LOVE Seriers
“ Responding to a Neighbor in Need “
However, in the context of the rejection of Jesus, it should also be noted in this parable that the Jewish religious leaders rejected the man who fell among the robbers. A Samaritan, an outcast, was the only one who helped the man. Jesus was like the Samaritan. He was the outcast One, who was willing to seek and to save people who were perishing. He
(1) The lawyer wanted to test Jesus. (He called Jesus “Teacher,” didaskale, Luke’s equivalent of a Jewish Rabbi.) (2) After Jesus answered the man’s question, Luke recorded that the man wished to justify himself (Luke 10:29).
Jesus answered his question with two other questions (v. 26), driving the Law expert back to the Old Testament Law. The expert answered correctly by quoting from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. One must love … God and one’s fellowman in order to keep the Law properly. Jesus affirmed that if the man did this, he would live.
The lawyer had a little leather box called a phylactery. Several passages of Scripture were in the box, two of which were De. 6:3 and De. 6:11. These were the two verses which he quoted.
There has to be a demonstration, an act, something done for love to be seen and understood. A profession of love without demonstration is empty. It is profession only. Love is not known without showing it.
1) Love is an active experience, not inactive and dormant. This was the point Jesus was making. Love for God acts. Love acts by showing and demonstrating itself. It is inaccurate and foolish for a man to say, “I love God,” and then be inactive and dormant, doing nothing for God. If he truly loves God, he will do things for God. Any person who loves does things for the one loved.
God wants us to make loving our neighbor the first order of our lives.
10:29–35 The parable is Jesus’ answer to the question, Who is my neighbor? The priest and the Levite were highly respected Jewish religious leaders, perhaps on their way to the temple at Jerusalem. The Samaritans were half-breeds, descended from Israelites who intermarried with the Gentile settlers brought into Palestine by the Assyrians after the fall of Samaria in 722 B.C. Although the Jews hated these neighbors, this Samaritan had compassion on the wounded Jew.
10:30 A man. Luke used this expression (literally a certain man) only when introducing a parable. See comments on 16:19.
Was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. Because Jerusalem sits on a mountain twenty-five hundred feet above sea level, one always goes down from Jerusalem no matter which direction one takes. Jericho was seventeen miles east of Jerusalem and approximately eight hundred feet below sea level.
When he fell into the hands of robbers. Robbers hid in the mountains, rocks, and desert along the road between Jerusalem and Jericho.