The Good Samaritan

THE GOOD SAMARITAN
Wherever Jesus walked with his disciples, crowds would follow him, and he would sometimes instruct them and sometimes pray for the people and sometimes answer their questions. On this particular occasion there were Lawyers and Pharisees in the crowd and a Lawyer asked Jesus a question.
Luke 10:25 Now, a lawyer stood up and tested Him, saying, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
He said to him, “What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?”
He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind’ and your neighbor as yourself.’
Jesus said, ‘You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live.’ (IE. a fulfilled life, not just an existence!)
But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
Jesus answered, “A man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing and wounded him and departed, leaving him half dead. By chance a priest came down that way. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to that place, looked at him and passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine. Then he set him on his own donkey and brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day when he departed, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said to him, ‘Take care of him. I will repay you whatever else you spend when I return.’
“Now which of these three do you think was a neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?”
He said, “The one who showed mercy on him.”
Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” 

This seems like an abrupt ending, “Go and do likewise.” as if Jesus had given a perfectly tidy answer and was ready to look at the group and say, ‘Next question?’
But what he said was a stinging blow into the conscience of each one that heard him. That story would have lived on in their minds, as it lives on in people’s minds all over the world even to this day – ‘Go and do likewise’.

Jesus had answered the question from the legal expert of ‘who is my neighbour?’ but that was not the original topic of conversation. The lawyer’s original question was ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ The lawyers and Pharisees, as well as the priests were the ones who were the custodians of the theological and ceremonial culture of Judaism at that time and they were violently resentful and resistant to the wisdom and the power of the teachings of Jesus. They were forever trying to trap him in some incorrect interpretation of the Law and the Scriptures.
Jesus often put them on the wrong foot by answering their questions with another question and on this occasion, he asked the lawyer ‘What is written in the law? How do you read it?’ and the lawyer correctly answered, that to inherit eternal life was all about loving God with your whole heart and loving your neighbour as yourself, and this is precisely what Jesus wanted to discuss, which was about love between us and God and between us and one another. That was because Jesus was teaching about God’s Kingdom of love in the earth. That love comes to us from God and is to be lived through us and to remain for all time on the earth and then from age to age in eternity. This is the inheritance of eternal life.
So Jesus told the lawyer that he had answered correctly concerning God’s eternal Kingdom love, and he told him to go and live out of that love and he would have the eternal life he was seeking. However, the lawyer did not like being given that penetrating answer, so he deflected Jesus with another question and said ‘Who is my neighbour?’

Jesus then spoke the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the story was set within the current religious and cultural customs and moral standards of Judaism of the day. 
When Jesus related how the priest first and then the Levite both ignored and even avoided having anything to do with the man who had been beaten up, that would have stung the ears of any priests and Levites who were listening, but the rest of the Jewish listeners could perhaps have been thinking ‘that poor guy could have been me!’ And they probably had an expectation that some good Jewish person, probably someone just like themselves, would come to the rescue and be applauded as being a good neighbour and be rewarded by God for their virtue.
But that didn’t happen. It was a hated and religiously despised Samaritan, a betrayer of the Jewish faith - and that would have stung everybody! That admonition from Jesus about their Jewish tribalism targeted all of their narrow wrongheadedness because Jesus was telling them that every other human being was their neighbour, even the unworthy Gentiles and the hated Samaritans. The coming Kingdom was open to everyone. The Lawyer even had to admit that the Samaritan was the one who showed mercy and therefore was the true neighbour to the poor beaten up Jewish man. 

That alone would have been offensive enough to everybody’s ears, but there was more yet to come because Jesus was talking about more than just ‘who is my neighbour?’ Jesus was talking about loving your neighbour. What the Good Samaritan did was more than being a good neighbour, he was a loving good neighbour and what he did was beyond any reasonable thing for all of them to imagine. Jesus told them that when the Samaritan traveller saw the man ‘he had compassion on him, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine. Then he set him on his own donkey and brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day when he departed, he took out two denarii (two day’s wages) and gave them to the innkeeper and said to him, ‘Take care of him. I will repay you whatever else you spend when I return’.

The Good Samaritan’s virtuous act of love drew no applause from he crowd that day. The Good Samaritan simply did what he did, and no reward is mentioned for what he did other than he acted in love and compassion. Jesus was telling them, and he is telling us today that this kind of love is its own reward even when it is not appreciated. That story of the loving Good Samaritan is clearly a picture of Jesus himself who sees us beaten up by life and left by the roadside and who takes us to a safe place of rest (which the Bible says is an Inn) where we can be cared for at his expense, and who has paid the price for our full recovery till his return. 
The Inn, pandocheion is translated as ‘a place where all are received, and no one refused’.

This story is first and foremost about God’s love for us. That love never ceases, even when it gets no appreciation or applause or thanks. 
God’s Love is its own reward for God himself, as it continues irresistibly till it finds someone to receive it and then it is completed, because love yearns to be received. 
It doesn’t suit a lot of people that God’s love works that way because they have their own concept of justice about who deserves God’s love. 

This story is also about our love for one another. Jesus said in the parable that this kind of love is to be our fulfillment in life as a glimmer of the reality of God’s love for us And we can be empowered by grace to not only live IN but to live OUT that love, just as Paul testified that he was compelled by God’s love to do what he did in serving others (2Corinthians 5.14).

How do we experience that love? 
We ask God to make HIS love real to us as we sit in his presence and thankfully receive it. That love implants itself deep into our spirit and grows there through the Holy Spirit.

How can we know that we have loved with that kind of love?
We measure how we’ve loved by being willing to measure how much we haven’t loved, and then we pray for more grace to receive even more of his love. God yearns to answer that prayer, so we continually put that on top of our list with quiet assurance, because we were created to complete God’s love to us by receiving it. This is the ultimate understanding for us to have in order to be fulfilled in life on this earth. 

Our faith in God is actually our faith in his love, and that love contains all of God’s wisdom and justice and discipline and mercy and forgiveness, and his ‘no’ to us is as loving as his ‘yes’. That implanted love becomes the spiritual energy centre of our life that guides us through all circumstances and completes the goal of our salvation.

1Corinthians 13:4 Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut,
Love doesn't have a swelled head, doesn’t force itself on others, Isn't always "me first," doesn't fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, doesn't revel when others grovel, Love takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, and always looks for the best, never looks back but keeps going to the end.
Love never dies. 
Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know truth only in part, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompleteness is cancelled.