Seven surprising things about the Good Samaritan in Luke 10


The Sunday gospel lectionary reading for Trinity 4 in Year C is Luke 10.25-37, most commonly known as the Parable of the Good Samaritan. I suspect many people preaching on this will be looking to wring some new truth from this, but might well lapse back into the ‘Jesus wants us to do good to others’ trope. It might be hard to find anything new to say on such a well-known story—such is the power of Jesus’ story telling that the phrase ‘pass by on the other side’ and the description of someone as a ‘Good Samaritan’ have passed into proverbial English use (though I don’t know if that is true of other cultures and languages).

But as I have reflected on the story, it occurs to me that there are a number of common misuses of this text.

  • Antinomianism: ‘Jesus wanted to do away with legalism and the Mosaic law; in the end, all that matters is caring for people’.
  • Reductionism: ‘Jesus only gave us two commandments, and both of them were positive’.
  • Moral ‘oughterism’: ‘Jesus told us that we ought to care for people, so this I what we ought to do.’
  • Liberal inclusivism: ‘The parable uses a despised outsider as the model of right action, so the truth is found in the lives of the marginalised.’

Some careful attention to the biblical text addresses these issues and offers us a better understanding of what is going on, and highlights seven surprising things that we might not have noticed.


First, we need to note that, though the story Jesus tells is only in Luke, the question of which is the greatest commandment comes in all three Synoptic gospels. It is not clear whether each of the writers puts his own interpretive angle on the encounter, or whether in fact this question arose on more than one occasion; if Jesus did indeed minister for the best part of three years (as the Fourth Gospel suggests), then the latter option is highly likely.

Matthew 22:34-40Mark 12:28-31Luke 10:25-28
Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered, “‘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, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

There are things to note about the differences here. As is common, Mark’s account of the opening dialogue is longer and more detailed than either Luke or Matthew; Mark includes the introduction to the Shema from Deut 6.4 that Jesus quotes, and Jesus goes on to commend the ‘lawyer’ and note that he is ‘not far from the kingdom of God.’ [We need to note the quite different sense of ‘law’ and ‘lawyer’ here; we are looking at a dispute about religious texts, and debates between the religious ‘experts’; and the ‘law’ was the first five books of the Bible, much of which was narrative.] Luke has interpreted this, possibly for an audience less familiar with Jewish theological terms, into the promise that ‘you will live’, though has the answer on the lips of the questioner rather than Jesus. Both Matthew and Luke interpret the question as somewhat negative, whilst Mark’s interpretation is more positive.


The second surprise to be aware of is that the request for a summary of the law has some very clear parallels. In Jesus’ day, two of the main rabbinical schools were those of Hillel (first century BC) and the later Shammai (50 BC—AD 30). Hillel and his school were generally thought to be more relaxed and open in their thinking, whereas Shammai and his school were often more rigorist—and so Jesus is often compared with Hillel in his approach.

One famous account in the Talmud (Shabbat 31a) tells about a gentile who wanted to convert to Judaism. This happened not infrequently, and this individual stated that he would accept Judaism only if a rabbi would teach him the entire Torah while he, the prospective convert, stood on one foot. First he went to Shammai, who, insulted by this ridiculous request, threw him out of the house. The man did not give up and went to Hillel. This gentle sage accepted the challenge, and said:

“What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary—go and study it!”

 (It is worth noting that with regards to ethical teaching, Jesus is often more in agreement with the school of Shammai, the most striking example being that of divorce. John Ortberg summarises David Instone-Brewer’s take on this on beliefnet.com)

It is important to spot what Hillel is doing here. He is not telling the would-be convert that there is only one commandment and that is all he needs to know. Instead, the man needs to go away and study Torah—but now knowing what it is fundamentally about, so that he does not fail to see the wood for the trees. There is, we might say, a mutual interpretive dynamic at work. If I want to make sense of the individual commandments, then I need to know the big picture that they are building into. But if I want to live out the big picture, I do need to study the individual commandments and the detail.

There seems to be something similar going on in the teaching of Jesus. It always strikes me as odd that so many read individual commandments of Jesus as if they were just features of an interesting text, and not the product of a mind that had a coherent and integrated outlook. Of course, Jesus offers us many commandments, not just two (‘turn the other cheek’, ‘bless those who persecute you’, ‘do not worry’, ‘do not judge’ and so on), so the question is: how does his summary of the law relate to his other teaching?


The third surprise is that, in reading the gospels, to find such a compelling story only in one gospel is in fact not that surprising, given that each gospel has its own unique material, and given both the extensive nature of Jesus’ teaching and ministry, and the strictly limited space that each writer had. In a brief conversation I had on the London Underground a while with an English Literature graduate, he commented that he had always found the Bible ‘very dense’ to read—and I replied that this was because the ancient writers had space for few words, so used each of them to the full! That also meant being highly selective about what they included.

Luke has a distinctive interest in Jewish-Samaritan relationships, including the rejection of Jesus by Samaritans in the previous chapter, and the mention of the grateful leper in Luke 17.16 who was a Samaritan, as well as recounting the Samaritan ‘mission’ in Acts 8.25f. It is striking that Luke assumes his readers know about the enmity between Jews and Samaritans, even though he appears clearly to be writing for a non-Jewish audience. It is quite difficult to capture the rhetorical impact of the mention of the Samaritan, in contrast to the very respectable figures of the priest and the Levite, and English translations miss the emphasis in the text with the word ‘Samaritan’ coming first in verse 33, in contrast to the mention of the other two figures in the previous verses. In the 1980s, the Riding Lights Theatre Company retold it as the Parable of the Good Punk Rocker (on the train from London to York, ‘London to York, London to York’…) which attempted to replicate this effect. We might do well to try and find a similar contrast in our own day.

It might be claimed that this demonstrates Luke’s focus on the marginalised and the outsider—but Luke also mentions the wealthy (in a positive light) and influential Jewish leaders more than the other gospels. So his focus is not so much that the gospel is for the marginalised, but that the gospel is for both the marginalised and the wealthy, both insider and outsider equally.


This leads to our fourth surprise, as highlighted by Alastair Roberts in his interesting reflection on this passage. The mention of Samaritans to the Jews Jesus is speaking with is part of a longer story of broken relationships.

It is worth noticing that in the previous chapter Jesus has not been welcomed by the Samaritans because they saw that he had set his face toward Jerusalem, but on two occasions we have good Samaritans. There is the one in the parable, but there is also the good Samaritan who was a leper and who returns to give thanks. The fact that that character is a Samaritan is highlighted.

So the Samaritans are part of the story Luke is telling. They aren’t just a generic outside group that is particularly unloved. Rather, they are part of the story of Luke, and Luke wants us to recognize their importance.

In the book of Acts, too, he gives attention to the Samaritans that are converted. In chapter 8, they receive the Spirit as much as the Jerusalem church and the people of Judea received the Spirit…

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, you see something of God restoring Israel and Judah, restoring this broken kingdom through the work of Christ. In that act of mercy, in that act of neighbour-making, there is a new people being formed, just as there was a new unity formed between the Samaritans and the Judeans in the act of mercy in 2 Chronicles 28.

The inclusion of the Samaritans within the blessing of the New Covenant, then, is an important part of the restoration of Israel as one true new nation…The question [Jesus invites us to ask] is “How am I going to be part of the restoration of the people of God, this restoration that takes place in the relationship between the good Samaritan and the Judean—these two groups that had formerly been at enmity being brought together?”


For our fifth surprise, we also need to note that the parable does not contrast legalism with compassion, since the Mosaic law also demands that we care for the stranger—in fact (rather ironically) this part of the summary of the law (‘Love your neighbour as yourself’) comes from the heart of what some readers would see as the most problematic law text in the Old Testament, Leviticus 19.18, not even a full chapter later than the notorious Leviticus 18.22! The issue is not compassion versus law, but the right understanding of the law, and the possibility of using Scriptural teaching for one’s own convenience rather than for the purpose for which it was intended.

This is confirmed by another of Alastair Roberts’ observations about the detail of the narrative, the use of oil and wine.

Some have observed that the parable of the Good Samaritan is, in part, a commentary upon Hosea 6:6: “For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.” The pouring on of oil and wine is a sacrificial action; that is how you might act toward a sacrifice.

Now the priest and the Levite are characters associated with the cultic worship of Israel, people who would be serving in the temple. Some have suggested that they are trying to keep ceremonially pure by not encountering a body that might prove to be a corpse. But the important thing in the parable, as Jesus indicates, is that true sacrifice is found in this act of mercy and compassion performed by the Good Samaritan, and in this act of compassion a sacrificial pattern is being played out. He is treating the man to whom he is showing mercy as if he were a sacrifice.

In other words, Jesus isn’t overturning Old Testament prescriptions, but entering into the debate within the Old Testament itself about what worship and sacrifice are all about.


The sixth surprise is perhaps the most important. The parable has been interpreted in a wide range of different ways, and one of the best known (though least persuasive for modern readers) is the allegorical reading first proposed by Origen:

The man who was going down is Adam. Jerusalem is paradise, and Jericho is the world. The robbers are hostile powers. The priest is the Law, the Levite is the prophets, and the Samaritan is Christ. The wounds are disobedience, the beast is the Lord’s body, the [inn], which accepts all who wish to enter, is the Church. … The manager of the [inn] is the head of the Church, to whom its care has been entrusted. And the fact that the Samaritan promises he will return represents the Savior’s second coming. (Homily 34.3)

This reading was virtually universal throughout early Christianity, being advocated by Irenaeus, Clement as well as Origen, and in the fourth and fifth centuries by Chrysostom in Constantinople, Ambrose in Milan, and Augustine of Hippo—whose version is perhaps best known:

A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho; Adam himself is meant; Jerusalem is the heavenly city of peace, from whose blessedness Adam fell; Jericho means the moon, and signifies our mortality, because it is born, waxes, wanes, an dies. Thieves are the devil and his angels. Who stripped him, namely; of his immortality; and beat him, by persuading him to sin; and left him half-dead, because in so far as man can understand and know God, he lives, but in so far as he is wasted and oppressed by sin, he is dead; he is therefore called half-dead. The priest and the Levite who saw him and passed by, signify the priesthood and ministry of the Old Testament which could profit nothing for salvation. Samaritan means Guardian, and therefore the Lord Himself is signified by this name. The binding of the wounds is the restraint of sin. Oil is the comfort of good hope; wine the exhortation to work with fervent spirit. The beast is the flesh in which He deigned to come to us. The being set upon the beast is belief in the incarnation of Christ. The inn is the Church, where travelers returning to their heavenly country are refreshed after pilgrimage. The morrow is after the resurrection of the Lord. The two pence are either the two precepts of love, or the promise of this life and of that which is to come.

There are all sorts of problems with this approach to the text, not least that it appears to have little connection with what Jesus actually meant, but also that it appears to annul the moral imperative. But the modern reaction to such a reading is to head in the opposite direction, and reduce the impact to mere practical morality, devoid of any Christological significance and detached from what the rest of the New Testament says about sin, atonement and ethics.

In fact, Luke’s careful approach to numerical composition helps us here. The turning point of the story is that the Samaritan sees the man, and is ‘moved with compassion’ (some ETs blunt this a little by saying ‘had pity on him’). The Greek term here, splagchnizomai, ‘literally’ means ‘his bowels were moved’ (hence the AV translates the cognate term in Phil 1.8 ‘I yearn for you with the bowels of Christ’). This term only occurs three times in Luke’s gospel:

  • Luke 7.13    The raising of the widow’s son
  • Luke 10.33    The parable of the man who fell among thieves
  • Luke 15.20   The parable of the two sons and the forgiving father

And in each case, not only is this verb the narrative turning point of the story—it is also the word which is numerically at the centre of each pericope, with an equal number of words before and after this term, to emphasise its importance. (This also tells us something about the care with which Luke has composed his gospel!).

And the striking thing is that, in the other two instances, it is Jesus who is moved to compassionate action. This implies that, whilst the allegorical reading has major problems, it has at least noted one thing of importance: it is the Samaritan who is taking the part of Jesus in the story. We might want, then, to reflect further and understand theologically that, beaten and bruised as we have been by sin, it is Jesus who has refused to pass by on the other side, but who has brought us help and healing by paying the price that was needed for us.

This is not to rob the story (pun not intended!) of its moral force—but it shifts the register. We do not help others because we ‘ought’ to, but because we have received for ourselves from Jesus the life-changing compassion which we then share with those around us, as part of sharing the love of God in word and deed.

We love because he first loved us. If we say we love God yet hate a brother or sister, we are liars. For if we do not love a fellow believer, whom we have seen, we cannot love God, whom we have not seen. And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love one another. (1 John 4.19–21)

As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. (Matt 10.7–8)

The practical lesson of the Parable of the Good Samaritan is to give to others what we have already been given.


(And don’t miss the bonus, seventh surprise: the word for ‘inn’ here is πανδοχεῖον, and this word occurs nowhere in the birth narrative in Luke 2. What is mentioned there is a κατάλυμα, an (upper) guest room, thus confirming that Jesus was not born in a stable!)

The illustration is a detail from ‘The Good Samaritan’ by the 16th century Flemish painter Jacob Jordaens.


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161 thoughts on “Seven surprising things about the Good Samaritan in Luke 10”

  1. “it is the Samaritan who is taking the part of Jesus in the story. We might want, then, to reflect further and understand theologically that, beaten and bruised as we have been by sin, it is Jesus who has refused to pass by on the other side, but who has brought us help and healing by paying the price that was needed for us.”

    This is such a helpful observation. I don’t know why I’ve never seen it before. The parallels are so obvious, once they’re pointed out. Thank you.

    “There is, we might say, a mutual interpretive dynamic at work.”

    Well quite. In both OT and NT, it is made pretty clear that everything religious we do, needs to be filtered through the great commandments about the power, primacy and importance of love. We are all familiar with the dangers of extreme fundamentalism, I am sure, and the way that people – in a quest for certainties – isolate individual laws and interpret them as if they exist as standalones, that simply need to be literalistically applied, without the ‘interpretative dynamic’ of love.

    That belittles God’s creations and risks reducing us to little more than robots – “I was only following orders” excuse and mentality.

    On the contrary, we all know that we have God-given consciences, with which we are challenged to interact with the Holy Spirit, as we open to the power of God’s love. Is it not fair to say that the whole scriptures are subordinate to the primacy of love, and to be interpreted in the context of that love?

    The Samaritan did not lecture the injured person on dogma, or wrestle with religious issues. He got on with doing true religion: intervening with compassionate love. If we have not love, frankly there is nothing left to all our religion, our tongues, our prophecy. God is love. Interpretation needs to be driven by the imperative of that love. The others who ‘passed by’ missed the point. That does not delete other commandments and teachings. But it informs how we should interpret them, and assess their contexts, and what primarily counts.

    Reply
    • Is it not fair to say that the whole scriptures are subordinate to the primacy of love, and to be interpreted in the context of that love?

      Well no, because you seem to have totally missed the point about a ‘mutual interpretive dynamic’. The key word there, ‘mutual’, making that as well as the scriptures being interpreted in the context of love, love must be interpreted in the context of the scriptures. Neither has ‘primacy’ over the other; neither is ‘subordinate’. You cannot understand the scriptures without love; equally you cannot understand what love is without conforming to the scriptures.

      Reply
      • I guess it’s *how* you conform to the scriptures that introduces the interpretative dynamic. Should they be conformed to, always, literally and legalistically? Or should they be read, subject to our consciences interacting with the Holy Spirit, in primary search of love. I’d still argue that love is primary, and helps us ‘open up’ the scriptures, through the Holy Spirit and the exercise of our consciences (and prayer).

        The Good Samaritan’s actions were right, not because of theological correctness and doctrinal exactitude, but because compassionate love in practical action is God at work, and comprehends the underlying primary imperative of the Love of God, and God’s person at work. That is more precious and more important than legalism in religion. Whether he realised it or not, he was acting in fulfilment of the scriptures, whose primary purpose is opening us up to the Love of God and its flow in our lives.

        I won’t say anymore because it will derail, and also because I have work to do!

        Reply
        • I’d still argue that love is primary

          So in other words you disagree fundamentally with the idea of a ‘mutual interpretive dynamic’; you think the correct interpretive dynamic is not a mutual one, but one which puts ‘love’ in a primary position and other considerations subordinate to it.

          Fine, that’s an arguable position (ai think it’s wrong and I have arguments against it, but it is arguable), but then don’t write ‘well, quite’ as if you agree with something that you obviously actually disagree with at a fundamental level.

          Reply
    • I actually think the use of the term ‘love’ in contemporary discussion is almost worthless. For one, you must distinguish in Scripture between agape and eros.

      But more broadly, ‘love’ in contemporary language means mostly ‘giving me what I want’ and so bears little relation to anything that Scripture says.

      Reply
      • “I love sweets” = gimme gimme.

        “I love my partner” = sacrifice, service, costly devotion, compassion.

        “The love of God at work in my nursing” has meant for 10 years, giving myself in service to others, cleaning them up after incontinence, ‘doing’ love practically.

        So I don’t really agree with your generalisation, Ian, that ‘love’ in contemporary language means mostly ‘give me what I want’.

        I’d respectfully argue that’s demeaning to people’s lives and openings to love (although I am sure you did not mean to be dismissive).

        Personally, I suggest that we all know ‘love’ when it flows from God… in our compassion, our service of others, our kindness to elderly or sad neighbours, and times when we put other people first.

        I suggest, whatever range of terms is used in scripture, any of us can experience the love that flows through the heart in kindness and compassion – whatever Greek word you prefer to use.

        When Jesus talks about loving God and loving our neighbours, he is surely talking about givenness and devotion… the ‘true religion’ of the prophets… and I don’t think that’s worthless. Quite the opposite. Opening our hearts to the supernatural power of love… letting that love flow out to others… that is actually God in action.

        It’s virtually the whole point of our existence, isn’t it?

        The Good Samaritan did just that. So did Jesus.

        Reply
        • So I don’t really agree with your generalisation, Ian, that ‘love’ in contemporary language means mostly ‘give me what I want’.

          Nah, Ian Paul is right, though putting it another way might make it clearer:

          ‘To love someone’ in contemporary language means mostly ‘giving them what they want’

          So if you say ‘I love my partner’, in modern terms, that means ‘I give my partner what they want’ — which is what you touch on with ‘sacrifice, service, costly devotion, compassion’.

          And it’s what we seen in the medical sphere too, where the ‘loving’ thing to do is seen to be to give people what treatment they want — up to and including helping them to murder themselves, if that’s what they want.

          We seem to have lost the concept of ‘tough love’: that sometimes the most loving thing is not to give someone what they want.

          Reply
          • I agree that somtimes the most loving thing is not to give someone what they want. Nonetheless, I think that we need to be careful here. Sometimes ‘tough love’ can be merely a phoney excuse for insisting on inflicting what WE want on someone.

          • Sometimes ‘tough love’ can be merely a phoney excuse for insisting on inflicting what WE want on someone.

            And ‘giving people what they want’ love can be just as much a phoney excuse for inflicting what we want on someone, like parents who fail their children by not setting boundaries because they desperately want to be ‘cool’ and ‘friends’ with their children — to say nothing of divorced parents who spoil their children in an attempt to salve their guilty consciences.

          • (Or indeed right at the worst end of the scale, those parents who munchausen-by-proxy their children into sexual reassignment surgery, inflicting irreversible life-destroying mutilation on their offspring in order to indulge their own desire to be trendy and interesting and experience vicarious cometitive oppression.)

          • S
            I’d just like to say that I agree with you 100% about “Muenchausen-by-proxy” parents.

          • You’re distorting the meaning of munchausen-by-proxy, obviously to make a point, but it’s not nice to see a serious illness distorted in this way.

            And conflating gender diaphoria with it also isn’t nice, although obviously expected from types like you. We get it. You don’t like trans stuff, but maybe stick to this rather than conflating different issues and making yourself appear even more repulsive.

          • You’re distorting the meaning of munchausen-by-proxy, obviously to make a point, but it’s not nice to see a serious illness distorted in this way.

            No, I’m not. The meaning of Munchausen-by-proxy is to fake symptoms of an illness in someone else (usually someone in your care) in order to get attention and praise for one’s ‘courage’ in dealing with the situation and caring for the ‘sufferer’.

            This is exactly what I mean when I refer to those parents who induce symptoms of gender dysphoria in their children in order to get attention and praise for fighting for their ‘special children’.

            This is obviously a totally different issue from adults who actually suffer from gender dysphoria.

            So no, I’m not conflating different issues. The people conflating different issues are the ones trying to blur the difference between adults who suffer from gender dysphoria — which is a serious condition that deserves our understanding and sympathy — and healthy children whose parents are basically abusing them for their own ends.

          • You know exactly what you’re doing and I can’t see any parent “induce symptoms of gender dysphoria”. You’re just conflating the two to have a go at parents who are trying the best for their children. It really isn’t very nice of you.

          • You know exactly what you’re doing and I can’t see any parent “induce symptoms of gender dysphoria”.

            Well of course you can’t. There are none so blind as those who do not want to see.

      • Ian – in the context of The Good Samaritan parable, I think we are given a very good working definition of ‘love’ when Jesus says ‘Go thou and do likewise’ – and this punchline is basically the whole point of the parable.

        I suspect that the definition of ‘love’ in secular discussion has never matched up with this and the difference between secular and Christian use of the term has been pretty much constant since the time of Adam.

        Reply
  2. Comparing the declarations of the summary of the law in Luke compared with Mark and Matthew is that in the latter two it is Jesus who gives it, while in Luke we see Jesus reflecting the question back to the “expert in the law”. From this, Luke is describing a different occasion from Mark and Matthew. Also, it would seem that this summary was known.

    Reply
      • You won’t find the bishops looking for that.

        The Bishop stood by herself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—racists, homophobes, Conservatives—or even like this Leave voter. I write to my MP twice a week and I get all my electricity from renewable sources (it says on my bill).’

        Reply
  3. In my view the best way of giving the parable force in our context is to adopt the approach of John Ray, with his many years of mission experience in the Muslim world. He would say that wherever we read the word ‘Samaritan’ in the Bible we should substitute the word ‘Muslim’ in our minds in order to give it equivalent cultural force.

    Reply
      • Ian,

        I was taking Greg to mean that – “in our context” – to some Christians, ‘Muslim’ has a certain stigma, and that the parable reset in present day contexts might be challenging, framed that way.

        However, I accept the specificity of Jesus’s words as addressed to his contemporary listeners, for whom Samaritans carried a certain stigma as well? All that said, I am happy to be educated about “the actual relationship between Jews and Samaritans” that you allude to. In fact, I’m quite interested to better understand that relationship in terms of religious belief, social and cultural relations, and the reasons why the choice of ‘Samaritan’ was particularly pertinent and challenging.

        I suppose a problem with using Muslim as a parallel to Samaritan lies in what you read in Luke’s writing as the implicit ‘project’ of God to restore one nation, one people of God – given the contradictions between Islam and Christianity?

        In terms of stigma, Muslim seems to work at the level of the ‘Good Samaritan’ story quite well. Would a better parallel for the wider ‘project’ of God be the union of Roman Catholics and Protestants? In some sectarian communities, that might work I suppose.

        Reply
        • I tend to agree. I thought the main thrust of the story was that ‘loving’ means not just loving those we like but those we normally have little or nothing to do with, eg enemies etc. It seems the Jews and Samaritans effectively hated each other for historical reasons. I certainly think the Protestant and Catholic analogy is appropriate, particularly in NI.

          God have mercy on my unloving heart.

          Peter

          Reply
          • Indeed Peter. We feel how unloving our hearts are. The love that was in the Samaritan’s heart made him reach out to any in need. It was not love demanded by law (the Samaritan was not under law). The law demanded love but the priest and Levite show demanded love is futile; love must flow from a heart, a redeemed heart with the indwelling Spirit but this last is going beyond the time of the parable.

    • He would say that wherever we read the word ‘Samaritan’ in the Bible we should substitute the word ‘Muslim’ in our minds in order to give it equivalent cultural force.

      Isn’t the problem with that that it just turns hearing the parable into an opportunity for people to go, ‘well I already knew that Muslims could be good, so I thank you Lord that I am superior to those racists for whom the idea of a “good Muslim” is shocking, for they are the ones who really need to hear this parable, not me’?

      Reply
      • That is indeed a risk, but I struggle to find a people (or other) group in our modern world that would not carry that risk.

        Reply
        • That is indeed a risk, but I struggle to find a people (or other) group in our modern world that would not carry that risk.

          I bet it wouldn’t be difficult to find a group that wouldn’t carry that risk, actually, but only for each specific audience. Obviously no one group will work for all audiences.

          Reply
  4. I think the element that may be missing from this helpful evaluation of the text is that the lawyer asks who is my neighbour, expecting (we presume) to know who he should love. What he gets is to answer the question, “who was the neighbour to the man?” and the implication now is – were you to be beaten up and left for dead, and two people passed by and one helped you, who would be *your* neighbour? The teacher of the law has to acknowledge that the neighbour is the one who did something (he can’t bring himself to say “Samaritan”; then Jesus says to him / us – ‘go and do the same’. The lawyer is asked to view the question first from a position of need not power.
    Thank you for reminding us to see also a Christological element in the rescue of the man – and the link to Jesus being moved in his guts with compassion.
    Thank you for reminding me that there is a specificity to the Samaritan context, and a continuation of the presence of Samaritans in Luke’s writing, as well as a more general element that neighbour includes those who are deemed outside our kinship group. There is always going to be a challenge as to how we modernise the illustration AND hold to the historic particularity.

    Some journeys are more dangerous than others:-
    A man falls overboard in the Channel, yachts and fishing boats don’t stop, but a dinghy with illegal migrants rescues him, makes space, shares some water, and risks even greater overloading .. Who was your neighbour when you fell overboard? .. Go and do thou likewise ..

    Reply
    • A man falls overboard in the Channel, yachts and fishing boats don’t stop, but a dinghy with illegal migrants rescues him, makes space, shares some water, and risks even greater overloading

      Or how about, an illegal economic migrant falls overboard…

      … another migrant dinghy passes by …

      … a push yacht with a load of Guardian features writers on deck drinking champagne passes by…

      … a rickety old fishing boat, festooned with St. George’s flags, comes to and throws down a line …

      Oh, you don’t like that one as much? I wonder why?

      Reply
      • I don’t like your version as much but not for the reason you seem to imply. The point of the story from Jesus was to put the lawyer / teacher of the law in the place of the victim who receives help from “another”, so that he would answer the question as if from a place of personal need not theory or charity. Your version with the St George flag-ship works if I am by nature the migrant, but personally I am not.
        Your version would work better (assuming you see me as a person who does not admire the St George Flag) if it is a charity worker / immigration advocate / ‘ anti-Rwanda policy protester (if that is what I am) who falls overboard and is picked up by the St George boat but ignored by the other protestors who see their job to be to protest etc .. or maybe picked up by the riot police against whom the person was protesting.
        This forum is not a place to mention those who have or haven’t generously supported Ukrainian families but local support here has brought together in practical compassion people who otherwise might hold very different political views. It is always good to be reminded that we can all too easily sneer at others or doubt their potential for goodness.
        For a different modern re-telling of the story, Vincent Donovan tells the story of someone attacked on the street in the city and no-one chose / dared to go and help them and the person died. Who then was a neighbour to the one attacked? Good question.

        Reply
        • Your version would work better (assuming you see me as a person who does not admire the St George Flag) if it is a charity worker / immigration advocate / ‘ anti-Rwanda policy protester (if that is what I am) who falls overboard and is picked up by the St George boat

          I can take that note.

          Reply
  5. Thanks Ian.

    “This implies that, whilst the allegorical reading has major problems, it has at least noted one thing of importance: it is the Samaritan who is taking the part of Jesus in the story.”

    Calvin’s opposition to the allegorical interpretation of this Parable has had lasting influence. This quote reminds me of one of Spurgeon’s sermons, who, as keen a disciple of Calvin as any, is yet unable to resist the ‘analogy’ while at the same time expressing caution to the allegory:

    “But now, fourthly, WE HAVE A HIGHER MODEL than even the Samaritan — our Lord Jesus Christ. I do not think that our divine Lord intended to teach anything about himself in this parable, except so far as he is himself the great exemplar of all goodness. He was answering the question, “Who is my neighbour?” and he was not preaching about himself at all. There has been a great deal of straining of this parable to bring the Lord Jesus and everything about him into it, but this I dare not imitate. Yet by analogy we may illustrate our Lord’s goodness by it. This is a picture of a generous hearted man who cares for the needy: but the most generous hearted man that ever lived was the Man of Nazareth, and none ever cared for sick and suffering souls as he has done. Therefore, if we praise the good Samaritan, we should much more extol the blessed Saviour whom his enemies called a Samaritan, and who never denied the charge, for what cared he if all the prejudice and scorn of men should vent itself on him?

    Now, brethren, our Lord Jesus Christ has done better than the good Samaritan, because our case was worse. As I have already said, the wounded man could not blame himself for his sad estate; it was his misfortune, not his fault; but you and I are not only half dead, but altogether dead in trespasses and sins, and we have brought many of our ills upon ourselves. The thieves that have stripped us are our own iniquities, the wounds which we bear have been inflicted by our own suicidal hand. We are not in opposition to Jesus Christ as the poor Jew was to the Samaritan from the mere force of prejudice, but we have been opposed to the blessed Redeemer by nature; we have from the first turned away from him. Alas, we have resisted and rejected him. The poor man did not put his Samaritan friend away, but we have done so to our Lord. How many times have we refused Almighty love! How often by unbelief have we pulled open the wounds which Christ has bound up! We have rejected the oil and wine which in the gospel he presents to us. We have spoken evil of him to his face, and have lived even for years in utter rejection of him, and yet in his infinite love he has not given us up, but he has brought some of us into his church, where we rest as in an inn, feeding on what his bounty has provided. It was wondrous love which moved the Saviour’s heart when he found us in all our misery, and bent over us to lift us out of it, though he knew that we were his enemies.

    Lastly, you who are Christ’s people are saved, and you are not going to do these things in order to save yourselves: the greater Samaritan has saved you, Jesus has redeemed you, brought you into his church, put you under the care of his ministers, bidden us take care of you, and promised to reward us if we do so in the day when he comes. Seek, then, to be true followers of your Lord by practical deeds of kindness, and if you have been backward in your gifts to help either the temporal or the spiritual needs of men, begin from this morning with generous hearts, and God will bless you. O divine Spirit, help us all to be like Jesus. Amen.” (https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/the-good-samaritan/#flipbook/)

    I struggle to see the practical difference between analogy and allegory here. But the important thing is to maintain that the Gospel properly understood always results in following its example, as you say. I for one find the analogy/allegory immensely helpful and am convinced that carefully teaching parables in this way is a right and effective way of communicating the Gospel.

    On another point Ian, in your article “Is allegorical interpretation a Good Thing?” You say:

    “Fifthly it turns the commentator into a priest—someone who stands between me and the text and mediates the meaning to me. I had not worked out that the thread was the blood of Jesus—how could I?”

    In the first Homily, Thomas Cranmer says:

    “For humility will only search to know the truth, it will search, and will bring together one place with another, and where it cannot find out the meaning, it will pray, it will ask of others that know, and will not presumptuously and rashly define any thing, which it knows not.

    GOD leaves no man untaught, that has a good will to know his word. And whosoever gives his mind to holy Scriptures, with diligent study and burning desire, it can not be (says Saint Chrysostome) that he should be left without help. For either GOD Almighty will send him some godly doctor, to teach him, as he did to instruct Eunuchus, a noble man of Aethiope, and Treasurer unto Queene Candace, who having affection to read the Scripture (although he understood it not) yet for the desire that he had unto GODS word, GOD sent his Apostle Philip to declare unto him the true sense of the Scripture that he read: or else, if we lack a learned man to instruct and teach us, yet GOD himself from above, will give light unto our minds, and teach us those things which are necessary for us, & wherein we be ignorant.

    How the knowledge of the Scripture may be attained to. And in another place Chrysostome says, that man’s human and worldly wisdom or science, is not needed for the understanding of Scripture, but the revelation of the holy Ghost, who inspires the true meaning of them, that with humility and diligence do search therefore. He that asks, shall have, and he that seeks shall find, and he that knocks, shall have the door open (Matthew 7.7-8).”

    Anglican teaching on Scripture does seem to acknowledge then that there are ‘others that know’, ‘some godly doctor(s)’, who without ‘worldly wisdom or science’ are taught the ‘true meaning’ or ‘true sense’ of the Scriptures by ‘the revelation of the Holy Ghost’. You describe such a person as a ‘priest’, but is this not an example of 1 Pet 4:10?

    Reply
    • Fascinating that I should agree with Spurgeon independently!

      On the interpreter as ‘priest’, I am not denying that there are some with insight and learning to whom we should listen. These are surely the ‘elders’. But against that, the Spirit gives gifts to whomever the Spirit chooses, so we need to listen to all.

      What I am protesting about is the idea of someone who has knowledge of what the passage means *that is not evident in the passage* and that others could not know of. This actually becomes a kind of gnosis, and I think Origen’s allegorical reading is a prime example.

      Reply
      • “the Spirit gives gifts to whomever the Spirit chooses…”

        As an author and Eng Lit graduate, that double use of ‘the Spirit’ made me curious, as it would be less clunky and more usual to use a pronoun the second time.

        Was that conscious and deliberate, so as to avoid deploying ‘he’ or ‘she’, or was it just ‘one of those things’?

        I’m not trying to be mischievous. I guess I’m just curious as to whether you are deliberately side-stepping the masculine pronoun with regard to the Holy Spirit because I’m interested in your view (especially following your really good article on women in the Church a few days ago).

        Reply
        • ‘As an author and Eng Lit graduate, that double use of ‘the Spirit’ made me curious, as it would be less clunky and more usual to use a pronoun the second time.’

          Yes. Because God is not sexed, if I don’t need to use a sexed pronoun I don’t.

          Reply
          • Ian

            I agree that in the absolute sense God is not sexed but he is in a relative sense in that as far as I am aware God is always spoken of in male terms. In the NT he is Father and Son with the Spirit having male pronouns.

            God is not ‘Our Mother in heaven’ and the eternal Son is not called ‘the daughter’. Surely these titles are significant. And, I would say, integral to their significance are patriarchal meanings.

          • If I may add, he has revealed himself in male terms although he is not (except in Christ) a man. Yet we know God only as he reveals himself and he is a God of truth so his revelation is true.

            Is there that in God which is best revealed in the masculine? As soon as I ask this I’m aware both male and female bear the divine image. It is true God is not a man that he should lie (Numbs 23:19). Yet Father and Son connote male characteristics.

          • Thanks Ian,

            This tends to be my practice too. I usually prefer to avoid using pronouns.

          • Because God is not sexed, if I don’t need to use a sexed pronoun I don’t.

            You know, I had a lot of sympathy for this view…

            … until a few years ago when it caused me to find myself singing ‘Give thanks because God’s given Jesus Christ, God’s Son’.

            At that exact moment I decided that whatever the gains in theological accuracy, the cost — in mangled language — is way too high.

            After all, I figure that if God really thought it important that human didn’t use pronouns to refer to God, then God would be quite capable (pace Andrew Godsall, who doesn’t think God is capable of anything) of ensuring that whenever the people God inspired to wrote God’s Word in scripture wrote anything about God that they never used pronouns when God would be the referent of the pronoun, but God didn’t do that so God mustn’t object that strongly to pronouns being used aboyt God.

          • I usually prefer to avoid using pronouns.

            Don’t you mean ‘Susannah Clark usually prefers to avoid using pronouns’?

          • S. “Don’t you mean ‘Susannah Clark usually prefers to avoid using pronouns’?”

            You’ve lost me now! Can you elucidate?

          • “(pace Andrew Godsall, who doesn’t think God is capable of anything)”

            Shame your God isn’t capable of stopping mad men from killing innocents. Though in your little world it’s probably because He doesn’t want to protect the innocent!

          • Shame your God isn’t capable of stopping mad men from killing innocents.

            My God is certainly capable of that, and I am sure that He has done it on many occasions. How many terror plots have MI5 stopped in the nick of time through ‘lucky’ chances?

          • “My God is certainly capable of that, and I am sure that He has done it on many occasions. How many terror plots have MI5 stopped in the nick of time through ‘lucky’ chances?”

            So why hasn’t your God stopped Putin? We all know that your God enjoys genocide. Maybe Putin is God’s instrument?

          • So why hasn’t your God stopped Putin?

            I don’t know. If I knew that, then I would be God, wouldn’t I? Do I look like God to you?

          • “I don’t know. If I knew that, then I would be God, wouldn’t I? Do I look like God to you?”

            I can’t see you. What does S stand for? Is it your initial?

            I know you can’t speak for your re-formed God, but surely they would have stopped it by now? Do they not care? There’s plenty of NGOs and civilians helping out there but no sign of your mighty God! Perhaps it’s his night off or something? Or maybe he’s not actually that capable!

            Looks like your agreeing with Andrew Godsall now. Your re-formed God can’t actually do much…

          • I know you can’t speak for your re-formed God, but surely they would have stopped it by now?

            Who are you to say ‘surely’ to God? Who am I to say ‘surely’ to God? Is God my batman, who must attend to my whims? Am I possessed of all the knowledge of God that I understand better than Him what He should do? Are you?

            There’s plenty of NGOs and civilians helping out there but no sign of your mighty God!

            I doubt you’d recognise the signs of God.

            Perhaps it’s his night off or something? Or maybe he’s not actually that capable!

            Or perhaps He knows infinitely more than you or I, and we shouldn’t presume that we know better than Him what He ought to do.

        • So you’re hiding behind your God’s omnipotence now!

          We can all see that your God is actually impotent, but you’re too stupid to see it. Rather than claiming not to know the mind of God, why don’t you face reality!

          Reply
      • Thanks for clarifying Ian.

        Maybe the most important thing is humility, we are always dependent on the Holy Spirit, whether directly or on others who are dependent on the same Spirit. Humility is certainly a theme in Cranmer’s Homily, one of my favourite parts is:

        “For (as Saint Augustine says) the knowledge of holy Scripture, is a great, large, and a high place, but the door is very low, so that the high & arrogant man cannot run in: but he must stoop low, and humble himself, that shall enter into it. Presumption and arrogancy is the mother of all error: and humility need to fear no error.”

        I lean towards a Covenantal interpretation of this Parable, since the lawyer is seeking to justify himself under the Old Covenant of Works, which says “do this and you shall live”. Jesus’ Parable makes clear this Covenant is no neighbour to him, far from helping him it leaves him in his natural state, only emphasising his helplessness. His only hope of eternal life is the New Covenant of Grace (or Mercy), the Author of which is standing in front of him. A life lived under the New Covenant consists of showing mercy to others, proceeding from the boundless mercy first received.

        Reply
        • If the OT represents an ‘Old Covenant of Works’ then God has changed his mind, and Jesus has come to tell us that God was wrong in the past.

          I don’t find that a plausible reading of this passage, or any in the gospels!

          Reply
          • Ian

            As I outline in my comment below (before reading am Tippett’s comment and your response) Paul specifically contrasts the law (this do and live) with the gospel (the righteous shall live by faith) Gals 3.

            I think you badly misconstrue the covenant of works/grace paradigm. The covenant of works (the law) was to bring to Israel (and us) a knowledge of sin (Roms 3). Law could only expose sin, excite sin and exaggerate sin (make it more sinful. The commandment that promised life could only produce death (Roms 7). The law is not of promise. It is not of faith (Gals 3)

            It also had the effect of confining them until Christ comes (Gals 4). It was like a children’s guardian (Gals 3,4). It was a prison that held captive (Gals 3).

            A sense of sin’s captivity was necessary to prepare Israel for the freedom and redemption that was to be found in Christ. God was not wrong in the past; he was preparing for the future.

          • Hi Ian,

            Do you think the lawyer is trying to justify himself by obeying the Law?

            Can anyone be justified by obeying the Law?

            The Law does point forward to Jesus through the sacrificial system. And all the OT saints are included in the Church through faith in a future redemption, though “they did not receive the things promised”.

            I think it can be argued that the two Covenants have been in place since the beginning, but only in Jesus do we see the Covenant of Grace fulfilled, by His own fulfilment of the Covenant of Works on our behalf. God certainly does not change His mind.

            I don’t think I’m saying anything controversial here, but happy to be corrected!

          • I agree. Commentators should comment on the basis that you are perfectly aware of Romans and Galatians and that it is possible to agree with what Paul says there and yet still affirm that the Mosaic covenant is not a ‘covenant of works’. The whole sacrificial system provided for the inevitable inability to keep the law perfectly, and the lectionary verse Deut 30:11 tells us that keeping the law was not difficult. Much more could be said on the point.

          • Sam

            I don’t like the thesis that Christ kept the law on our behalf. No amount of law-keeping by Jesus could save us. Only his sin-bearing sacrifice could save us. We are justified by grace through faith through his blood. We are justified by his life but not his life in self-humbling but his life in resurrection.

          • I don’t see why God can’t change their mind! In the OT it was an eye for an eye, but it the NT Jesus teaches forgiveness, for example.

      • Ian

        I agree with your comment about creating a priestly caste who take the bible from the people. In my view often scholarship functions in this way. When we are told that an interpretation is the assured view of scholarship yet it is not evident in the passage to the reader I think scholarship is adopting this ‘priestly’ role.

        Reply
        • Hi John,

          I agree, the salvation Jesus achieves includes both satisfaction of Divine justice and propitiation for our sins. The WCF puts it like this:

          “Christ, by His obedience and death, did fully discharge the debt of all those that are thus justified, and did make a proper, real, and full satisfaction of His Father’s justice in their behalf. Yet inasmuch as He was given by the Father for them, and His obedience and satisfaction accepted in their stead, and both freely, not for any thing in them, their justification is only of free grace, that both the exact justice and rich grace of God might be glorified in the justification of sinners.” Ch 11 (https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/westminster-confession-faith)

          This is what I meant by ‘on our behalf’.

          Perhaps my original comment would be more acceptable if ‘new’ and ‘old’ were omitted. I am convinced that Jesus is showing the lawyer that he cannot obtain eternal life through obedience to the Law, by works, it must be received through Mercy/Grace alone.

          And I think Matt 13 gives warrant to looking for deep things in Parables.

          “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.” (V35)

          This lawyer needs nothing more than to simply humble himself and receive God’s mercy, which is through the everlasting covenant, made before the foundation of the world.

          Reply
          • The downward road from the City of God,
            To the City of Destruction I have trod.
            Robbed of life I lay beside,
            How I did believe the lies.

            The blood of bulls cannot cleanse,
            My works cannot endure His lens,
            But here comes One, on a donkey,
            With oil and wine to make me Holy.

            My burden borne, my wounds healed,
            My redemption ever sealed.
            Safe in His Church, under His care,
            I await His return from the air.

          • Great poem. Or is it a hymn?
            It’s like a straightforward description of the picture. It draws me in. Makes me feel I belong.

          • Hi Steve,

            Yes, I like it!

            Also I think there needs to be a final verse:

            And while I run this earthly race,
            I long to see my Saviour’s face,
            I try to share His love with all,
            And he’ll always catch me when I fall.

  6. Yes, this parable is now all too familiar, and therefore preachers are looking for novel interpretations to refresh it. If one is going to choose to talk about the parable, then this discussion does well, though I am not convinced by the fifth and sixth surprises.

    I cringe a bit when I read ‘(pun not intended!)’, when actually the pun only exists if attention is drawn to it.

    We do not help others because we ‘ought’ to, but because we have received for ourselves from Jesus the life-changing compassion which we then share with those around us. Yes, except that it then seems contradictory to quote John’s reiteration of Jesus’s command that those who love God must/ought to also love one another (and in more situations than those where compassion is required). The command is necessary, because despite receiving Jesus’s life-changing compassion, we won’t necessarily share that compassion with those around us, if indeed it has changed our lives. The law is written on our hearts yet not written on our hearts. Jesus rounds off the parable with a command.

    But perhaps better to preach on the OT reading, Deuteronomy 30:9-14. The passage should begin at verse 1 and end at verse 10. It looks forward to the day when God will send out his angels (Matt 24:31) and gather the unfaithful Israelites, lying in their foreign graves, back to the promised land. Then they will live in the land permanently and the prophecy about a new covenant will be fulfilled (Jer 30:3, 31:33-34). When there is so much the Church does not understand, why keep on harping on about passages that are so familiar they just perpetuate the slumber?

    Deut 30:11 – relevant to Luke 10 – refers to the whole Law, not to the immediately preceding verses.

    Reply
    • Deut 30 is the new covenant where God circumcises their hearts. Paul sees this fulfilled in the gospel in Romans 10. The gospel is the word that unlike the law is not impossible, In it the law finds fulfilment.

      Reply
  7. The allegorical view is too clever by half and is obviously not Jesus’ short, sharp point when he told the parable to a self-righteous lawyer asking who his neighbour was. The effect of Augustine’s eisegesis (for it is not exegesis) is to make people think they cannot grasp scripture for themselves, and that its meaning is reserved for professional theologians and academics and philosophers to work out and hand down – even though the New Testament is deliberately written in street (koine) Greek, not Hebrew or classical Greek.

    Much of Augustine’s allegory (which is from his Quaestiones Evangeliorum, 2.19) is indeed borrowed from Origen’s earlier Homilies on Luke (34.3). But Origen took Jericho to be the world rather than the moon, and he called the manager of the inn the head of the church, not St Paul. That there is no way to say which of Augustine or Origen is right and which is wrong sounds a warning. They are taking their wider understanding of scripture – which they got from its plain meaning – and using it to reimagine the parable. The result therefore makes no valid point which cannot be got from the plain meaning of the scriptures.

    Reply
    • Lest we forget:

      “”I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.”

      I think the key message of the Good Samaritan story is pretty clear. And I think most people would understand it, and get the message, in their hearts.

      The Bible is not meant to be nit-picked like a wordsearch. For most people, the intention of Jesus is that we respond with our hearts, and Jesus can be known as well by a person with learning difficulties as by an academic.

      God can unlock the door of our heart, if we respond to stories like this one, and recognise the loveliness and flow and power of God’s compassion and love.

      It really is all about love.

      The Good Samaritan showed love. That’s the message. It’s enough.

      When we open to the flow and compulsion to love, we open to God in our action. He did too, in the story.

      A lot of the Christian gospel is really pretty simple. God is love. God shows us love in Jesus Christ. Sometimes we intellectualise things too much in Christian life.

      Love is not a degree in theology. It is also (and more) about opening to feeling and compassion. Including the feeling God has towards us. And the feeling God wants us to have towards others. We’re meant to feel this. It’s a flow that reaches into us, if we open the doors of our heart, and flows… all alive from God… out to others through more open doors in our heart.

      That’s the flow of compassion.

      That’s what the Samaritan had in the story. Compassion and love.

      We can talk and talk and talk (hands up, I do a lot of talking)… but actually the main thing we need to do is get on with loving God (in prayer and walk with God) and loving our neighbours.

      Small children can do that. They don’t have to intellectualise everything.

      I truly think the Good Samaritan story is fundamentally simple. It’s very much a case for us of ‘be like him’ and ‘go and do thou likewise’.

      Reply
      • The Good Samaritan showed love. That’s the message. It’s enough.

        It’s not enough unless you can define, ‘love’.

        Love is, quite famously, a word which means very different things to different people. I suspect what you mean by it is very very different from what I mean by it, for example.

        So if you want to claim that ‘love […] is enough’ you have to spell out what you mean by ‘love’.

        Could you spell that out?

        Reply
        • Trying to define love is a bit like catching a flowing stream in your hands.

          At the point you catch it for inspection, it’s no longer a flowing stream.

          We have to DO it. And we do it by opening to the feeling and compassion of God.

          This story of the Samaritan [the topic] is really very obvious.

          He has compassion on a suffering stranger. He opens to love… to the flow of the Holy Spirit.

          “Go, and do thou likewise.”

          We know we should.

          Reply
          • This story of the Samaritan [the topic] is really very obvious.

            Well yes it is, and that’s the problem. The question is what is the living thing to do in situations where it’s less obvious.

            Say someone comes to me and confesses they are a drug addict; they have shoplifted and committed many petty thefts to feed their addiction. Sometimes they manage to get sober, and then they hate what they have become and want to die; but then they take another hit and they don’t care. They beg me to give them money for drugs so they can forget what they’ve done; or, failing that, to help them kill themselves and end their misery for good.

            Tell me, what’s the loving thing for me to do for that person? What’s the loving thing for society to do for them?

            If your ‘go and do likewise’ platitudinous guff can’t answer that question, it’s not much practical use then is it?

          • You STILL have to ‘go and do thou likewise’ even when (as is often the case in life) situations are complex. That’s not platitudinous guff. It’s a commandment from Jesus.

            The flow of love includes all the steps it may take to help a person in trouble, including prayer, including the support and expertise of others. But just because examples in life are complex, does not mean that the fundamental need to open to the compassion of God is not still the simple underlying and primary impulse.

            In the story of the Good Samaritan [the topic]… Jesus kept it simple. Because the core message is indeed simple. To deal with the complexities of life, and value judgments with the help of the Spirit and our consciences, we first need the impulse of compassionate love.

            That simplicity is primary. Dealing with the complexities is what follows on from that.

            The love of God is a flowing stream. We are invited to open to that stream… to open the doors of our hearts. But so often we keep many of the doors of our hearts firmly locked. We keep God out. For selfish reasons or for fear of emotions we don’t want to handle.

            The story of the Good Samaritan is an appeal to us to open the doors of our hearts to the flow and the power of God’s love, and (because a flowing stream is not meant to be dammed up) to open doors in our heart so that flow and stream reaches out to others.

            Then we have compassion in action… feeling in action… whether that compassion is an instant act or a programme of actions. Situations may be complicated. But we still need to be driven by the compassion of God.

            S, I can’t handle long and extended ping-pong dialogues right now because of pressure of work. But this is my response to you:

            Like the Good Samaritan (though it’s often not easy or instant) we need to open our hearts to God’s compassion for others, and give ourselves, devote ourselves to God and God’s flowing compassion out towards others. That is the great commandment really. That’s true religion (as some of the prophets point out).

            Jesus describes this process, this flow, this operation of the Holy Spirit, when He says “streams of living water will flow from within you.”

            There is much feeling in compassionate love. Feeling is so important in our interactions with God. There is also Will to get things done out of compassion. But the will is driven by the Love of God.

            In some evangelical circles, feelings seem to be seen as dangerous. I disagree (within reason). We are made to have feelings and to open to feelings. Love is thread through with feeling. That should not be elided with mere sentiment. But if we make our Christian lives all a matter of will and logic, then we risk keeping some doors closed from the flow of God’s love.

            Compassion spontaneously reaches out. We see that in the Good Samaritan.

            It also raises questions for those Christians who believe that people of other religions or none are closed off from this compassion.

            They are not.

            I know that, from all the amazing and compassionate colleagues I have worked with in the NHS. They are capable of ‘doing true religion’ in their opening to the compassion of God. Common sense says that people of all faiths may be capable of compassion. The story of the Good Samaritan speaks to them as well.

            Little children learn to be kind and compassionate to animals or friends or granny.

            The love of God is not all intellectual doctrinal structures. The love of God is open to us all to do, and to open up to. Love is not constrained by boundaries we sometimes like to build up like stockades. The Spirit blows where (S)he will. God is at work all over the world.

            Little children understand that we should feel that compassion. And in many ways that equips and prepares us for growing into the deep mysteries of who God is, as revealed to some of us, in Jesus Christ.

            Have a good week.

          • Susannah, the phrase ‘The flow of love’ is meaningless until and unless the meaning of ‘love’ is clarified.

            If you are busy, why not post shorter comments…?

          • Ian, S, others…

            In the context of this topic [the Good Samaritan] if you don’t know what love is, maybe (as Jesus suggested) we should ask little children, or basically almost anyone.

            I think we all know what compassionate love is, as expressed by the Samaritan.

            People all over the world recognise it and do it. (Christians don’t have a monopoly over compassionate love.)

            I’m not seeing the difficulty in understanding what kind of love Jesus was exhorting us to, using the Samaritan as an exemplar.

            We need to let that kind of love flow in our hearts again and again in our lives.

          • In the context of this topic [the Good Samaritan] if you don’t know what love is, maybe (as Jesus suggested) we should ask little children, or basically almost anyone.

            Okay, so how would the little child say I should love the drug addict? Give them drugs and clean needles? Help them murder themselves? Put them into rehab, no matter how much they curse and scream at me for doing so? Something else? What is ‘loving’ in this situation, if it’s so simple a little child could recognise it?

            I’m not seeing the difficulty in understanding what kind of love Jesus was exhorting us to, using the Samaritan as an exemplar.

            If you don’t see the difficulty then tell me what is the loving way to treat the drug addict. If it’s not difficult you should be able to tell me, right?

            Or is it only not difficult in easy cases? But of what practical is a principle which only works in easy cases? We don’t need a principle to tell us what to do in easy cases, where the right thing to do is obvious! We need guidance for what to do in the hard cases — and there, it seems, your ‘just love’ principle is exposed for the empty platitude it is.

          • I am responding to Ian’s invitation to clarify what love means.

            You can hardly expect me to provide strategies for handling every problem in the world.

            Jesus didn’t do that either, in terms of the details of strategies for treatment.

            But Jesus DID give us a great example of compassionate love in the story of the Good Samaritan.

            I’m saying that millions of people know the nature of love and compassion, even if they don’t have all the strategies for creating a utopia.

            And the source impulse of love is absolutely vital and fundamental. All the strategies in the world may be followed, step by arduous step, but you need the motivation, the openness, the willingness to love first of all.

            The Good Samaritan in the story had that impulse. We called to open to it too. It’s primary, imperative, and fundamental to true religion. Because in opening to compassionate love, we are opening ourselves to the God who IS compassionate love.

            Do you have a problem with that, apart from me not solving all the problems in the world or the test question you set me on something I’m not actually talking about!? I’m not discussing drug addicts. I’m discussing what we learn from the Good Samaritan story about our need to be compassionate. That’s the topic. It’s about impulse and opening to compassionate love. It’s the great commandment.

            Then apply (in your own life) as you see fit.

          • I am responding to Ian’s invitation to clarify what love means.

            Right, but the point is that you didn’t clarify what love means at all.

          • Doesnt Paul give a pretty good description of loving behaviour to the Corinthians?

            But remember everything Paul says is suspect because he was a man trapped in his sexist, homophobic culture.

          • S. “They beg me to give them money for drugs so they can forget what they’ve done”

            The Bible is very clear here: give them the money for the drugs so they forget their poverty. (Proverbs 31:6)

          • S. “Okay, so how would the little child say I should love the drug addict? Give them drugs and clean needles?”

            Unless you are going to put them through rehab then giving them drugs and clean needles is exactly what you should be doing. Otherwise they will probably have to mug someone to feed their addiction.

            Refusing to give them the drugs they need is in effect putting other people at risk. This is why most normal people, unlike most on this blog, would help in a needle exchange or place to help addicts take drugs safely.

          • “Want. Not ‘need’. Want.”

            This perfectly illustrates what a wrongun you are!

            If someone is addicted then their body ‘needs’ not ‘wants’. Needs!

            Only by going ‘cold turkey’ can their body change. People like you who deprive others need locking up!

          • If someone is addicted then their body ‘needs’ not ‘wants’. Needs!

            I don’t think that is correct. If a body needs something, that means it will die if it doesn’t get it (vitamin C, for example, which your body needs or it will die of scurvy). While there are some drugs in that category — insulin for a diabetic, for example — I don’t think any of the drugs generally used for pleasure fall into it. Withdrawal from them may be unpleasant, but not fatal. The body may want the drug, but it doesn’t need it to survive in the way the diabetic needs insulin.

            So no, ‘wants’ is correct. Not ‘needs’.

          • “So no, ‘wants’ is correct. Not ‘needs’.”

            Perhaps we should be glad that people like you aren’t ministering to the needy as this is for rotary clubs to quote you.

            I’m no expert, but to deny people access to the drug they are addicted to could be fatal. Yes, like VitC, their body needs it.

            So ‘needs’ not ‘wants’ is correct!

          • I’m no expert, but to deny people access to the drug they are addicted to could be fatal. Yes, like VitC, their body needs it.

            I think you are wrong. From https://americanaddictioncenters.org/withdrawal-timelines-treatments/risk-of-death :

            ‘While it is true that unassisted withdrawal from some substances, such as alcohol and benzodiazepines, can be deadly, professional treatment provided in medical detox programs can reduce that risk. With medical attention, withdrawal symptoms can be controlled or eliminated altogether.’

            So the body doesn’t need the drug; the actual process of withdrawal (ie, getting the drug out of the body) can cause side-effects that could be fatal, but with medical management this risk can be reduced or eliminated. And once that process has been completed and the drug is out of the body, the body does not then require the drug to survive.

            So ‘wants’ is correct. Not ‘needs’.

          • ‘While it is true that unassisted withdrawal from some substances, such as alcohol and benzodiazepines, can be deadly”

            Your own article is against you! At least try and find some ‘expert’ who agrees with you, lol.

            You were talking about denying an addict on the street. It is me who says that is fatal, and it should only be done in rehab. Just man up and accept you were wrong!

          • You were talking about denying an addict on the street

            Was I, though? Did you actually read what I wrote? Go back and check whether I mentioned any streets, or whether you imagined that.

          • “They beg me to give them money for drugs”
            I don’t think they’re begging in the rehab, more likely to be on the street. Maybe stop digging?!

          • “They beg me to give them money for drugs”
            I don’t think they’re begging in the rehab, more likely to be on the street.

            Did you stop to think that perhaps I was related to this person?

          • Love is godliness (God-likeness)

            Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him

          • Indeed – which includes acts of compassion but also all of the hard lessons Jesus sprung on various people. The rich young ruler wasn’t happy when Jesus looked at him, loved him and pointed out the one thing he lacked.

  8. Jesus is the ultimate good samaritan as per Spurgeon; the only one who perfectly obeyed the command to love God and neighbour as self, loving his enemies, haters, opponents to death, for their forgiveness in a new covenant in his blood. To bring outsiders in. Even as he was crucified as an outsider, outside Jerusalem, on his way to the heavenly city, New Jerusalem. And that includes us.
    To share his glorious riches, his inheritance with us.
    Great Good God, news.

    Reply
  9. The parable is a response to the lawyer’s question, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ His ‘I do’ probably hints at his frame of thinking: eternal life is by law-keeping. Jesus takes him up on his own premise and asks what the law demands. The reply is ‘love the Lord your God and your neighbour as yourself’. Jesus reply is from the law ‘this do and live’ (Lev 18:5). Notice both Jesus and the lawyer assume ‘live’ refers to eternal life.

    ‘This do and live’ was the fundamental premise of the law. It promised life (ultimately eternal life) upon obedience. Paul regularly sums up the premise of the law as ‘this do and live’ and contrasts it with the grace of God in the gospel (Roms 7:10; Gals 3:10-12; Roms 10;5).

    For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” 11 Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” 12 But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” Gals 3:10-12

    Jesus goes on to illustrate how demanding the ‘this do’ is. Even the guardians of the law fail abysmally before it. The neighbourly love of the law is expressed in mercy to the needy, the undeserving, the enemy. It is in fact a counsel of despair if it becomes the basis of eternal life. If we are to depend for eternal life on our display of mercy we will fail. The righteous must live by faith and by grace acts of mercy will be found in our lives.

    Ultimately, of course, the Good Samaritan, as others have noted is Jesus. He comes to where we are bringing healing to the undeserving.

    Reply
    • “He comes to where we are bringing healing to the undeserving.”

      I’m not sure I’d say the victim was undeserving of this help from the Good Samaritan. Unless you think it was his own fault for being robbed? I do accept the statement works about Jesus, but the parallel doesn’t quite stretch to the robbery victim in the story being undeserving.

      Reply
      • Possibly not Susannah. However, we may argue he was being irresponsible travelling a road notorious for robbers. However, the big point is he was in need rather than his culpability. Mercy is for the needy. When opened out it is also for the morally needy.

        Reply
      • I’m not sure I’d say the victim was undeserving of this help from the Good Samaritan.

        Would you say he was deserving of it?

        Reply
          • When I was in my 20’s, I was in charge of one of the national centres for sex offenders – I had over 100 in my charge. Naturally I studied all their criminal records, and they were horrifying. Did they deserve love?

            When I was in my 60’s I was nursing in a London hospital when a desperately ill, convicted paedophile was brought to my ward. There was a prison officer posted just outside the ward. Did the convict deserve love?

            To be honest, his medical state was pitiful, and I developed an interaction with him in my duties of care. My job wasn’t to judge. It was to care.

            Yes I think he deserved love, because his pitiful state deserved compassion.

            Are we not all in pitiful states before God?

            I believe in a God who by very nature has compassionate love towards all people.

            I believe the story of the Good Samaritan reflects that compassionate response to a person in trouble.

            Now whether you say we ‘deserve’ the compassion of God or not, I’m pretty clear that God thinks that we’re worth that compassion.

            I think the prisoner was too. I think in his pitiful state, he deserved my very best care, just like everyone else.

          • Yes I think he deserved love, because his pitiful state deserved compassion.

            Number one, love and compassion are different things. So just because someone deserves one doesn’t necessarily mean they deserve the other.

            Number two, if you think he deserved compassion, provide your argument. So far you’ve just asserted; you haven’t given at rain as to why you think he deserved compassion.

            Now whether you say we ‘deserve’ the compassion of God or not, I’m pretty clear that God thinks that we’re worth that compassion.

            I don’t know about God’s compassion, but the whole point about God’s love, the whole thing which is so spectacular and amazing about it, is that God loves us even though we are totally undeserving of His love. Romans chapter five, verse eight.

            I think the prisoner was too. I think in his pitiful state, he deserved my very best care, just like everyone else.

            It was certainly your duty to give him your very best care. But that’s an entirely separate question from whether he deserved it or not.

            Say a gunman shoots up a school, and the police shoot him. Critically wounded, he is brought to the same hospital where some of his young victims are still fighting for their lives; the bodies of others who have only recently lost that fight are still cooling to room temperature.

            Does he deserve the best efforts of the doctors to save him? No, of course he doesn’t. Is it nevertheless their duty to give those best efforts to save him, knowing that he doesn’t deserve their help? Yes it is.

          • I believe we deserve love because we are created by God and precious to God. We have worth. God is even prepared to die for us.

            Now, we come before God dressed in rags because of our imperfection. But we are still beautiful to God. We are made in God’s image with that original beauty in our Creator’s DNA which we possess.

            Of course, it depends what you mean by ‘deserve’. Have we earned God’s love. Not in all cases. But that we’re worth God’s love – that I believe.

            We’re special.

            Also, bear in mind that we are placed in a world of hardships, sickness, loss that was not our fault. The circumstances and suffering of many people is pitiful. So we also ‘deserve’ rescuing because it’s not our fault that we suffer, and we’re worth more than that.

            We are not just trash.

            And God definitely does not think so.

          • I believe we deserve love because we are created by God and precious to God. We have worth.

            We all know you believe that, because you keep saying it. The point is that I don’t believe it.

            Now, what’s supposed to happen in this situation, where you believe something and I don’t believe it, is that you put forward reasons why you are right and I am wrong — evidence and logical arguments are good — and try to get me to change my mind, or at least to convince the onlookers that you are right and I am wrong.

            That’s how debate works. It’s how we discover what is true.

            But you haven’t put forward any reasons why you are right and I am wrong. You’ve just keep repeating what you believe. That’s not going to convince anyone who doesn’t already believe the same as you, least of all me.

            Why don’t you try giving reasons instead of just repeating what you believe?

            Now, we come before God dressed in rags because of our imperfection.

            You seem to have a wrong idea of what sin is. You seem to think it’s a stain like paintdrops on a wooden floor, that can be wiped away. You don’t seem to realise that it corrupts and twists to the very core.

            We’re special.

            No, we are not. You are not a special unique snowflake. You need I think to get that into your head.

            Also, bear in mind that we are placed in a world of hardships, sickness, loss that was not our fault.

            It was our fault. It was sin that made the world this way, and our souls are corrupted by that very sin so that that sin is all we desire. So the state of the world is indeed our fault.

            We are not just trash.

            And God definitely does not think so.

            God definitely does think that we are trash, because we are trash, and God sees the truth of our trashiness.

            But — and here’s the amazingly stonkingly earth-shatteringly amazing, incredible, awesome thing — even though we are trash, even though God knows we are trash, God still loves us, and the way in which he loved us was that He sent His Son to die for us.

            For trash.

            If that doesn’t blow your mind I don’t know what would.

            And if we weren’t trash, if we really did deserve to have Christ die for us — well then, it wouldn’t be half so impressive, would it? How hard is it to love someone who is beautiful? Not that hard at all, that’s how hard. Would the love of a God who only loved us because we were worth loving be worth celebrating? No, it would not. Because in that case god would just be doing the easy thing, loving the beautiful, loving the lovely.

            But to love the ugly, the diseased, the corrupted, the hateful, the undeserving, the scum, the trash — that love is worth celebrating. That love is worth shouting from the rooftops.

            The other kind of love? The easy love? Not so much.

          • To quote Heinrich Heine:

            Mine is a most peaceable disposition. My wishes are: a humble cottage with a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, the freshest milk and butter, flowers before my window, and a few fine trees before my door; and if God wants to make my happiness complete, he will grant me the joy of seeing some six or seven of my enemies hanging from those trees. Before death I shall, moved in my heart, forgive them all the wrong they did me in their lifetime. One must, it is true, forgive one’s enemies– but not before they have been hanged.

          • “OK – how about Vladimir Putin? Does he deserve compassion and love?”

            Well here’s the thing: if he was brought to a ward in desperate sickness and I had to nurse him, then yes, he would deserve compassion and love and care and humanity. Because that’s what a nurse should provide. And also, because much as it sticks in my throat, Vladimir Putin is precious to God. We all are. Therefore every patient deserves compassion and love, because they matter that much to God.

            I write that, with the proviso that I condemn his evil actions during his time in power. I have been a critic of Putin for two decades, and if you want to know what his rule has been like, read “Putin’s Russia” by Anna Politkovskaya. Anya had more courage than Putin ever had, and was a truly brave journalist.

            Naturally, she is dead.

            I don’t think we humans get to choose who gets the compassion and love of God. Each one of us is seeded with God’s beauty, but hurts and selfishness often send us astray and despoil the original beauty within us when we were born.

            As Christians our commandment is to love and love and love. Of course we continually fail. But yes, I would nurse Vladimir tenderly , and feel sorry for him, for the sadness of his lostness, self-hatred, and anger.

            Think how much more God must care for him. Maybe one day, in horror at what he has done, he will repent. A process we all have to go through. Judgment is real.

          • Well here’s the thing: if he was brought to a ward in desperate sickness and I had to nurse him, then yes, he would deserve compassion and love and care and humanity. Because that’s what a nurse should provide.

            It is indeed what a nurse should provide. But isn’t the point of being a nurse that a nurse should provide compassion to everyone, whether they deserve it or not?

            That is, you wouldn’t provide compassion to Vladimir Putin because he deserves it — which he most emphatically does not — but you would provide it to him because as a nurse it is your duty to provide care to both the deserving and the undeserving, without discriminating between them?

        • S. “God definitely does think that we are trash, because we are trash, and God sees the truth of our trashiness.”

          Ugh. I think this is the main problem in your life, and perfectly illustrates the divide between us.

          It’s just bizarre that you think that God sees us as ‘trash’. Maybe if you had a little self respect you would feel better about yourself and others?

          Reply
          • It’s just bizarre that you think that God sees us as ‘trash’.

            Perhaps you should take it up with, I don’t know, St Paul? Have you read his letter to the church in Rome?

            Or maybe John Newton? ‘Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.’

            Maybe if you had a little self respect you would feel better about yourself and others?

            You know pride is the worst sin, right?

          • Having pride in yourself and your achievements is only a good thing. It’s really weird that you don’t see this!

            Amazing Grace is one of my least favourite hymns. But the slave trading author was certainly a wretch. It should be consigned to those times when an uncle Tom wants to brighten up another mass shooting.

            And yes, I’ve read Romans. Not all of us conform to your narrow reformed thinking.

          • Amazing Grace is one of my least favourite hymns. But the slave trading author was certainly a wretch

            And you think you’re better than him, do you?

            And yes, I’ve read Romans.

            Then you should know not to think you’re better than other people.

          • “And you think you’re better than him, do you?”

            Of course I’m better than him. What a bizarre question to ask!

            I suppose you think that all sins are equal, that murder is as bad as stealing a bottle of water from a shop!

          • Of course I’m better than him.

            And that’s pride.

            I suppose you think that all sins are equal, that murder is as bad as stealing a bottle of water from a shop!

            So do you think that Jesus was wrong to say that whoever was angry with their brother was as guilty as if they had murdered him, then? Or that anyone who looked at a woman lustfully was as guilty as if they had committed adultery?

            You think you know better that God; you think you know better than Jesus. You think you’re better than other people.

            Humility isn’t your strong suit, is it?

          • “And that’s pride.”
            Don’t be silly. That is logical thinking.

            “So do you think that Jesus was wrong to say that whoever was angry with their brother was as guilty as if they had murdered him, then? Or that anyone who looked at a woman lustfully was as guilty as if they had committed adultery?”

            Obviously committing adultery is much worse than lusting as it involves another person! Don’t you re-formed people have brains to engage?

            And of course murder is worse than hating. Jesus was just being polemical to make a point. He’d be horrified by idiots like you taking it literally.

            “You think you know better that God; you think you know better than Jesus.”
            No I don’t.

            “You think you’re better than other people.”
            Obviously I’m better than slave traders and murderers!

            “Humility isn’t your strong suit, is it?”
            And intelligence isn’t yours!

          • Obviously committing adultery is much worse than lusting as it involves another person!

            That’s not ‘obvious’ at all. Why does involving another person matter?

            I could try to explain but why when Professor Lewis did it better than I could:

            ‘People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, “If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.” I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part
            of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and
            with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with. God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.

            That explains what always used to puzzle me about Christian writers; they seem to be so very strict at one moment and so very free and easy at another. They talk about mere sins of thought as if they were immensely important: and then they talk about the most frightful murders and treacheries as if you had only got to repent and all would be forgiven. But I have come to see that they are right. What they are always thinking of is the mark which the action leaves on that tiny central self which no one sees in this life but which each of us will have to endure or enjoy — for ever. One man may be so placed that his an- ger sheds the blood of thousands, and another so placed that however angry he gets he will only be laughed at. But the little mark on the soul may be much the same in both. Each has done something to himself which, unless he repents, will make it harder for him to keep out of the rage next time he is tempted, and will make the rage worse when he does fall into it. Each of them, if he seriously turns to God, can have that twist in the central man straightened out again: each is, in the long run, doomed if he will not. The bigness or smallness of the thing, seen from the outside, is not what really matters’

            To ‘the bigness or the smallness of the thing, seen from outside’ you could easily add ‘and whether another person is involved’.

            That’s why anger is as bad as murder: because if I would have murdered someone, if I could have got away with it, but didn’t because I feared I would be caught, then I am — in terms of the mark on my soul — exactly as guilty as if I had carried out the murder, for I wanted to carry it out and only circumstances stopped me. Similarly if I <i would have committed adultery but only didn’t because of the consequences, I am as guilty as if I had done the deed — because, if circumstances had been different, I would have.

          • Stupid writes:”That’s why anger is as bad as murder”

            So when I’m angry with someone I’m as bad as Dr. Shipman! You really are stupid. And your re-formed God is not just impotent but is now ludicrous. I know you re-formed types don’t have much up top, but you really should engage what you have before writing this nonsense.

          • So when I’m angry with someone I’m as bad as Dr. Shipman! You really are stupid. And your re-formed God is not just impotent but is now ludicrous. I know you re-formed types don’t have much up top, but you really should engage what you have before writing this nonsense.

            I cannot detect an argument in the above, just insults, so there’s nothing to engage with.

    • `Ultimately, of course, the Good Samaritan, as others have noted is Jesus. He comes to where we are bringing healing to the undeserving.’

      I do think that this destroys the meaning of the text. Yes, the ultimate good Samaritan is Jesus, but that isn’t what Jesus is trying to convey here. Yes, he brings healing to the `undeserving’, but there is nothing in the text to indicate that the man beaten up by robbers was `undeserving’.

      There are (of course) higher and deeper meanings here, but the main aim of the parable was to answer two questions: (a) who is my neighbour? answer: whomsoever God puts in your way and (b) what does `love my neighbour’ entail? Answer: do what you can (even if you happen to be a Rangers supporter, your neighbour is a Celtic supporter and you’re likely to receive extreme opprobrium from your local Rangers supporters club for so doing).

      Note: Jesus makes it clear here that the law of love does not mean that you actually have to like your neighbour – simply do your best for him or her.

      Yes – I do understand that Jesus is asking very hard things here (imagine if Andrew Godsall and S were the two protagonists in the story …… )

      Reply
      • Indeed. Too much can be read into the text, leading to loss of the key point that Jesus is trying to make. I can just imagine Him rolling His eyes at some of this!

        Reply
  10. We Christians are like trauma patients in a sanatorium. We await the arrival of our benefactor. In the meantime we amuse ourselves. Some take it upon themselves to push a trolley from bed to bed with samples from the library. Thanks Ian.
    I’m amused, just enough, by listening to the incoherent, semi conscious, ramblings from some of the beds in earshot.
    Where’s Jock? Has he been put on the terrace to take the air.

    Reply
    • Hello Steve! Good to hear from you – and thanks!

      Half correct here – instead of put on the terrace, try `put on the deck chair under the apple trees in the garden’. Instead of `take the air’ try `take a glass of our neighbour’s home made plonk’ – and you’ll have a reasonable idea of what is going on here.

      Which I suppose brings us to the eighth surprising thing – why did the good Samaritan pour the wine onto the man’s wounds rather than down his throat (where it might have been more appreciated)?

      I don’t have much to add here, because Ian Paul wrote a great piece, with good insights, which deals with it quite comprehensively.

      Except that I do think that ‘love’ in this context is reasonably well defined by the parable – so I didn’t really understand the discussion about it earlier on. In this parable, it isn’t rocket science. Jesus isn’t telling the ‘expert in the law’ to do anything particularly hard; nothing that isn’t well within his reach. There is nothing to indicate that the Samaritan had any huge affection for the man – nothing to suggest that he liked (or disliked) the man he was attending – so we aren’t actually called upon to *like* our neighbour. The Samaritan simply did what he could, with the bandages and medication he had available (he seemed to have a first aid kit with him) and put the man on his donkey (he had a donkey – so this didn’t pose him a serious problem) and took him to the inn (and there is every indication that he could easily afford to put the man up in the inn). There is nothing in this parable that is too high or too hard (unlike the Sermon on the Mount – where it really is too high and too hard); there is nothing that is `out of reach’. The only aspect of this that does seem too high and too hard for the priest and the Levite is worrying about `what will the neighbours say’.

      Reply
      • Oil n wine were universal ingredients. In this case good for cleaning out wounds. I’m a bit surprise by the allusion to sacrifice. I remember the first wobbly moment I had as a Christian in my teens. What if God’s care for His sheep was the same as most human farmer’s? What if the wedding feast features the human race as the main course!? The addition of wine and oil would be quite the accompaniment. Plus a sprig of rosemary.

        Reply
      • Jock

        I think we have to ask what ‘issues’ are likely to lie behind the parable. What is the questions that parable is addressing? The context is the arrival of the kingdom of God and the transition this involves. This is why it is appropriate to see that the parable reveals the weakness of law. The parable begins by putting it squarely in the context of the mosaic code. In fact I think he is asking the lawyer to do something hard. To stop and help someone who has already been attacked by robbers putting yourself in the danger zone and to do so for an enemy is hard. Certainly the law experts kept themselves out of harm’s way – for them the cost of being a neighbour was too high.

        Jesus is teaching that the law must give way to the Christ who is the fulfilment of law.

        I think asking the right questions of a text, the questions it invites us to ask, is the key to understanding. Of course which of us does this as we ought.

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        • John – in this case, the ‘expert in the law’ wasn’t a nice character – he was trying to trip Jesus up.

          Everything you say about the parable is true – but in addition to this he was also talking directly to this arrogant ‘expert in the law’.

          You’re absolutely right that, for this ‘expert in the law’, what Jesus is telling him to do is actually quite hard, but it really shouldn’t be so hard. One of the functions of the parable was to take this fellow down a peg or two – which he succeeded in doing.

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          • John – in this case, the ‘expert in the law’ wasn’t a nice character – he was trying to trip Jesus up.

            Was he? What makes you think that? Are you sure you’re not confusing him with the ones who asked Jesus about paying taxes to Caesar?

          • trying to justify himself …. (he wasn’t strictly looking for information)

            He certainly wasn’t, but it sounds to me like his motivation was fundamentally self-centred — he wanted to make himself look good — rather than specifically trying to catch Jesus out (unlike the ones who asked about the taxes, who were trying to catch Jesus out).

  11. It there any indication in the greek that ‘fell among thieves’ could also imply ‘fell in with thieves’? Could the victim have also been a robber?

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    • I had to do my own research on billmounce. No is the answer.

      At the beginning of ch10 Jesus sends the 72 out as sheep among wolves. This man coming down from Jerusalem looks very similar in kind to one of the sent except that he is out on his own. A Samaritan comes to buddy up with him. I wonder if this is more than a parable? Did it actually happen to some over zealous follower of Jesus who wiched to ‘have a go’ on his own?
      Just thinking.

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  12. Peter Reiss makes a good point:

    “I think the element that may be missing from this helpful evaluation of the text is that the lawyer asks who is my neighbour, expecting (we presume) to know who he should love. What he gets is to answer the question, “who was the neighbour to the man?” and the implication now is – were you to be beaten up and left for dead, and two people passed by and one helped you, who would be *your* neighbour? The teacher of the law has to acknowledge that the neighbour is the one who did something (he can’t bring himself to say “Samaritan”; then Jesus says to him / us – ‘go and do the same’. The lawyer is asked to view the question first from a position of need not power.”

    So we are to love our neighbour.

    “Ok, who is my neighbour?” asks the Lawyer

    “Well,” says Jesus — and tells the famous tale ending with the question “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”

    The smart alec lawyer replies “The one who showed him mercy.”

    So the neighbour — the one to be loved, remember, according to the Summary of the Law — isn’t the one in need but one who helps.

    It’s very odd.

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    • Interesting point. Jesus turns ‘who is my neighbour’ into ‘are you a neighbour’. The lawyer is convinced he must ‘do’ some law-keeping to inherit eternal life. He didn’t see how demanding this was from a law perspective.

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  13. Note the use of “inherit” in the first verse.

    The Lawyer assumes he will die and “inherit” eternal life after his death. For us, we inherit it on the death of Christ and it begins in this life, here and now (cf eg Ephesians 1:11). We are heirs, beneficiaries of the the “will”.

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    • Indeed, Oliver. Eternal life, starts now or rather backdated: in belief, united to Christ in his death and resurrection.
      Jesus is the testator of his Last Will and Testament, no codicils allowed, nor revisions! By lawyers or liberals.

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  14. I was glad of the bit about the ‘being moved by God’s love’ at the centre of the story … but I can’t work out how to count the key word as being at the numerical centre of the Greek text in any of the 3 passages in Luke. Is there a logical start and finish point that I’m missing?

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    • Chiastic patterns in scripture is an interesting subject. I’d like to read more on this. I’ve only read ‘Jesus through Mediterranean eyes’ . I’d be very interested in seeing Revelation laid out chiastically too.

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  15. Glad to see the suggestion that we can find echoes of Jesus himself in the Samaritan (especially in the light of Jn 8.48. when he is accused of being just that – I know it’s a different gospel, but it’s an interesting choice of ways to “other” Jesus on the part of his accusers). In the light of that, I have long been struck by the “two denarii” in this passage. I am a storyteller, and it’s a rule of good storytelling that you don’t include details which don’t matter, otherwise it is just a distraction. If a denarius was the usual daily wage for a labourer, enough to live on for a day, as the parable of the labourers in the vineyard tells us, then might the fact that the Samaritan gives the innkeeper “two denarii” suggest that he is giving enough to support this man for two days and expects to return on the third day, as Christ does after his crucifixion? If not, what is the significance of the two denarii ? I can’t find any commentaries that touch on this.
    I know that Origen interprets the Samaritan’s return as the second coming of Christ, but might it be a hint that this parable has something to say about resurrection and its outworking in the Christian community? The man is restored to life by an unlikely saviour, the Samaritan, and sheltered in an unlikely place – the pandochion “all welcome” inn – a place he will have to share with an unlikely community consisting of anyone else who happens to be there – such inns had a rather rackety reputation. Is this an echo of how it might have felt to be part of an early church community? Just a thought.

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    • That is an interesting take. Are you also implying that the inn is a bit like the grave. a place where we are all welcome until Jesus returns to redeem us? That would make an interesting short story.

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      • I’m not sure I would want to press the point too far, but it seemed to me that there might be some sort of hint of resurrection about the story. I suspect that Luke and the early Christians for whom he wrote, who had found themselves with new – if rather surprising – lives, in new, rather surprising communities may have seen resurrection, and the Kingdom of God, in a much broader way than many Christians now do.

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    • You raise the question about the detail. Clearly in such tight stories the detail is important. The question is whether its colour or allegory. There are no hard and fast rules. It’s true that parables often make one main point, however, they don’t always make only one point. They may make several points. The parable of the sower clearly makes multiple points, This parable makes perhaps a major point and a number of minor points. It proves who acts neighbourly, But it equally shows the inability of law to produce love and neighbourliness. It hints at Jesus himself as the Good Samaritan.

      So are the oil and wine, the inn, the two denarii allegorically significant? I suspect not. I think they simply reveal his considered care. To have an allegorical significance I think the allegorical meaning would have to be very clear and I don’t think it is. Though I was reared on the innkeeper as the Holy Spirit and the denarii being the gospel price paid.

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