I was reading a [post](http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/001286.html) over at [Evangelical Outpost](http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/) that notes an [interpretation](http://prosthesis.blogspot.com/2004/01/new-for-me-view-of-good-samaritan.html) of the good Samaritan story. Joe asks an open question of whether this is an accurate interpretation. I want to answer that question, and provide what I think is a more complete interpretation.
This quote from the original post summarizes the viewpoint under examination:
>Jesus is the man by the road. He was on the road to Jerusalem. He was beaten and bloody. Robbers stripped him of his clothes and beat him and left him for dead. And the only person who could be close to Christ at all was the Samaritan because he was free from the law. And because he was free from the law, he was able to lower himself and go down by the side of the road with Him.
>And in that way, Jesus shows the expert of the law that he can keep all the laws in the world, but that won’t allow him to earn eternal life. In fact, in order to gain eternal life, the expert of the law has to stop admiring the priest and start admiring the Samaritan (who he really wouldn’t admire at all). So, what must the expert do? He has to completely change the way he looks at things. He can’t be the priest, he can’t be the Levite. He has to be the Samaritan. And that requires recognizing that the law can do nothing. And, in fact, his only hope is to have a relationship with the bloodied, beaten man by the side of the road.
Is this an accurate interpretation? My short answer is “not really”. I will spend a little time here trying to back that up. The interpretation presented has elements of truth, but it misses quite completely what I believe to have been the primary point of Jesus telling this parable.
First of all, I want to affirm the basic sentiment that we can’t earn salvation. But here’s the first twist. This was not news to the people of the first century. Salvation by the grace of God alone has always been a part of Judaism–then and now. This is the subject of another essay though, so I won’t delve deeper into it here. Taking what I’ve asserted as true, and I know some will not believe this without further information, it seems unlikely that Jesus would have been simply repeating something so obvious. So what was he saying?
To begin to answer this, we have to look more closely at the preceding verses. As the referenced article did, I will use the text [Luke 10:25-37](http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=LUKE+10:25-37&version=31;) as the starting point. Consider the first verse:
>On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
So the first question is, who or what is an “expert in the law”? This person is not a lawyer in the Western sense. An expert in the law refers to someone who was an expert in–almost certainly had memorized–the entire Torah, the first five books of the Bible. So this guy was no slouch.
His first question is, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answers with a question, very rabbinic in style, thus prompting the man to answer his own question. For Jews in that time period the concept of eternal life was not other-worldly, but rather was more like “living in harmony with God.” So we can rephrase his question as, “What must I do to live in harmony with God?”
All the kids standing around knew the answer to this question. Keep the commandments! For Jesus’s day, this was common knowledge. But the answer that the man gives is still very interesting, because it introduces one of two ‘big’ theological debates of that time that Jesus confronts in this passage.
The man’s answer to Jesus’s question is:
>‘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.’
Here, he is quoting [Deuteronomy 6:4-5](http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=deuteronomy%206:4-5;&version=31;) and [Leviticus 19:18](http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2019:18;&version=31;). By saying this he stakes out a position in a theological debate. Jesus then affirms this position, showing that he is on this same side of the debate.
What debate is this? It is a debate of priority of commandments. In the Torah, sometimes commandments are mutually exclusive in a certain circumstance. The Jews recognized this, and set up a series of priorities in the commands. Of course, the debate then became the order of the list. In Jesus’s day, there was a major split between traditionalists and progressives on this issue. Everyone agreed that Deuteronomy 6 was the greatest command:
>Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.
The debate started with #2. The traditionalists prioritized keeping the Sabbath, ritual cleanliness, and other commands ahead of “love your neighbor”. The progressives, however, put only “love God” ahead of love your neighbor. So both Jesus and the man questioning him are affirming the progressive position on this debate.
The man realizes this was a bit of a novice-level question, and tries to “justify himself” as the text says–he’s trying to save face.
Part 2 will look at his second question, “And who is my neighbor?” and will dig into the absolutely brilliant nature of Jesus’s answer.
