looks
(56:22):
like to follow Jesus, to be a Christian, to be a believer.
And that's the message in actionthat we celebrate Jesus doing
for us. It's time for us to cross the
line like He did for us, show mercy like He does for us, and
be ready for the world to changeright before our eyes.
As we say Lake Ulmod, go and learn.
(56:45):
I'll see you next time on what the Bible actually says.
What's up everybody, Welcome to the What the Bible Actually says
podcast. I'm your host Tyson put off and
I'm glad to have you here today.Whether you have been here
before or your first time listener, I just can't tell you
how much I appreciate your support and you listening to
this podcast. So First off, really good news
after 20 long years of praying about and thinking about and
(00:40):
researching the Life and Times and messianic campaign of Jesus,
the three volume project that I've put together with Hey Call
Publishing Co is now out. All three volumes are published
and I can't tell you how excitedI am about the way they turned
out, about the practicality of using them to study the gospels
and study the life of Jesus, about the insights that have
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come out of this 3 volume project.
All three volumes are now available in ebook and in print.
I'll put those links on the web page.
And I'm, I'm truly grateful for your support of this podcast up
to this point. And I am truly grateful for
those of you who've reached out for your support for the
conversations I've had. I'm grateful because in all of
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the hate and the violence and the division and the confusion
over who Jesus really is, which side he's on, things like that,
it's absolutely incredible. It's so awesome to see so many
people out there who have a genuine heart for the Jesus
revealed in Scripture in the Gospels and the Jesus who really
lived and walked and breathed and talked and launched A revolt
against the world's powers 2000 years ago.
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Thank you for your heart for Jesus.
Thank you for your willingness to set aside your disagreements
with others and just love peopleand just love Jesus like he
commanded us to do and like he showed us to do.
So thank you. I also want to thank you for
your patience with me. All right, this is a lot longer
intro. If you're new to this podcast,
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then I tend to give. I like to just jump in, get
straight to the point. But it's been a while.
We've taken an unexpected hiatusfrom putting out more episodes
over the course of this summer. With the kids being home
whenever we're not at basketballand running around and running
and sports and workouts and thensome trips.
We were able to squeeze into themix this summer.
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Big life changes in our family in terms of careers and work,
plus teaching and publishing this summer just sort of
unfolded in some unexpected ways.
And I can't bring myself to put out the content that doesn't
meet a certain standard. So I made the decision to use
this summer kind of the margins between all of these moments to
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do a few things in preparation for the fall, for gearing back
up and getting back to recordingepisodes.
So thank you for your patience with me.
And I can't tell you how excitedabout what we've got in store.
I am. And for this next phase in the
podcast, it's it's going to be exciting.
We've got a lot of good things happening, so thank you again
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for your support. Thanks for sticking with me with
this long introduction. Let's get into it.
All right, let me ask you a question.
What if the most dangerous thingJesus ever said about love was
that your enemy might be your neighbor?
Think about that for a moment. I'll ask it again.
What if the most dangerous thingJesus ever said about love was
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that your enemy might be your neighbor?
Now we've all heard the story ofthe Good Samaritan.
It's one of those parables that seems to have spilled out of
Sunday school and into just about every part of culture.
Politicians use it. Hospitals and nonprofits are
named after it. You hear it on the news any time
someone stops on the side of theroad to help a stranger change a
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tire. We even have Good Samaritan laws
that protect people who try to help in emergencies, sort of
like the one that Jerry and Elaine and George and Kramer
break in the final season of Seinfeld back in 98, my senior
year in high school. And so when you hear this
parable, the Good Samaritan, most of us instantly think this
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story's about kindness. Be nice, help people in need,
just be a good person, even if it's inconvenient for you,
right? And I mean, sure, that's not
wrong, OK? It's not wrong.
That element is built into the story.
Problem is, if we stop there, weactually miss what's going on in
this story completely. In Jesus's day, this parable
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wouldn't have come across as a little more lesson about lending
a hand to someone who just needsneeds a boost, needs a little
help. It would have come across as a
political and a religious explosion.
That's what I want us to see here today, because when Jesus
told this parable, he wasn't just saying help people.
He was redefining what it means to belong to the people of God.
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He was talking about a salvationissue.
As we're about to see. He was blowing up the categories
of who's in and who's out. He was turning a test question
about eternal life into a radical redefinition of love,
neighbor, mercy. To get there, to get to where we
need to get to understand this story, we, we have to step back
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and, and understand the setup. Who's asking the questions?
What do they mean by neighbor? Who are the Samaritans?
Why would this story have shocked or offended the people
who heard it? So this moment takes place in
the fall or winter of 28 AD OK, according to the chronology that
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I that I lay out in the Jesus books and throughout this
podcast series, it's late in Jesus campaign and it's between
the feast of booths or Sukkah and Hanukkah where his opponents
are going to try to stone him. So it's in the I holiday season,
in the Jewish calendar, in the fall slash winter, and I've
placed it in scene 19 of my books.
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So it's not far from Jesus's final confrontations in
Jerusalem, where in just a few short months he's going to be
arrested and crucified. So this is this is getting to
the end. He's well known in the Galilee,
he's well known in Judea. By the time he's got a lot of
friends, he's got a lot of enemies, a lot of followers, a
lot of opponents. And Luke places this parable in
chapter 10, Luke chapter 10, right after a pretty significant
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moment, which is going to be critically important for
understanding the meaning of theGood Samaritan parable that I've
literally never heard talked about.
And that is invaluable to understanding its true meaning.
Jesus had just sent out a group of 70 or 72, depending on which
manuscript you're looking at. Disciples, OK?
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They went out to heal the sick, to announce the Kingdom and
depend completely on the hospitality of strangers.
And this is in Luke 9. Remember, the Good Samaritan
parable is in Luke 10. Jesus sends out these disciples
in Luke 9. So they went out to heal.
They went out to announce the Kingdom and they were supposed
to depend on other people's support.
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They didn't have anything with them.
So they come back excited, saying that even demons submit
to us in Jesus names. And Jesus rejoices and he tells
them that God has hidden things from the wise and the powerful
and the and and has revealed these things to the little
children. So it's in that atmosphere, OK.
It's on the tails of that episode, that event when Jesus
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is flipping expectations upside down.
And at that point, that's when alawyer stands up to test him.
So when Luke says lawyer here, don't picture a modern day
attorney. This isn't someone suing people,
drafting contracts. This is an expert in the Torah,
in the Jewish scriptures, especially the first five books
of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and
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Deuteronomy. He would have been trained to
interpret the law of Moses and apply it to life.
So remember that in the Bible, this is a kind of a Christian
misunderstanding of what the theLaw of Moses actually is.
We here talk about the law of Moses and we automatically place
it into a religious category. We think, oh, Law of Moses,
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religious laws, eating laws, whoyou can contact, who you cannot
contact, laws that relate to your religious life.
But in the ancient world, the world of ancient Israel and in
Jesus world, the Law of Moses was the actual law.
You were punished based on violations of Moses's laws.
So if you violated A purity law,you could get in trouble
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legally, not just religiously, right?
It was all mixed in together. So this lawyer comes to Jesus
and he's less like a preacher and less like a lawyer that we
think of today. But he would, he's like a
theologian and a legal scholar rolled into one.
So he's an expert in the law. And Luke tells us that he stood
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up to test Jesus. That word test is important.
It means that this wasn't just acasual question.
He, he didn't have an honest question in mind.
He wanted to probe Jesus and andtry to trap it.
So the question that this lawyerasks teacher, what must I do to
inherit eternal life? I want you to hear the question
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and just stop and think about actually what he's asking.
Don't gloss over it. Don't Christianize this,
teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
OK, there's two things that you need to understand here.
One, he's asking a question about eternal life.
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When I was growing up and in thethe Christian world that I'm
surrounded by, there are a lot of debates about primary issues
versus secondary issues in Christian theology.
Primary issues have to do with salvation.
Things that are crucially important toward where you go
when you die, if you're a believer, if you're a follower,
if you're, if you're 1 of Jesus's or not.
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Secondary issues are not salvation issues.
They're not critically importanton that level.
They're important because Jesus talked about them, Paul talked
about them, the Bible talks about them here, there, but
they're not the salvation issues, right?
In the Christian world, you'll hear talk about those are issues
where a denomination can differ from another denomination in
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this or that secondary belief because they're not salvation
issues we're dealing with. The lawyer here asks Jesus an
overt, explicit question about eternal life.
What must I do to inherit eternal life?
So he's asking a salvation issue, which means that we have
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to rethink automatically before we even get to the Good
Samaritan parable, the category we place it into.
So we've got this this set of drawers and we place these types
of questions and issues and Bible verses into them based on
what category in the Christian system they belong to.
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We've got salvation issues in one.
We've got politics in another drawer, social issues, moral
issues, business issues, how I run my business, that's in
another drawer, and this one's in that kindness drawer.
That acts of kindness drawer we tend to place it in, but Jesus
takes it out of that and he putsit into a different drawer, into
the salvation issue drawer. And that's what the lawyer is
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actually asking. What must I do to inherit
eternal life? So that's the first thing.
Second thing, he doesn't say what must I believe but what
must I do? And Jesus doesn't correct him.
I think this is important especially for American
Christianity to understand. We have this, especially in the
evangelical world that I'm a part of.
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It's all about belief. People literally can go and do
and be horrible to other people,but as long as in so many
circles they say the right things and they say that they
believe the right things, none of that matters.
And Jesus says, uh, uh, that's not how it works.
And just a little caveat, we canget into this at a different
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time. I'm not saying you earn your
salvation by doing certain things, but Jesus here makes it
very clear as we're about to find out that there are certain
behaviors that he expects to seefor those who want a claim on
eternal life. So it's a salvation issue.
Behavior all of a sudden does become part of this equation and
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not just belief what you believeyou do.
A lot of people, for example, say they want to win at
basketball, but then they don't Co practice, they don't go put
in the work. We talk about this with my kids
all the time. Do you really want to win or do
you just want to win because theeffort you put into it is going
to show? And my kids really want to win
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at this point because they get up at 5:00 in the morning and we
go to the YMCA before school andwe work on their skills.
And then they go to practice in the morning.
And then they go to practice in the afternoon and they work on
their skills. And then they come home and they
work on their skills. And that tells me that it's not
just, yeah, I'm saying I believethis, that I want to win.
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They're putting in the effort, the outward action they're doing
the do that suggests and demonstrates that they truly
believe it inside. So this lawyer comes up to Jesus
and he says, not what must I believe?
But he says, what must I do? Because he's just skipping to
the point because he knows. And Jesus knows action proves
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belief when it comes to salvation.
But then I think what Jesus doeshere is he shifts the focus of
what types of action demonstratesomeone's true belief in him
away from these interpersonal issues.
And we're going to get to the Good Samaritan parable in a
second where Jesus does all of this.
But I want you to notice something.
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If it's a matter of doing that proves what I believe, then what
do? What do we typically hear in in
Christian sermons, in Christian books, in Christian
conversations? Well, how are you doing in your
personal life? How are you doing in your
thought life? How are you doing in your
feelings life? We interpersonalize it and we
privatize it and we make it all about how I'm doing inside.
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And Jesus is saying, huh? And this lawyer's asking, and
he's trying to trap Jesus into saying something that he doesn't
want to say. So Jesus is very clear as to
what he says someone must do, how their behavior must look,
and what category of behavior they need to focus on in order
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to inherit eternal life. And note too that eternal life
in Jesus world wasn't just aboutgoing to heaven when you die.
It wasn't just about saying a prayer, living on the way you
live, and then going to heaven when you die.
It was about participating in the life of the age to come, the
life of the world to come. You'll see that in ancient
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Jewish writings all over the place, the time when God would
set the world right, defeat evil, and renew creation.
There is this continuity betweenlife now and life in the future.
Eternal life meant living under God's reign, the Kingdom here
and now, even in this life, and extending that into the future
when God would make everything right, recreate everything, make
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it all really good. All right, with that background,
let's look at how Jesus answers the question.
Jesus answers this question withanother question which is very
rabbinic of Jesus and it's very Jesus like he says, what's
written in the law? How do you read it?
Lawyer knows. So the lawyer, he replies by
quoting 2 key texts. First from Deuteronomy 6, Love
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the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with
all your strength, with all yourmind, The Shema.
And the second one from Leviticus 19.
Love your neighbor as yourself. So these were already seen in
Jewish tradition as central to the law.
Jesus didn't make this up. Everybody knew Deuteronomy 6 and
Leviticus 19 were critical in. How?
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Someone behaved if they were a member of God's people, they
were central to the law. So when the lawyer puts them
together, he's given a solid answer and Jesus agrees.
Jesus says you've answered correctly, do this and you're
going to live. So do this and you're saved.
He says so. Then the lawyer, he doesn't
quite get what he wants. He doesn't quite get that trap.
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Situation for Jesus. Because he says it, Jesus
confirms that he's got it right,Luke says.
But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, And who is my
neighbor? So that little phrase wanting to
justify himself tells you a lot about what's going on here.
The lawyer isn't really looking for a definition of neighbor.
He's looking to narrow the definition.
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He's not looking to expand that definition because he wants to
help someone that he doesn't know if he can help or not.
He's looking to draw lines and limit who his neighbors actually
are. He wants Jesus to say your
neighbor is your fellow Israelite, or maybe your
neighbor is your fellow law keeper, another lawyer.
That's your neighbor. The neighbor in your gated
neighborhood, The neighbor in your synagogue.
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Something neat and manageable. Because in the traditions of
Jesus's time, neighbor didn't actually mean everyone, at least
how it was interpreted. It meant the people inside your
covenant community, your own people.
And Leviticus 19 says do not seek revenge or bear a grudge
against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor
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as yourself. And the phrase your people is
important. Most assume that that means
Israelites, and so the lawyer's question is basically, OK, fine,
love your neighbor, but let's beclear, who counts, who
qualifies, and who can I leave out?
So that's the setup for the parable, and it's important we
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feel that tension before Jesus starts telling the story.
So one more aspect is criticallyimportant here.
Before we talk about the parableitself, we've got to pause and
talk about one of the key players in the story, the
Samaritans, because if we don't understand who they are, we
won't feel the punch of what Jesus is saying.
The Samaritans weren't just generic outsiders.
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They weren't pagans in the senseof worshipping Zeus or some
random Canaanite gods. They were much closer to home,
and that's what made this tension so fierce.
So I've heard a lot of bad takesabout who the Samaritans were.
They were these awful people. They were terrible.
They were wicked and Pagan and just horrible culture.
And that they couldn't be any farther from the belief system
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and the behavior system, some ofthe true people of God.
But that's just not true. OK, so here's a quick historical
rundown. So you remember King David, King
Solomon, they united, the tribescreated what's called the United
Kingdom. That's when the northern tribes
and the southern tribes all united under 1 banner.
Well, after Solomon wrecked the place and his sons and the
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descendants and the kings took over, the Kingdom became divided
into two. The northerners were the
Israelites and that was the Galilee and Samaria, and then
the southerners were the Judaites, the southern Kingdom,
and they centered around Jerusalem.
So over in Mesopotamia, which ismodern day Iraq, the Assyrians
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and the Babylonians battled backand forth.
Well, the Assyrians, when they were in power, they came in to
try to conquer the northerners and the southerners in the land
of Israel and Judah, and they were successful in the seven
hundreds BCE. They came in and they destroyed
the northern Kingdom. So they destroyed the Israelites
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who were living in the Galilee and Samaria.
At the time. And they took a bunch of them
into exile. Which means they took a bunch of
them back to Assyria and then they put their own people in the
land of Samaria. They basically repopulated it.
When you conquered a land, you would put your own people there
so that you had loyalties there and and people knew the system
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that you wanted to impose on those newly conquered peoples.
And that's what they did. So the Assyrians, when they
resettled this land, they replaced the native Israelites
with their own people. And over time the native
Israelites who stayed there intermarried with these Assyrian
folks and became this distinct people group, what we know now
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as the Samaritans. They still worshipped the God of
Israel, but they had their own distinct traditions.
They believe the true holy site wasn't Jerusalem like the
Judaites, but Mount Geraldine inSamaria.
They accepted only the Pentateuch, which is the first
five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers in
Deuteronomy, but not the prophets, not the Psalms, not
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the other books of the Old Testament, of the Hebrew Bible,
And they saw themselves as the true heirs of Israel's faith.
This also helps to contextualizeJesus's encounter with the woman
at the well in Job 4, if you go read that.
So meanwhile, the Judaites in the South centered around
Jerusalem and we'd later know and refer to as the Jewish
people. They saw the Samaritans as
compromised, as as basically half breeds or heretics.
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And there were centuries of hostility.
Remember, this took place in seven hundreds BC, so 700 years
before Jesus's lifetime. And by Jesus's day, there'd been
a lot of violence that had takenplace between the Jews and the
Samaritans. Josephus, the 1st century Jewish
historian that everybody talks about, he actually tells stories
of Samaritans attacking Jewish pilgrims who are traveling
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between Jerusalem and the northern lands and then Jews
retaliating in the same way. And the hostility wasn't a
polite religious disagreement. It was deep.
It was social, ethnic, religiousand political.
So when we hear Samaritan, we might think outsider, or some of
us might even not think that far.
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We might just think, oh Jesus isusing this person as an example
of how to treat people well. But for a.
Jew in Jesus world in the 1st century, this meant something
much sharper. It meant enemy.
And not an enemy far away in some distant land, but someone
close enough to be a daily immediate threat to your own
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survival. It's the difference between
having an enemy living across the ocean in a different
country, or having an enemy living in the house next door to
you. The Samaritans and the Jews live
next door to each other, and they hated each other, so they
each saw each other as a threat to each people group's own
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survival. It was a big deal, a big
rivalry. So when the lawyer asks, who is
my neighbor, he's expecting a discussion about insiders versus
outsiders, maybe a debate about whether proselytes or converts
can count people who convert to the faith.
But he's not expecting Jesus to make the hero of the story none
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other than a Samaritan. Nobody is expecting this, so
Jesus begins this parable. This is in Luke 10.
Check it out. Last thing I want you to do is
to think I'm spinning things in one.
Direction or another? So I want you to have the text
with you, and I want you to dig into it.
So Jesus begins a parable. A man was going down from
Jerusalem to Jericho when he wasattacked by robbers.
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They stripped him, beat him and went away, leaving him half
dead. So if you've ever been to
Israel, it helps to picture the geography.
The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was famous in the
ancient world. Not in a good way.
Jerusalem sits in the high Hill Country.
It's about 2500 feet above sea level.
Jericho lies in the Jordan Valley, more than 800 feet below
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sea level. Remember the Jordan Valley and
the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth?
So that's a drop of over 3000 feet in just about 17 miles.
So that is a steep and rocky andtwisting descent from Jerusalem
to Jericho. And that's where this story,
this parable takes place. And because of that terrain, the
road had a terrible reputation. So you think of a narrow
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mountain pass or an alleyway. You're warned not to walk down
at night. Ambushes were common.
Bandits could hide in the rocks and leap out at travelers.
If you're going uphill, you werealready exhausted just from the
incline. Even as late as the 19th
century, people wrote stories about attacks on that same
exact. Road.
So when Jesus starts his story in this way, his audience,
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they're like, yeah, man, I know.I've been there.
I've heard about it. I've seen it with my own eyes.
This happened to me before. This happened to my buddy.
They know this road, they know it's dangers, they know it's a
difficult. Trek to make.
Both uphill and downhill, they've heard the stories.
And they've seen them. The traveller in Jesus parable
is jumped, stripped of everything, beaten and left half
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dead. And that half dead part, it's
important. He's not clearly alive.
He's not clearly dead. He's in this sort of Gray zone.
Then comes the first passer by, a priest.
So if you're in Jesus audience, a 1st century listener, this is
promising. Priests were the religious
leaders. They were descendants of Aaron.
They served in the temple, they offered sacrifices, LED worship.
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They were respected, honorable holy figures of society.
They weren't poor by any means. They didn't take a vow of
poverty. They were well off and very
powerful. And if anyone is going to stop
and help, surely it's a priest. So Jesus says he, the priest saw
the man and he passed by on the other side.
Then comes a Levite. Levites weren't priests that
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they were priestly. They're in that priestly
religious class and they assisted in the temple.
They were respected for their service.
They were representatives of Godhimself, just like the priests
were. Once again, listeners in Jesus
audience would have expected himto do the right thing.
And again, what's Jesus say? He saw the man and passed by on
the other side. So why'd they pass by?
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Jesus doesn't say. Some interpreters speculate they
were worried about purity laws. If the man was dead, touching
him would have made him rituallyunclean, which would disqualify
a priest or a Levite from templeservice until they went through
the proper purification. Others say maybe they were
afraid the robbers were still lurking nearby and stopping
would put them in danger. Others point out, though, that
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in the parable, Jesus says that they are traveling down from
Jerusalem, not up. So they're leaving Jerusalem
toward Jericho, not going from Jericho to Jerusalem.
So that would mean that they're not headed to do temple duties.
They're leaving them because they've already completed them.
So purity is not even the issue here.
Whatever the reason is, Jesus doesn't say.
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But they don't stop. They pass by on the other side.
So then comes the twist. Jesus says.
But a Samaritan, as he travelled, came where the man
was, and when he saw him, he took pity on him, took pity.
The Samaritan took pity on the beaten man.
That's the moment when the crowdwould have gasped.
We've already talked about who the Samaritans were, the rivals,
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the enemies that those people ofthe 1st century.
And for Jesus's audience, the Samaritan was not the hero of
any story. In fact, if you were telling a
parable that began with a priestand a Levite, the natural third
character would be an ordinary Israelite layperson.
That's kind of the rhythm. The priest, Levite, Israelite.
That's the way this sort of three fold setup went in Jewish
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storytelling. It's kind of like a priest, a
rabbi, and a minister walked into a bar.
There was a rhythm to it, and Jesus deliberately breaks the
rhythm. So instead of an Israelite, he
inserts none other than a Samaritan.
The last person on earth you'd expect this is the enemy.
And what does the Samaritan do? Jesus says he went up to him and
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bandaged his wounds, pouring oiland wine on him.
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'll reimburse
you for any extra expense you may have.
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So the details are over the top.Oil and wine aren't cheap.
These are common remedies in theancient world, but they're not
free. Carrying the man on his donkey
means the Samaritan is walking while the wounded man rides.
At the end, he doesn't just drophim off, he cares for him
himself. Then he pays extra to denarii.
That's basically two days wages for a laborer, which is enough
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to cover a couple weeks at the end.
And on top of that, he says openup my tab, put anything else
that he needs on it. I want you to think about this
when, when you or I drive by a homeless person on the street or
someone on the street asking formoney, what's our first
response? What bad decisions did he or she
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make to get in the situation they're in?
Oh, they don't look too homeless.
They, they, they have a little pudge in their cheeks.
I would absolutely not give themmoney because look at those
shoes they're wearing, right? Or we ask questions like
actually, I've actually had thisrationale explained to me by
someone very respectable in one of the communities that I used
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to be in. And they said I, I make it a
personal policy that I don't give to homeless people because
I don't know what they're going to do with that money.
And I think a lot of us probablyshare that.
Oh, they're going to go buy drugs.
I'm not giving them money. I'll give them maybe a
Chick-fil-A, I'll bring them a meal.
We don't ever do that, but we say that's what we'll do because
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we don't want to just leave an open tab because we don't know
what got them into their situation.
Why did this man walking on the road get himself into the
situation? What did he owe someone money?
Did he burn some bridges and they beat him up and took his
stuff from him and left him for dead?
We asked these questions. The Samaritan didn't ask this
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question at all. He took care of him and he said
I'll pay for anything he needs, just open my tab.
It's generous. It's sacrificial, it's risky.
So imagine you're driving your car late at night and your car
breaks down. Let's say you're on a trip.
You're by yourself. You don't have cell service.
(30:27):
You're in a place out far away from any major cities or towns.
You break down the roughest, roughest place you can imagine
and a couple passes by. They look like nice people.
They look just like people from your small group, but they keep
driving. Same thing happens couple more
times, gets late into the night and the one who stops walks up
(30:51):
to you and you're terrified because you've been taught that
this is the type of person, thisis the color of person.
This is the demographic that you're supposed to hate.
But they're the ones that come up and ask you if you're OK and
they help you. They pay for your hotel.
They check back the next day to make sure you're OK.
Turns out to be the one person you'd least expect.
It's someone you've been taught to distrust, someone you've been
(31:14):
taught to fear. Someone you've been taught is
dangerous. Someone you've been taught is
evil. Someone you've been taught to
demonize yourself. That's the feel of Jesus's
parable. The Samaritan doesn't just help,
he goes way beyond. He shows mercy that actually
costs him something, and he shows that mercy in spite of the
fact that in this story, he's the demon.
(31:37):
He's the bad guy in the listener's eyes.
And here's another small detail.But it's really important.
So remember how I said the man was half dead?
So if you were lying there unconscious, he doesn't have
clothes on. It would have been nearly
impossible to tell at a glance whether he was Jewish or
Samaritan or whatever he was. So ethnic identity in that world
often showed through clothing, what you wore, or your accent.
(32:00):
Remember, Peter is identified when he denies Jesus by his
accent. Community ties would identify
you. But here's a here's a guy
without clothes. He's lying on the side of the
path without words. He can't speak, so you can't
identify him by how he speaks. He's beaten beyond recognition.
He's anonymous and that means that the Samaritans compassion
(32:21):
isn't about recognizing a friendor an ally.
It's about seeing a human being in need and responding.
That's it. He's not basing his compassion
on the fact that this half dead man is a Republican like he is,
or a Democrat like he is, or a citizen is, of of his own nation
like he is, or of his own ethnicgroup, or of his own social
(32:41):
group or economic class, or member of his church or his
synagogue. He sees a hurting man and he
responds with pity, Luke says, or with deep compassion.
He doesn't ask questions like, what the heck did this joker do
to get in such a terrible situation in life?
He just sees a guy who's been handed a terrible card, whether
it's his own fault or not, and he says I'm here to help.
(33:03):
He's the only character who actually does something
constructive. The priest and the Levite are
doing what they've been taught to do.
They're defined by avoidance. Their identity is in what they
aren't and what they don't touch.
As representatives of God, they've created a system in
which they're defined by purity holiness.
(33:23):
So we don't touch what we think would put a stain on God's
holiness. And as we talked in the previous
episode, go back and listen. God's holiness is not scared of
being defiled. The priest and the Levite act
like it is. The Samaritan acts like it's
not. They pass by on the other side.
The Samaritan goes and gets his hands dirty, gets his hands
(33:43):
bloody, and he gives himself in service to the hurting human
being that he finds on the road.So Jesus has flipped the script.
It's not the religious leaders and the insiders who stop.
It's not the enemy outsider who avoids.
It's the other way around. The enemy outsider is the one
who actually stops and helps thebeaten man.
And he doesn't just do the minimum.
(34:05):
He shows radical, extravagant care.
Now before we think this is likean exception in the stories of
Jesus and the rest of the stories about how we protect
ourselves from the enemies out there, this is not a one off
story. The Good Samaritan story fits
within the entire narrative of the Bible from Genesis to
Revelation. It embodies everything the
(34:27):
Kingdom of God is about. It embodies everything it is for
us to follow Jesus, to believe in Jesus, and to be saved.
Jesus doesn't pull this parable out of thin air.
This is woven into the fabric ofIsrael's scriptures, into the
Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible,and into Jesus's entire
messianic identity and campaign.Look at the Old Testament.
The lawyer quoted Leviticus 19. Love your neighbor as yourself.
(34:50):
That verse sits inside a larger section about holiness in
community in the Bible. You can go read that in
Leviticus and it clearly says donot seek revenge or bear grudge
against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor
as yourself. And for most interpreters in
Jesus's day, neighbor meant onlyyour people, only those who are
(35:11):
like you. Love your neighbor, yes, but
don't love your enemies because we have a responsibility to
protect what we are and who we are and what we have.
And that's God's holiness. So that's why the lawyer presses
Jesus, and who is my neighbor? He's trying to clarify
boundaries. Notice that he's not looking for
ways to break down boundaries. He's looking for ways to build
(35:32):
them. So I talked to a young man, I'll
refer to him as young man a while back.
I get a lot of insights into life from the many, many, many
conversations I have and papers I read and stories I hear from
my students. It's changed, changed my life.
I hope to have an influence on my students, but they truly
(35:54):
influence me because I get to interact with people that I
would never get to come into contact with otherwise.
And this young man, I talked to him.
We were having a great conversation and at one point he
he started telling me about his job in particular.
He just couldn't understand how his Co worker, whom I'll call Co
worker who's a homosexual, is sokind to everyone.
(36:16):
Nicest person he's ever met, he says.
So as we talked this young man, he goes through all of the bogus
theological reasons he's always been taught in sermons and in
small groups and from his familywhy he's supposed to hate
homosexuals and keep them at a distance.
And he just can't wrap his mind around how his Co worker could
(36:37):
be such a kind and caring and genuine person.
It really bothers him. He's been taught that those
people are hateful and they're enemies and they're that those
people and he just, he can't wrap his mind.
It's like 2 worlds colliding. So one point in this
conversation I just asked him flat out, why does this bother
you so much? I don't preach to him, I don't
(36:58):
say anything. I just want to hear his side and
here's what he says. Because I'm a Christian and I've
always been taught that homosexuals are the enemy.
So he messages me a few weeks later to thank me for our
conversation and it turns out that one night after work his
(37:18):
car doesn't start. He and his Co worker are the
only ones closing the car won't start.
He's frustrated, he's not from around here so he has no family.
And lo and behold, the one who comes to his rescue is none
other than his Co worker. His homosexual Co worker.
And get this, this young man explains to me that his Co
(37:39):
worker not only gives him a ridehome that night, but he picks
him up the next day for their shift and early shift with
coffee, breakfast burritos for him to eat after their shift
that following day. He takes the young man where he
needs to be to get a new batteryinstalled, make sure
everything's OK, goes completelyout of his way to ensure that
(38:00):
his well-being is taken care of from start to finish.
And in that experience, this young man tells me his world
changes completely. He stops listening to the trash
about who are our enemies, aboutagendas, about gatekeeping and
how to build barriers between usand them.
Those evil people out there who don't think like us, who don't
(38:23):
live like us, who don't love like us, who don't vote like
this. And instead he starts to see
everyone as his neighbor. Those were his words, looking at
ways to break down the barriers that he'd always been taught to
build. Just a little update before I do
this episode. I reached out to him and just
said, hey, can I tell this story?
(38:44):
I won't mention names, he says. Absolutely, he says.
But I do have an update to give you after that.
Couple days later, I talked to my dad on the phone.
So he was speaking with his family back home and he was
telling him what happened. And he said at one point his dad
got silent in their conversationon the phone.
And he says that his dad got really angry with him, with the
(39:07):
young man. How in the world could you
accept that kind of help from a homosexual?
And the young man says that at the moment, obviously it was
tough to hear and confusing because he had just had a life
changing moment where the lens through which he saw other
people, people who weren't like him, where he used to
(39:29):
immediately build boundaries between them, this life changing
experience shattered that framework in his life.
And he no longer felt like that's how he should treat and
view people. And his dad said otherwise.
And he said, but you know what? I knew that that's how Jesus
wants us to love. So when Jesus tells this story,
(39:52):
makes the enemy the hero, he's doing something radical.
He's saying, you've read Leviticus too narrowly.
Neighbor love isn't limited to your in Group.
God's Kingdom presses that definition outward even to those
you think are beyond it. And.
Notice how Luke. Sets us up in his own gospel
just a chapter earlier. Remember we talked earlier in
this episode about how Jesus sent 70 or 72 of his disciples
(40:15):
out and they went out leading upto this?
Well, Luke describes that scene in a little more detail.
So we're in Luke 10 for the Samaritan parable.
Luke 9, verses 51 to 56 describes how Jesus had tried to
pass through a Samaritan village, but the villagers
refused him hospitality. And James and John, you remember
(40:36):
this, they got angry and they wanted to call down fire from
heaven and destroy him. Remember that because in that
day refused refusing someone hospitality is basically saying
you are the evil enemy. Go away.
And in a world where if you traveled and you couldn't just
expect to go and stay in a Holiday Inn and you couldn't
sleep out in the wild because itwas dangerous, you relied on the
(40:59):
hospitality of of strangers. These villagers refused to Jesus
hospitality. So it was essentially a threat
on their existence. And James and John want to bring
vengeance on them. And what's Jesus do?
He says, heck yeah, let's do it.No, he says, shame on you, James
and John. He rebukes James and John.
He doesn't even rebuke the Samaritan villagers.
(41:21):
That's the backdrop to this parable.
The Samaritan village rejects Jesus.
His own disciples want revenge. And then a chapter later, Jesus
turns around and makes the Samaritan the model of mercy.
The model not just of mercy, butof salvation.
This is what it looks like if you're 1 of mine.
I mean, that's a Ouch, right? That's no accident.
Jesus doesn't let the rejection of his so-called enemies harden
(41:45):
him into bitterness. He keeps pressing past the
barriers. The Samaritan woman in John
chapter 4 gives us another angle.
Again, Jesus crosses lines. He meets a woman at Jacob's well
in Samaria. Remember, she's shocked that he
even talks to her because she says Jews don't associate with
Samaritans. And Jesus not only talks with
her, but he actually entrusts toher one of the most profound
(42:08):
self revelations that he gives anyone in the entire Gospels,
that he's the Messiah. And she becomes the very first
one to announce his Kingdom to her village in Samaria.
So put those pieces together. Leviticus's command regarding
neighbors, Luke's story of rejection in Samaria, and John's
account of the Samaritan woman, all of that shows a consistent
(42:30):
theme. Jesus is redrawing the map of
love. He's redrawing and rethinking
what it means to be a neighbor and what it means to be an
enemy. He keeps pointing past the
assumed borders, past the ethnicand religious rivalries, past
the safe categories, past demographics, past skin color,
past political allegiances. In his Kingdom, the neighbor is
(42:52):
not the one who looks like you, are worshipped like you.
The neighbor is the one who shows mercy and the one to whom
you show mercy. That's what it means to follow
Jesus. That's what it means to be
saved. So I want to look at a couple
more details because some of thesmall words matter when it comes
to exegeting and understanding these texts.
Remember. So first, the Greek word Luke
(43:14):
uses for the Samaritan's response is something like to
feel deep compassion. NIV translated has pity, but
it's it's not a word we use in English, but it comes from a
Greek word, splanchnoi for guts or inner organs.
In that culture, your gut was where you felt deep emotions.
The way we say. I felt it in the pit of my
(43:35):
stomach. So this is gut level compassion.
It's not pity from a distance. It's it's not a polite sense of
concern, but a visceral physicalstirring that moves you to
action. And Luke uses this verb almost
exclusively for Jesus himself orin parables where someone acts
in a God like way. So like the father in the
parable of the prodigal son feltdeep compassion when he saw his
(43:58):
son returning home. So when Jesus puts this word in
the mouth of the Samaritan's actions, he's saying this enemy,
this outsider, is the one who embodies the very heart and
compassion of God himself. Second, look at the way the
lawyer responds at the end. Jesus is finished with the
story, and then he asks, which of these three do you think was
(44:21):
a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?
So notice how the questions flipped.
The lawyer asks, who's my neighbor?
Or in other words, who qualifiesfor me to love?
Jesus reframed it, he says, which one acted as a neighbor.
So the issue for Jesus isn't whoqualifies as my neighbor, He
says everyone does. The issue for Jesus, though, is
(44:44):
whether I myself am willing to live as a neighbor.
A lawyer wants a definition. Jesus gives him a challenge.
And look at how the lawyer answers.
He gives the right answer, he says, the one who had mercy on
him. Notice what he leaves out,
though. He hates the Samaritan so much
he can't even say it was the Samaritan, he says, the one who
(45:05):
had mercy on him. He can't say the Samaritan.
He he has such utter disregard for the very existence of the
Samaritans that he can't even say Samaritan, the one who
showed mercy. It's almost comical, but it's
also tragic. He knows the right answer, but
he's still so horribly racist and prejudice and hateful and
(45:27):
angry and bitter and vindictive that he can't even say Samaritan
in his mouth. Third thing, the setting of this
parable isn't random. We talked about that in Luke 9,
where Samaritan village rejectedJesus.
So that rejection episode, that account is fresh in the
background. So Jesus is not just talking to
the lawyer, the disciples, Jamesand John and the others who were
(45:50):
with Jesus and all of the followers.
They've been talking about what happened in that Samaritan
village, I guarantee. And they're probably like, man,
I wish Jesus would have let me go up and bust some heads.
I wish Jesus would have just destroyed them all because they
rejected Jesus. They are not one of us.
Does that rhetoric sound familiar?
And Jesus says, Nope, that's nothow I operate.
(46:12):
They can reject me and I'm not here to start a holy war.
In fact, Jesus goes and he knowsall of that chatter is going on
in his crowds. He uses that as a teaching
moment. He could have stoked the fires.
He could have said, you know what?
You remember you all talking about it, what happened to us in
Samaria and they rejected me. Burn them to the ground.
(46:34):
Get revenge on them. But he doesn't, because a good
leader doesn't do that. And he tells a parable instead
about a Samaritan being the heroand being merciful to one of
their own people. And he's saying it's not that
they are your enemies. It's not that you should just
help your enemy. It's that your enemy might be
(46:54):
the one who saves you at some point.
So maybe it's time to start rethinking whom it is we carry
hatred for in our hearts and oursocial behavior, in our politics
and in the name of God. Jesus had the chance to start a
holy war against people who rejected him, people who hated
him, people who actually tried to cause harm to him.
(47:14):
In rejecting hospitality to him,they left him in a dangerous and
vulnerable position. And you know what he did?
He said, Nope, that's not how webehave.
These exegetical details are important because they drive
home the same point. The Samaritan isn't a convenient
example of kindness. He is the enemy who embodies
God's compassion. And that forces the lawyer and,
(47:37):
and I think it forces you and meto rethink questions about love,
neighbors, enemies, mercy from the ground up.
At its core, this parable says love isn't about drawing
boundaries, it's about crossing them.
The lawyer wanted to narrow lovedown to make it manageable.
Who exactly counts as my neighbor?
And Jesus blows that question wide open.
(47:57):
He flips it from who qualifies for me to love to what kind of
neighbor will I be? And that's the challenge.
Because one thing to help someone or you already like, or
someone who looks like you, samecolor of skin, someone who votes
like you, some situation that's kind of close to you that you
know about, and it just tugs at your heart.
(48:18):
It's another thing entirely to show mercy across the lines that
divide us. The lines of politics, race,
religion, class, even personal history.
Think about it. The Samaritan in this story
didn't just act kindly, he acteddangerously.
He stopped on a road known for ambushes.
He's standing over a man. Possibly this man was like a
(48:39):
Brig and he didn't know. Maybe this man was a criminal
and whoever caught him beat him up because he stole from them,
and this Samaritan could have been associating with someone
who could have gotten him in danger down the road.
He didn't know. It didn't matter.
He didn't ask those questions. He risked his own safety.
He gave away oil, wine, money, time.
(48:59):
He cared for a man who, if theirpositions were reversed, might
never have done the same for him.
It didn't matter. That's not safe charity.
What he was looking for. That's Jesus caliber of love.
And here's where it gets really uncomfortable.
As if this parable isn't alreadyuncomfortable enough in our day
and age, the parable also challenges us not only to give
(49:23):
mercy, but also to receive it. In Jesus's story, the wounded
man has no choice. He's helpless.
His only hope comes from the last person he'd expect, his
enemy. That's part of the sting.
What if the person though that you and I have been taught to
avoid, to despise? The person we demonize, the
person that we sit and we listento our cable news pundits say
(49:45):
these are the worst people in the history of humankind.
We need to avoid them. We need to eliminate them from
the face of the earth. We need to strip them of their
rights because they are evil. What if it's that person that
turns out to be the one God usesto save you?
The question Jesus is posing in this parable is, would you be
(50:06):
willing to receive it? And I know there's a lot of you
sitting there saying, man, I wouldn't.
I'd rather die than let my enemysave me.
I'm a tough guy, man, I saved myself.
Let me ask it this way then, because I don't like to ask for
help either, not even from people I know.
But I get that. But let me ask you this.
What if it was your child who needed help, and the only person
(50:30):
on earth who could help with someone you hate?
Would you be willing to receive it then?
That's the Kingdom vision here. Real love isn't sentimental.
It's not selective. It doesn't stop at boundaries,
it crosses them. It risks reputation and comfort
and safety, and it forces us to see our enemies not as
categories to avoid, but as humans we might need and who
(50:54):
might need us, because we're allin this together.
So let's circle back to where westarted.
What if the most dangerous thingJesus ever said about love was
that your enemy might be your neighbor?
That's the sting. That's the challenge of this
parable. It's easy to admire it from a
distance, to treat it like a nice moral tale about being
kind, which is the way we talk about it, the parable of the
(51:16):
Good Samaritan. But Jesus meant it to be more
than that. He aimed it at the attorney who
is asking him questions, at his audience who had hatred in their
heart. And he's aiming it at us, too.
For some of us, the challenge isto admit that we've drawn lines
too tightly. We've defined neighbor as people
in our circle, people we're comfortable with, people we
(51:37):
trust, people who vote like us, people who watch the same cable
news shows as us, People who worship like us, People who look
like us, People with the same color of skin, people with the
same amount of money. But as we've talked a lot
throughout this podcast, Jesus always presses us beyond our
comfort zone. He never allows us to stay
comfortable even if our comfort is in doing good.
(51:58):
He always presses us to the nextlevel.
Who's the Samaritan in your world?
Who's the person or the group you instinctively avoid fear,
despise that your leaders are currently telling you is the
enemy, our evil, are trying to brainwash your kids, are eating
dogs, are trying to take over and destroy your existence.
(52:21):
Who are those people in your life that in Jesus world was a
Samaritan? And it turns out that Jesus took
that Samaritan. He placed that Samaritan at the
center of his Kingdom and said this is what salvation looks
like Now What would it look likefor you and me not only to help
that person that we view as an enemy, but to see them as
someone God might use to help you or me?
(52:42):
For others, this story offers comfort.
I think a lot of people have been made to feel like the
Samaritan, like the outsider, like the one who worships the
wrong way, who lives in sin because of some decision they
made, because of who they are, because of their identity, the
one who just doesn't belong. Maybe that's you.
Maybe you've actually been told,or it's just been made very
(53:05):
clear through culture, through the verses that are cited and
quoted and misunderstood on social media or at church.
Now, if you go and get cleaned up, yeah, come on in, You're
welcome into the house. But not until then.
Maybe that's you. I want you to be encouraged.
Because just like he always doeshere, to Jesus places the
outsider at the center of his Kingdom, He shows that mercy and
(53:27):
compassion and neighborliness are not tied to your status or
to others approval of you in God's Kingdom.
You are the one Jesus says will stand at the front and the
center before God's throne, worshipping God for eternity,
not the people who keep you out.So the invitation to you and me
is simple, but it's demanding, especially in a climate in which
(53:48):
leaders and friends and cable news and politicians are saying
to reinforce the boundaries between you and me and our
enemies. Like Jesus is calling you to a
holy war, that it's time to get revenge, that it's time to
eliminate the enemy and take back this country and this world
for Christ. Jesus doesn't say any of that.
And in fact, he says, don't do that.
(54:11):
And instead Jesus is an example and Jesus command is the exact
option. He says, go and do likewise be
like the Samaritan, go and show the mercy that we we all talk
about as Christians, we all talkabout it, right?
Grace and mercy. We sing about it.
We read the verses, especially in Romans and we talk about it.
We sing songs. Can we celebrate God for showing
(54:33):
us in Jesus's life and death andresurrection that he doesn't
care who we are. We all belong with him.
And it's at this point we don't get to go do that and then go
treat people like they're not welcome.
We don't get to do that and go treat people like they're the
enemy. So you know how there are some
theological points that are hardto apply in real life?
(54:54):
We hear an awesome sermon at church.
Then we go out to lunch after the service and we're talking at
lunch. Like, man, that was an awesome
sermon. I just feel so inspired, man.
You remember that quote and thatstory he told.
And then we start to think, and we'd be like, I don't really
know what to do with this. This theologic point is awesome,
but what do I do with it? Like, where's the So what?
Where's the How do I apply this in my life?
(55:16):
This one is simple. The Good Samaritan parable is
actually simple. It's not easy.
It's the hardest thing probably you and I can ever do.
But it's simple. Identify those we see as enemies
and go and put our life on the line for them.
No questions. Asked.
If there's someone in your or mylife who is an enemy, there's
(55:38):
someone like a politician or a cable news pundit or social
media is telling me that is my enemy.
They are demonic, they are evil.Stay away from them.
That's the person that Jesus is saying you and I have a
responsibility to go and serve them, not convert them, not
(56:00):
shout at them because of all thebad things that they are, that
they represent or that they think, not try to argue them
into submission for disagreeing with you or me.
Just go and love them like the Samaritan did.
That's it. That's the message and that's
the action of Jesus's story of the Good Samaritan.
Simple, but not easy. But still, that is what it looks
(56:22):
like to follow Jesus, to be a Christian, to be a believer.
And that's the message in actionthat we celebrate Jesus doing
for us. It's time for us to cross the
line like He did for us, show mercy like He does for us, and
be ready for the world to changeright before our eyes.
As we say Lake Ulmod, go and learn.
(56:45):
I'll see you next time on what the Bible actually says.
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