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Luke 10:25-37 The Parable of the Good Samaritan

The parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the most recognized passages of the New Testament. It is a parable of contrasts, and its details would have struck a chord with Jesus’ listeners and Luke’s readers. I want to point out some of these details and reflect on how we are meant to mature from them.

Understanding the Law

The first detail is that the expert in the law correctly describes the heart behind the law. By quoting part of the Shema (Deut. 6:5) and Leviticus 19:18, the expert in the law established his understanding that eternal life is intrinsically tied to loving God with one’s whole life and loving one’s neighbor as oneself. Jesus tells the expert that his response is correct (Lk. 10:25-28).

Who Is My Neighbor?

The second detail is the expert’s second question: “and who is my neighbor?” (v.29). We are told he asked this question because he sought “to justify himself.” His desire to justify himself is somewhat vague, but we can deduce from the parable that the expert sought to justify his current practice of selective neighborliness. The second detail, therefore, is that the expert knew the intended heart behind the law, but he sought to limit the number of situations in which he was required to act in accordance to the law.

Key Characters

The third detail is the characters of the parable. The parable has four characters who play an active role: the man, the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan. The last three of these are specific to Judaism. The priest and Levite are religious leaders. The Samaritan is a descendent of Jacob, but Samaritans were seen, to some degree, as ethnically distinct from Jews, and the two groups no longer worshipped together (c.f. John 4:1-20, 39-42). The man who fell victim to the robbers, however, is intentionally described as “a generic man.”¹ Thus, the third detail presents a striking scene for Jesus’ and Luke’s first century audience: a generic man (could be anybody) is thrust into a desperately vulnerable position and is at the mercy of anyone who is willing to help.

The priest and Levite would have also known the requirements of the law but chose to be selective in their practice of it. The Samaritan, on the other hand, practiced the requirements of the law. This development would have struck the listeners as the opposite of what should have happened, yet, it unfortunately matched what the people had experienced from the Jewish leaders.

The Significance is Found in the Details

At the end of the parable, Jesus asks the expert “which of these three proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The expert responds “the one who showed him mercy.” To which Jesus responds “Go and do the same” (vv.36-37).

By the end of the exchange, the expert in the law recognizes that extending mercy is the fulfillment of being neighborly, and being selective in one’s extension of mercy to others is unfaithful to the law.

For Us Today

Faithfulness to God means being like the Samaritan: be quick to extend mercy; don’t be selective to whom you show mercy.

We must also understand that opportunities for mercy are often unplanned. So, we must decide beforehand how we are going to respond in those situations. Will you be a neighbor by extending mercy? The action we take reflects the level of mercy we wish to extend. The Samaritan did not leave the beaten man at the mercy of another until he had personally attended to the man himself.

We should do likewise by deciding in advance how committed we are to being neighborly to the anthropos tis (the generic person) who crosses our path in a desperately vulnerable position.

Footnotes

1. The Greek construction anthropos tis (ἄνθρωπός τις) is emphatically generic. Anthropos means “man” or “a man”, and tis is a pronoun that renders what it refers to as ‘indefinite’ (i.e. generic). ↩︎