Love Your Neighbor More
Luke 10:25–37
SERMON • Who is my neighbor? In other words, whom am I obligated to love? In answer to this question, Jesus gave the parable of the “Good Samaritan,” possibly the best known and least understood story Jesus ever told. Join us as we discover the truth behind this famous parable and learn to see ourselves, others, and Jesus with new eyes.
We're contemplating the Parable of the Good Samaritan today, as we focus on the theme of "Loving our Neighbors More." As we move into this text, we should each be asking ourselves, "What would it look like for me in my context, my family, my relationships, my weekly routines to love my neighbors more?"
The phrase "love your neighbor" has fallen in hard times. In fact, it’s not only misunderstood and misapplied but even abused in our day.
Redeeming the Call to “Love Your Neighbor”
During Covid, as you may remember, the phrase "Love your neighbor" was widely used in blogs and broader culture to justify all manner of demands from one group of people or another to limit not only one’s personal freedoms but national and even religious freedoms, in the name of loving one’s neighbor.
Some argued, "If you love your neighbor, you’ll stop meeting as a church congregation, or you’ll stop singing, or you’ll require masks at all times, or this or that." Or "if you love your neighbor, you’ll get vaccinated, once, twice, and three times." Others countered just as resolutely, "If you love your neighbor, you won’t force him to get vaccinated or shame or fire him for not doing so." And so the conversation went.
Love Your Neighbor by Providing Her Abortion Access?
Most disturbingly, just this past September, California Governor Gavin Newsom sponsored numerous pro-abortion billboards in seven "red" states after the overturning of Roe V Wade. What was jarring to behold was that some of these billboards argue for abortion rights by quoting Scripture’s command to love "your neighbor as yourself."
So if pro-abortion, political billboards can cite Jesus’s words with a straight face, where does that leave us with regard to a culturally worn-out and broken phrase "Love your neighbor as yourself?" The answer is… it leaves us where we always are: in need of opening our Bibles and seeing for ourselves what Jesus, in context, meant when he uttered these timeless words.
Luke 10:25-28
Let’s begin reading in Luke 10:25-28:
And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And 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.” And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” vv. 25–28 5 min: Explain setting and scenario
Was the question sincere or a trap? Taken in Luke’s larger context of justification through faith and not works, and the immediate context of the question the lawyer asks about how to live in such a way that one inherits eternal life, it’s most natural to gather from Luke’s comment that the lawyer sought self-justification (looking for affirmation that he was righteous and would indeed inherit eternal life).
Luke 16:15: “And he said to [the Pharisees], “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God”
Luke 18:14: tax collector and a Pharisee pray: “I tell you, this [tax collector] went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Acts 13:39: “By [Christ] everyone who believes is freed (same Greek word) from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.” The standard Jewish answer in Jesus’ day would have been “you should love your fellow Jews”
Matt. 5:43: “You’ve heard it said, ‘you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’”
So, it’s most likely the lawyer was trying to trap Jesus into saying all people should be loved (since Jesus was known for treating everyone with equal dignity). This would put non-Jews on equal footing with Jews, which could get Jesus in trouble. The lawyer then presses Jesus further with the all-important question: “And who is my neighbor?” In other words, “If eternal life depends on me loving my neighbor as myself, explain to me exactly who my neighbor is.” The question means: whom am I obligated to love—and whom can I lawfully hate? This is the main idea of the text.
Who is my neighbor?
This question arose when a lawyer, seeking specificity from Jesus, prompted Him for a definition. However, Jesus, rather than providing a judicial or contemporary Jewish definition of a neighbor, opted to illustrate his point through a story. He narrated the well-known parable of the "Good Samaritan" to elucidate whom we are required to love.
The Story of the Good Samaritan
In this parable, as described in verses 30–35, Jesus recounted how a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho was assaulted by robbers. They left him half-dead after stripping and beating him. A priest and then a Levite, both considered official churchmen, encountered the man but chose to pass by without offering assistance, likely to avoid becoming ceremonially unclean or sharing the victim's fate. In contrast, a Samaritan, who crossed ethnic barriers, showed mercy to the injured Jew. He tended to the man's wounds, transported him to safety, and even covered his expenses at an inn, showcasing compassion and generosity.
Jesus concluded the parable in verses 36–37 by asking which of the three proved to be a neighbor to the victim. The lawyer acknowledged that it was the one who showed mercy. Jesus then instructed him to "go, and do likewise," emphasizing the act of showing mercy. This parable transforms the question "Who is my neighbor?" into "To whom should I be a neighbor?" The shift is significant.
A better question: To whom shall I be neighbor?
The original question limits the scope of our love, while the revised question encourages a heart posture that reflects Christ's love in all interactions. It moves from merely doing good selectively to being a loving neighbor universally, influenced by God's grace and a compassionate heart.
Jesus' focus on the heart's attitude in the parable highlights the importance of genuine compassion over obligatory actions. It contrasts the tendency to find excuses and blame shift, a skill often developed from a young age, with the virtues of truth, honesty, humility, love, compassion, generosity, and service. The parable and Jesus' teaching not only exposed the unloving heart of the lawyer but also serve as a mirror for our own hearts, challenging us to reflect on our attitudes and actions towards others.
We have failed to show compassion to others.
If we're honest, we too often have walked on the other side of the road when we've seen our "neighbors." Be that our coworkers, our siblings, our parents, our spouse, our boss, our HOA neighbor. We often don't feel compassion as we should. We aren't often moved towards others in compassion. No doubt there are differences of personality. Some are more naturally caring, others more naturally nosy and so like to dig into people's troubles. But I'm not talking about personality, we're talking about redeemed hearts that feel compassion like the Samaritan. Others of us may feel it, but rarely take any concrete steps to move towards others in practical ways to meet practical needs, perhaps especially when (like the lawyer) the "others" are not of our ethnic, cultural, or socio-economic background. Or because they're our spouse or kids.
An Illustration from a Troubled Marriage
The story is told of a man who was harsh with his wife. They had a troubled marriage and the pastor visited the house and talked with them. The pastor said, "Well, God says in Scripture that husbands are to love and cherish their wives. But the man explained "I can't love my wife. So the pastor said, "Well, if you can't love her as your wife, can you love her as your nearest neighbor?" Since you're obligated to love your neighbor as yourself. When the man objected, the pastor said, well if you can't love her as your wife, or as your neighbor, can you love her as your enemy? Jesus said, "Love your enemies, bless them who curse you, and do good to those who hate you." You see, while we are so often looking for loopholes in our responsibilities, Jesus is showing us that our hearts are naturally bent towards loving ourselves supremely and others only at our convenience.
But there's another side of this coin. Despite our failures to relate to all others from hearts of compassion, we grossly underestimate our failure to live up to God's standard of righteousness.
We falsely think we're compassionate enough.
Compounding our admitted lack of compassion is often the delusion that we're doing pretty well. Right? If Jesus' numerous interactions with the religious elite in his day, embodied by the lawyer in our story, the priest, and the Levite give us any indication, those three individuals would have likely assumed they were doing just fine. They loved those they wanted to love, they excused their failures to love those they didn't want to love, and they expected to inherit eternal life all the same—based on the delusion that they were, of course, "good people." We fancy ourselves pretty good folks, not realizing that God's standard of goodness is "perfect righteousness" in heart as well as action. There's a reason why the message of God's free grace for sinners rolls like water off a duck's back to most people, because most people—despite their insecurities, sins, grievous regrets, current struggles, pride, self-loathing, self-justifying habits, still manage to look around at most others and feel pretty good about themselves. I venture to say that it's rare to meet a person who doesn't assume they're at least better than average.
The Pendulum Swing from Insecurity to Pride and Back Again
We humans are complex creatures. Half the time we feel ourselves to be failures, losers, and lost causes and can't believe God's Grace is free to all who trust in Christ, and half the time we are so gripped by pride, self-justification, excuses, blame-shifting and seeing ourselves as victims of circumstance that we're offended when Scripture tells us we by nature really are abysmal moral failures in the sight of God—apart from the transforming work of God in our lives. God's law is the standard by which you and I will be judged by God one day. There is no grading on a curve. If you wish to stand before God dressed, as it were, in your own righteousness, you will not stand at all. When we situate this parable in the larger storyline of Scripture, the fact is that none of us in this story is the Good Samaritan (Romans 3:10, 23).
By nature, we're all the one laying half-dead along the road, naked of our own achievements before the bar of God's justice, stripped of any pretense of virtue by God's perfect law, robbed of all we took pride in, sinful, helpless, forsaken by the false promises of deliverance by the priest and Levite representing religious piety. There is only One who is good, and that is God. And there is only one good man, and that is the God-man, Christ Jesus. This is our gospel conviction.
Jesus is the ultimate Good Samaritan.
I am not suggesting that in Jesus' parable he secretly intended to show that he himself is the Good Samaritan. This interpretation, an allegorical interpretation, for the theological-nerdly among us, has a long history, but has been rejected by John Calvin and many others. But we do have the benefit of reading the parable not only in its immediate context but also its literary context in the whole of Luke and even in the context of all of Scripture—in view of the unfolding of all of redemptive history. And what we come away with understanding is that, as with every virtue, every obedient action to God’s law, every holy attribute of moral character, they’re all embodied and epitomized by none other than Jesus alone.
New Testament scholar, D. A. Carson put it this way:
"The ultimate Good Samaritan, who comes to broken people condemned to death, and binds up their wounds and saves their lives, and frees them forever from slavery, because he pays it all. It’s Jesus. Now that’s not Jesus’ point when he tells the parable, but Luke has so configured it in his sequence that you cannot help but see this is the case. This is the parable Jesus tells as he resolves to go to Jerusalem to die for our sins."
This theme of Christ’s compassion is a major theme in the gospels:
Matt 8: "Jesus stretched out His hand and touched the leper, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.”
Matt 20: Upon seeing the blind men, "Moved with compassion, Jesus touched their eyes; and immediately they regained their sight and followed Him."
Mark 6:34: "When Jesus went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and He felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and He began to teach them many things."
Luke 7:13: "When the Lord saw the widow of Nain whose son died, He felt compassion for her, and said to her, “Do not weep.”
Luke 19:41: "When He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city devoted to divine destruction and wept over it."
John 11: Jesus saw the sorrow of his friends mourning the death of Lazarus and asked “Where have you laid him?” They said to Him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. So the Jews were saying, “See how He loved him!”
And Jesus demonstrates a depth of love for neighbor we can scarcely imagine. Jesus embodied a compassion of heart that moved him towards redemptive actions for the good of others... FOR OUR GOOD, every day of our lives. This realization is actually what slowly and steadily creates in us, by God’s Spirit, hearts softened towards others just as Jesus’ heart was softened towards us. Because Christ’s heart for others is what God wants in us. Not mere external conformity to rules, to laws, in order that we might earn eternal life. No, Jesus grants eternal life in order that his very heart might be formed in us. Having found us, delivered us, rescued us from death, bound up our wounds, anointed us with the Spirit of God, paid our sin debts, Jesus now tells US: “You go, and do likewise.”
Go and Do Likewise
The final words of Jesus in this exchange is “Go and do likewise.” I envision (and have been praying) that some of you respond by feeling a nudge to get certified as foster parents, or to begin the adoption process. Or to begin being prayerfully alert to opportunities to financially help others in need. Or to reimagine relating to others with the same compassion we’ve received from the only truly Good Samaritan. Relating with compassion for your spouse, your boss, your employees, your parents, your children, your roommates, your friends… your former friends, and even your enemies. ❖
