What must I do to inherit the life of the age to come (eternal life)? This was the question not only on the heart of the lawyer that came to Jesus (Luke 10:25-37), but it was the question of the day for most Jews of the first century. What he wanted to know from Jesus is how Jesus was defining the Covenant people of God. Who would be in and who would be out? When Jesus responds to his question with a question of his own, the lawyer is ready with a response. It appears that he was familiar with Jesus’ teaching and gave a response that he knew would please Jesus. The man says that one must follow the Jewish prayer known as the Shema (pronounced shuh-mah), which called for one to love God with all your heart, soul, and strength (Deut. 6:4-9). He combines it with the call to love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18).
Then comes his real question. If loving neighbors was a big part of being identified as God’s Covenant people, then who was his neighbor? It is significant that the two commandments quoted by the lawyer come from the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament). If one were to stick woodenly to the Torah, then it would be quite easy to come up with an extremely limited definition of neighbor. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day had oral additions to the Torah that further defined the expected actions of Jews. According to the oral Torah, someone would have been expected to help this man whether or not they thought he was dead. The Levi, the priest, and the Samaritan, however, would have all rejected the oral Torah and not felt bound to go beyond a wooden, literal interpretation of the Torah in order to help this injured Jew (although we are not told he is specifically a Jew, the presumption of most scholars has always been that he was).
As the lawyer asks the question about neighbors, Luke tells us that he wished to “justify himself.” This doesn’t mean that he wanted to make up for asking a bad question or he was trying to convince Jesus that he was saved. When Jews used that word they are referring to the evidence or badge that one is part of the people of God (see Romans 3:28; 4:2; 5:1, 9). He was trying to identify the people of God. In other words, he was seeking to define the boundaries of God’s Covenant people with himself carefully drawn on the inside and all of the undeserving, unrighteous people on the outside.
The lawyer wanted to know where the Covenant boundary line should be drawn and that is the question that Jesus answers with the story of the Samaritan. Jesus’ story should not be confined to a nice moral tale, indicating that people should be nice to and help one another (although that is certainly true). Nor should it be limited to say that Jesus was simply defining how his followers should treat someone who would normally despise them (although that is certainly true as well).
Jesus’ point went far beyond those two conclusions. The Jew on the side of the road had discovered that his true neighbor was the Samaritan, and not the Levite and the priest. The Levite and the priest were Jews that were so concerned with “following the law” and keeping ceremonially clean that they had missed the whole point of the law. They were like someone who would let a child get hit by a truck because they didn’t want to break a jaywalking law.
Jesus is, once again, defining and redefining who would be brought into the age to come as part of God’s Kingdom. He was clearly teaching a principle that reigns supreme throughout his teaching up to this point in Luke; being a part of the Kingdom of God had nothing to do with being born a Jew, but had everything to do with truly hearing and obeying the Word of God. The Kingdom of God breaking into the world, and it was open to anyone who would follow Jesus. The days of Israel being the sole people of God were over. Those that were considered on the outside were coming in, while those that had always been in, were in very real danger of being out.
As stated earlier, the three characters in this story that had the opportunity to help the injured man, would all have come from groups that held strictly to the Torah and rejected helping this man based on that basis. It is the one who broke away from that mindset and enacted a radical generosity and mercy that was defined by Jesus as being neighbors with the man in the ditch. He was the one who realized that love for God and all of His creation trumped strict observance of the law.
Jesus was telling this lawyer that there was a new way of being God’s people, and it was going to be defined by those who lived out the true heart of the Torah. This was a huge challenge to the beliefs of the lawyer, particularly as it relates to his original question of how to obtain the life of the age to come. He must do it by finding a new and radical way of understanding God’s Torah for mankind. Truly loving God meant loving His entire creation. It meant discovering that neighbors were not limited to the border of Israel. All of mankind was made in the image of God. Those who acted with this radical love for God and mankind would be a part of the Kingdom of God, and those Kingdom people would discover that everyone was a potential neighbor.
There is a constant temptation for God’s people today to think that we are on the inside and look down on everyone else who is not. We can be tempted to avoid certain types of sinful or destitute people in the name of staying pure and holy. Jesus’ message, in situations like that, would apply to us just as it did for the first century Jews. Being in the Kingdom of God means loving all people, even our most hated enemies, in a radical and shockingly merciful manner.
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