Who Do We Love? (Luke 10:25-37)

Introduction

If you have your Bible, please turn it to Luke 10:25-37.

We’re coming to the conclusion of our three-week series dealing with Christmas and love. And so far, we’ve worked through just understanding what love is and then seeing how God shows us His love through the birth of Jesus Christ and the sealing of those who believe by the Spirit through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Of course, we’ve taken a lot of time through those sermons to deal with practical ways to apply those ideas, but I think today’s message is going to be the most practical of the three.

Today, we’re dealing with our own love—and whether or not we exhibit that love rightly towards the people that we ought to or not.

Let’s take a look at Luke 10:25-37.

Luke 10:25–37 ESV

25 And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” 27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” 28 And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” 29 But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30 Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. 34 He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ 36 Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” 37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

As we study this passage, we’re going to break it into two parts: (1) The Command to Love (25-28) and (2) The Example for Love (29-37). Of course, everything that we’ve worked through over the past two weeks builds up to this point as well—so, thinking through what exactly we mean when we use the term love helps us see what love is. Reflecting on God’s love for us helps to motivate us to love Him and to love others. The goal for today is for us to reflect on our own love both for God and for other people with the intent of encouraging us to grow in our love for both God and other people.

Prayer for Illumination

The Command to Love (25-28)

Our text starts by telling us who this conversation is between. We’re told that a “lawyer stood up to put him [meaning Jesus] to the test.” We do need to clarify what the Bible means by lawyer because it isn’t the same as when we use the term lawyer.

When we think of who a lawyer is we think of what a lawyer does in our context today.

Someone who either defends or prosecutes alleged criminals or perhaps you might think of lawyers that work in family court or something along those lines.

We have a very specific role in our minds when we think of lawyers—that they’re dealing with the secular court (not the religious court).

Occasionally, that’s exactly what the Bible means with the term lawyer, but in this case, it isn’t referring to a legal lawyer, but to someone else.

In this case, when the Bible talks about a lawyer, it’s talking about someone who is an expert in the Law—specifically, the Mosaic Law.

We know this because of the context—the lawyer asks his question in order to trip up Jesus, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

And Jesus responds with “What is written in the Law?” And He isn’t referring to the law of the Romans, rather, he’s referring to the Law of Moses, which is why the L is capitalized—it isn’t referring to the legal law of the area, but rather the Law written in the Old Testament.

If this was a regular, non-religious or secular lawyer, Jesus wouldn’t have pointed him back to the Mosaic Law for the answer.

This individual is pointed back to the Mosaic Law and he’s able to answer well—v. 27, “he answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.’”

This is a sentence that the Jewish people call the Shema, it’s actually not the full Shema—it’s missing the part that says, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD,” but regardless, the lawyer quotes the sentiment here.

It shouldn’t surprise us that he would quote this—if you talk to any Jewish person to this day and ask them what the Shema is, if they’re Jewish in practice (and not just in ethnicity), they’ll be able to quote it verbatim. The shema is engrained into the hearts and minds of Jewish people from their youth.

And it’s meaning is actually pretty simple isn’t it? “You shall love,” which is αγαπη, the selfless, sacrificing love that is epitomized in God’s love for us, “the Lord your God with all your heart . . . soul . . . strength . . . and mind.” Let’s talk about what that means:

When talking about the heart—the Jewish people understood it in a particular way—to the Jewish people, the heart is the seat of all your emotions—that with all your emotions, you ought to love the Lord.

When talking about the soul—the Jewish people understood it in a particular way—to the Jewish people, the soul deals with who your are as a person. It’s translated as soul, which gives us an impression of the eternal part of our being, but it’s the Greek word nephesh, which could be translated as spirit or we might say consciousness—the part of you that really makes you alive—that with everything that makes you alive, you ought to love the Lord.

When talking about strength—the Jewish people understood it to mean motivation or even effort—that with all your effort, you love the Lord.

When talking about the mind—the Jewish people understood it to mean your intellect. That with all your intellect, you ought to love the Lord.

Now, I do want to (as a side-note) point out something, there are some who make the argument from the shema that this proves that man is three parts—body, soul, and mind.

They call it the tripartite soul and the differing opinion is that man is made up of two parts—body and soul.

Let me just point out that the shema isn’t a good argument for the tripartite soul—and here’s why. To the Jewish people, the soul and the mind were so interconnected that you can’t really differentiate between the two.

We could very well have three parts (it would show a beautiful correlation to how God has three persons), but this isn’t the passage to argue that idea from.

Rather, the point being stated here is that you are to love the Lord your God with every part of who you are—your intellect, your body, your soul, everything about you with all the strength you can possibly muster—all of you must love the Lord.

And, the lawyer continues with the fact that you are to love “your neighbor as yourself.” Now in this instance, this is the Lawyer speaking, but Jesus also says that you are to love others as you love yourself—This is actually a quote from Leviticus.

Let me preface with this statement—this does not mean that you must love yourself before you can love other people. The Bible assumes that you already love yourself—in fact, the Bible assumes that you love yourself too much.

The argument that you need to love yourself more actually comes from Ancient philosophy and modern psychology—not the Bible—Aristotle talks about it, Freud talks about the idea of self-love. Rather, the point is that you already love yourself to some extent—

Now, how that self-love appears in your life might be different.

It could show up as narcissism where you think you’re better than everyone else.

It could show up as you just not really paying mind to anyone else because you’re more focused on yourself

Or, it could show up in self-deprecation—where you talk down on yourself (1) because you’re too focused on yourself or (2) because you know that if you do, someone else will come alongside you and say, “no, you really aren’t that bad” to puff you back up.

Regardless, the idea is that you already love yourself more than like—too much.

Dr. Iain Duguid of Westminster Seminary says “if I say to a class of kids, ‘children, today I want you to paint your paper blue as the sky is blue’ I don’t mean that they have to make the sky blue before they can touch their paper. On the contrary, the presupposition is that the sky is already blue . . . so too the presupposition of the passage is that we do already love ourselves (even though that self-focus may emerge in quite destructive behaviors) . . . what we are commanded to do is to turn that attention away from ourselves and love others.” Iain Duguid (iainduguid), “Lots of good answers here already.” Puritan Board, February 5, 2022, https://www.puritanboard.com/threads/loving-yourself.108166/.

The Bible is saying that you ought to love people just as much as you love yourself.

And really, that’s actually the least you ought to love other people—if you take into consideration the chronology of Jesus’ life, what you’ll notice is that just before Judas betrays Him, Jesus tells the disciples in John 13:34 “34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”

The ultimate goal is really for us to love one another just as much as Jesus loves us.

It’s a high call—to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as much as you love yourself—is hard; and yet, Jesus agrees.

Jesus states that the Lawyer is correct, which makes sense because the lawyer is really just quoting the Mosaic Law, which was written by God Himself. Jesus tells him in v. 28, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

Of course, anyone who is honest with themselves would state that there’s an impossibility here that prevents us from loving as He has commanded us to love apart from His own work within us.

We live in a sin-cursed world, we’re dealing with sin as it influences us and harms us in various ways. Because of sin, we struggle to love perfectly.

In fact, remember last week’s sermon—we only love Him because He first loved us—thus, until you actually know God through Jesus, you don’t really know what true love looks like.

So those who don’t know Jesus at all—though they could love to some extent—don’t know the full extent of love because they don’t know God who is love Himself.

So, how do we love God and love our neighbors?

First and foremost, it’s completely empowered by the Holy Spirit—the Spirit enables us to love God and to love one another.

Secondly, it’s more than just an emotional feeling towards other people—thus, whether we love, is seen through our actions.

And third, it’s experience through how we live.

The reality is that we can claim to love God and love other people all day, but until our actions prove it, they’re just vain words—as 1 Corinthians 13 states, we’re just noisy gongs and clanging cymbals.

Now, what happens is that as the lawyer hears this from Jesus, he seeks to justify himself. He attempts to justify himself because he recognizes the same things that we do about this command to love one another—it’s nearly impossible.

And that’s when we hear an example of what this love looks like in vv. 29-27. Let’s re-read those verses:

The Example for Love (29-37)

Luke 10:29–37 ESV

29 But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30 Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. 34 He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ 36 Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” 37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

To justify himself, the lawyer asks, “and who is my neighbor?” Let me start by saying that if we think about it, we won’t have to think too hard as to why he’s trying to justify himself.

We all recognize that in our humanity, we can’t help but to sin.

Part of sin is having a lack of love for one another.

So, why does he try to justify himself? Because he’s just as guilty as we are of not loving people as much as he ought to love them.

And we often run into the same problem that he has where we try to justify our own sinfulness.

The problem is that it’s rather difficult for us to repent from our sins if we’re too busy trying to justify our sins.

Or, in other words—if we find excuses for our sins, we’ll never actually repent from them, but I digress.

To justify himself, the lawyer asks, “who is my neighbor?” and to respond to this question, Jesus tells a story.

The story is that a man had been traveling when he had been robbed.

Let me say that while many people think of traveling today as being dangerous—traveling then was often far worse.

In fact, you usually wouldn’t travel by yourself because of the great danger in doing so—remember, there aren’t police officers around, there’s no sort of public safety to consider.

Rather, if you were outside of the city, which this man clearly was, you’re left to your own devices to protect yourself.

Thus, most people would mostly travel during the day so that if someone was coming to do you harm, you’d at least be able to see them.

Unfortunately, this man was vastly outnumbered by those who sought to hurt him, and we see him robbed in such a way that’s violent—he’s stripped, beaten, and essentially left to die in a ditch.

He clearly needs help—he’s desperate for help.

And the Bible tells us that multiple people passed by and did nothing.

We read in v. 31 that a priest saw him and walked across the street so he wouldn’t have to walk near him

We read in v. 32 that a Levite also saw him and walked across the street so he wouldn’t have to walk near him.

And in both situations, it ought to cause a bit of disgust in us—because of who the people are.

The priest who is called by God to lead God’s people into worship—the priest, who would know the Word of the Lord better than most people—refused to help, in fact, he pretended not to be able to see him.

The Levite—who was one of his own, and Israelite—a member of his extended family who you think would care for his own—refused to help, in fact, he pretended not to be able to see him.

However, in v. 33-35, there’s a gentleman who does help him—a Samaritan, who stops, cleans him up, bounds up his wounds, took him into the city, paid for him to stay somewhere for him to recover. There are a number of significant points to be made about this person:

First off, the Samaritan people and the Israelites did not get along.

The Jewish people viewed the Samaritans as half-breeds—the Samaritans were half Jewish and half whatever else they might be. Because they viewed the Samaritans as half-breeds, they refused to get along with them.

In fact, the Jewish people wouldn’t even let the Samaritans worship God with them—that’s why the Samaritan woman who Jesus speaks to mentions that the Jews worship over there and the Samaritans worship over here.

The Jewish people didn’t even want the Samaritans living amongst them—so much so, that if you’re familiar with the map of Israel during the intertestimental period and during the life of Jesus—the Samaritans had their own little place in Israel and the Jewish people lived apart from them.

I think it would be fair to say that the Jewish people hated the Samaritan people and vice versa.

Second, note the great cost that this Samaritan paid on behalf of the Jewish person, who he didn’t know. And I’m not just talking about financial cost.

Though that’s worth noting as well—the cost to clean this man up, bind up his wounds, and pay for him to stay in an inn for multiple days is significant.

The Bible says in v. 35, that the man had taken two denarii to give the the innkeeper—a denarii during that time period was a day’s wage and it doesn’t even bother to tell us of the cost of the oil, the wine, and whatever else there might be.

Just consider the great cost for the Samaritan, who as he traveled—had to walk because he placed the injured Jewish man on his own animal.

Consider the great cost in time for the Samaritan—people didn’t travel back then just for fun, so he’s giving up of his own time whether that was for business or whatever it might be to help this Jewish person who had been robbed.

And again, remember that the Samaritan didn’t even know this Jewish man—in fact, there is no indication that these people knew each other at all; and yet, the Samaritan man didn’t hesitate to help this Jewish man.

Jesus concludes the story with a question in v. 36, “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” And the lawyer responds with, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus tells him to go and do likewise.

The one who actually showed kindness and compassion—the one who cared for someone he didn’t know—that’s the one who proved to be a neighbor.

Notice that Jesus doesn’t say that the others weren’t his neighbor—rather, He essentially says that by showing mercy, the Samaritan proved to be a good neighbor.

And truthfully, if we’re thinking about this in light of all that we’ve learned through our series on love—this shouldn’t surprise us at all. If we truly love one another and we see someone in such need, wouldn’t it make sense for us to step in and help in situations like this?

Jesus shouldn’t have to say what He says to conclude this story, but I think we all need the reminder—”go and do likewise.”

With that in mind, let’s talk about our application for the morning.

Application

First and foremost, consider your love for God and other people.

The Bible says that you ought to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength—that every part of you ought to love Him.

Now, let’s be honest—how many of us love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength? And how many of us are holding back our love from Him?

Do you want to know if you don’t love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? It’s actually rather simple—what entices you to sin?

Think about it with me: why do we struggle with sin? It’s because we love our sin more than we love our God.

If we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength than sin wouldn’t be as appealing to us because we’d recognize how much damage sin causes in our lives and how much distance it places between us and God.

And yet, we all of sins in our lives that we like to partake in. Why? Because we love our sin more than we love our God.

For example—in our current world, one of the most pervasive issues that we see that hurts every age group, male or female, Christian and not Christian is that of pornography.

Let me be abundantly clear that the viewing of pornography is sinful because it causes the viewer to lust after another person—Jesus says that if you have lust in your heart, that you’ve already committed adultery. It’s sin.

Just about any Christian would agree with me in that statement and yet, even in Christian circles—the viewing of pornography is an epidemic—why? Because those that view it, love their own pleasure more than they love God.

Or, for example—think about your interpersonal relationships (this is a more subtle sin problem). Sarcasm can be a blessing and a curse.

I grew up in the Midwest and part of midwestern personality is a pretty blatant sarcasm that we use to pick on each other out of love—ask Natalie sometime what meeting my grandparents was like.

It’s very easy for that sarcasm to switch from being lighthearted and loving to being mean-spirited and hateful without anyone really knowing the difference.

Many of us utilize sarcasm in a mean-spirited and hateful way—we aren’t actually being loving. Why do we do it? Because it brings us some sort of satisfaction and we love that satisfaction more than we love God.

You can see very easily where you can be lacking in your love for God based on what causes you to struggle with sin the most.

The sins that you struggle with the most are the sins that you love more than you love God.

Likewise, the Bible says that you ought to love others as you love yourself; in fact, you ought to love God as much as He loves us.

Now, again, let’s be honest—how many of us know we are to love our neighbors and yet, we don’t?

And I’m not even asking about whether or not we bend over backwards to be a good neighbor like the Samaritan man in this story.

I’m asking—how many of us exhibit what 1 Corinthians 13 claims is love to one another? How many of us are patient and kind towards others? How many of us rejoice with others and exhibit grieve and mourn with those who grieve and mourn?

The reality is that for most of us, I’m sure we’d all agree, we’re far better at acting unloving than loving towards each other.

The issue with that is that Jesus states that people will know we believe because of our love towards one another—so, what do people think if you’re never loving towards them? Can I offer two thoughts?

The first is this: if you’re never loving towards others, it’s not even on their radar that you might believe in God—they just want to stay away from you.

The second is this: if you’re never loving towards others, but they know you claim to believe in God—they won’t want anything to do with the God you claim to believe in.

And in both cases, I don’t think we can blame them.

The reality is that when it comes to loving God and loving others—we all fall short, but that doesn’t absolve us of loving God and loving others—the Bible doesn’t say, love God and love others until you fail and then just give up.

Rather, the Bible clearly tells us to continue to grow in our love for Him and for others even when we do fail.

Or, in other words, when we do fall short in our love for Him and for other people, the goal is to get back up and keep loving God and loving other people.

The reality is that until we love God with all our hearts, soul, mind, and strength and until we love our neighbor as ourselves, we still have work to do—we need to keep loving God and loving others.

Likewise, let me encourage you with this—when you find yourself in a situation when you’ve realized that you haven’t exhibited love towards God and others—just repent, and keep loving God and loving others.

There are some things in life that can’t be taught—e.g., some people have a knack when it comes to people skills.

We call them people persons—I’d say my wife is one of them. In every place that we’ve ever lived, in every ministry we’ve ever served in, in every church that I’ve ever pastors—Natalie makes friends quicker than anyone I’ve ever met and they’re not just friends of convenience—rather, she makes life-long friends within a few weeks of meeting people.

In fact, the best example of this is the friendship that she has with two women who she worked with for less than 3 months remotely a few years ago.

She talks to these ladies almost daily and they’ve never even met face-to-face.

Or, we all know someone who has a knack for sports—it really doesn’t matter what sport it is, they can play it and they can play it well.

Or, some people have a knack for picking up languages.

I don’t believe love is like that at all. Here’s why, αγαπη is a command. If love was something that we just are born with—we’re naturally more loving than other people, Jesus wouldn’t be able to command us to love other people and to love Him.

What that means is simple—how do we grow in our love for God and others? We keep exercising love.

We keep loving and we keep loving and we keep loving.

Friends, who do we love as Christians? We love God and we love one another. Anything less is sin—and we need to repent and keep loving Him and other.s

We love because He first loved us. And because His Spirit indwells us, empowering us to love God and others, we can persevere in this high calling—not perfectly, but increasingly faithfully.

Pastoral Prayer