Those Who Believe the Gospel Become Like the Gospel
Ask the Pastor with J.D. Greear
Audio By Carbonatix
By J.D. Greear, Crosswalk.com
Jesus clarified that it’s simply impossible to be his follower and not be engaged in his rescue mission. He illustrated this in one of the most important and recognizable parables he ever told, “The Parable of the Good Samaritan,” or as my kids call it, the Good Samara-FRIEND.
In Jesus’ Luke 10 parable, a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan all have the opportunity to help a Jewish man who had fallen into the hands of robbers along his way from Jerusalem to Jericho. They stripped him, beat him up, and fled, leaving him on the cusp of death.
The priest was the first to encounter him, and he passed by on the other side of the road. We were always hard on this priest when I learned this story in Sunday School (on flannelgraph—let the reader understand). I even remember the expression on the face of the character; he had this pious “I’m better than you” look on his face, stepping over a bleeding man on his way to the donut shop or something like that. But Jesus’ audience would have immediately recognized a few things about this priest that would have made him a much more sympathetic character.
First, the Jericho road was extremely dangerous. It was literally called, in those days, the “Pass of Blood” because of all the places robbers could hide. The one rule on the Jericho road is YOU DON’T STOP. It would be like driving through a really dangerous part of town late at night. You don’t stop because if you do, you might get mugged.
Second, suppose the priest was returning from Jerusalem. In that case, that means he’d just finished his purification rites, which were required for him to be able to perform his religious duties back in his hometown. Purification was a seven-day process, and, according to Jewish law, if you touched a dead man after you’d been purified, you had to go back to the temple in Jerusalem and purify yourself again, which would take another seven days! So, for this priest to stop and help this guy would have been dangerous and massively inconvenient. I find it hard to stop to help someone if I think it will cost me 15 minutes; how much if I knew it would cost me a week!
Of course, inconvenience shouldn’t really factor in when someone’s life is at stake. After all, isn’t a man’s life worth at least a week of your time? For the priest, apparently not.
The story continues with a Levite, who, in the same way, passed the man on the other side of the road. Levites were like JV priests, and because the road was really straight, in most places you could see three to four miles down it, which means that this Levite would have seen the priest pass by the wounded man. So he probably thought, “Well, if the PRIEST doesn’t feel compelled to help, I can’t be expected to either.” Again, it’s understandable … but still, the guy is dying. Have a heart!
Then a Samaritan came along. He didn’t pass by on the other side of the road: He saw the man and had compassion on him.
What you need to know is that Samaritans were the ethnic and religious enemies of the Jews. They were the half-Jew, half-Gentile offspring that came about when the Assyrians, who had conquered the Northern part of Israel, forced the Jews there to intermarry with them. The Jews thought of Samaritans as racially defiled, half-bloods—or, for you Harry Potter fans, mud-bloods. Jews were extremely racist toward Samaritans.
The Samaritans weren’t that pleasant a people either. They built their own alternate temple and said that their altar was the true altar of God. One Jewish historian records that on the eve of one of the Passovers, some Samaritans catapulted dead pigs into the middle of the temple courtyard so the place would be defiled and the Jews couldn’t celebrate Passover.
Samaria was right in between the northern and southern parts of Israel. Still, the Jews hated Samaritans so much that if they were traveling from north to south in Israel, they would walk around Samaria, even though it added a couple of days to their journey, just to avoid contact with Samaritans. Just touching a Samaritan, they believed, made you dirty.
But shockingly, this Samaritan, when he saw the bleeding Jewish man, felt compassion, or as the Greek says, splagma. That word is an onomatopoeia: One of those words where the word sounds like what it is, like “bang” or “splat.” Splagma refers to a pity that just rises up from the core of who you are, like a gut-wrenching compassion. (Say it right and you’ll feel it coming up from your gut.) The Samaritan had such splagma for this man that he bandaged his wounds, put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and cared for him. Then, he left him in the innkeeper's care, paying for him out of his own account—and even opening up a line of credit for him!
What do you notice here about this Samaritan’s love? It’s unrestrained, limitless. He literally opens a line of credit and says, “Whatever it takes to get this guy to health, put it on me!”
Then Jesus asks, “Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? … Go and do the same.” In this story, Jesus shows us what it means to love our neighbors and why those who have been saved by grace will do it instinctively.
But Jesus could have made that point with any cast of characters. Why choose a Samaritan as the hero? After all, Jesus could have easily made another Jew the hero of this story. He could have said, “And first, a priest came by, and then a Levite, but then a really kind, elderly grandma Jew came by and she helped the man—and you should be like the good grandma Jew, not the stuffy religious guys!” It would still have an element of surprise, but without the discomfort of bringing in a person the Jews despised as an enemy.
So why a Samaritan?
Let me ask a second question: Who do you think is supposed to represent you and me in this story? I’ll tell you what I usually hear: We typically read this story and say, “I know, I know, I’m like the busy priest and the uncaring Levite, but I should really be more like the Good Samaritan.” But what if the person we are supposed to most identify with in the story isn’t the priest, Levite, or even the Good Samaritan? What if the person we are most supposed to identify with is the guy bleeding on the side of the road? And what if someone who had every reason to hate us and be our enemy chose to put himself into danger to save us?
The Good Samaritan story isn’t just a wise lesson about love. It’s also a parable about God’s interaction with us. Because the true Good Samaritan is Jesus, who took upon himself the suffering we had caused ourselves and poured out his own resources to save us. He put himself in danger and yielded his body to crucifixion to save us. Then, he gave us an unlimited credit at the bank of his grace to cover whatever else we needed. And he did that even though (unlike the man in this story) our situation was entirely our own fault, and we didn’t deserve any help.
If that’s true, and we’re the man on the side of the road who got rescued, that changes how we approach others in need, right?
The take-home point from the parable doesn’t change: Love your neighbor. But we already knew that punch line. What changes is the motivation. When Jesus the Good Samaritan rescues us bleeding sinners, we realize that all we have is from grace. And those who have been the recipients of great grace can’t help but show it to others. It becomes an instinct. And if you don’t have that instinct, have you really experienced the gospel?
Jesus isn’t giving us a rule to follow as much as he’s making us aware of a new reality. Each of us had made God our enemy, and, instead of hating us, God saw us and felt compassion. Instead of paying us back, he poured out his life to save us. We are saved because he stopped, turned aside, and got involved in our pain. And those who believe the gospel can’t help but become like that gospel.
Photo Credit: SWN Design
J.D. Greear is the pastor of The Summit Church, in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. He hosts Summit Life, a 30-minute daily radio broadcast and weekly TV program as well as the Ask the Pastor podcast. Pastor J.D. Greear has authored many books, most notably Gospel, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart, and Gaining by Losing.
Pastor J.D. completed his Ph.D. in Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Chick-fil-A, serves as a Council member for The Gospel Coalition, and recently served as the 62nd president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Pastor J.D. and his wife Veronica are raising four awesome kids.
