Luke 10:25-28 25And behold, a lawyer stood up putting him to the test, saying, “Teacher, by what action will I inherit eternal life?” 26And he said to him, “In the law, what is written? How do you read it?” 27And answering, he said, “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.” 28And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
The following story is one of the best known of any of Jesus’ teachings. Everyone has heard of the “Good Samaritan,” but few look deeply into the story that prompted the parable and the key points of the parable. Jesus gave the parable as an illustration to answer the question of a lawyer. The question the lawyer asked Jesus is the most important that we can ask: How do we gain eternity life? The lawyer must have been listening to Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of God and wanted to know how to enter this eternal kingdom.
Luke inserts this story as an illustration from verse 21 of the wise who thought they knew God but really did not. The lawyer was someone who knew the law well and studied it carefully. He should have known the answer already. This was not an innocent inquiry but a test to see what Jesus would say. The opposition to Jesus begins to grow at this point in the narrative. Jerusalem meant trials and suffering, but the tension had been growing for some time. Most English translations do not accurately translate the Greek. The word for doing (poiēsas) is a participle used instrumentally. The man wants to know what act of doing will give him the reward he seeks. The main verb is a future tense will inherit (klēronomēsō) and indicates possession or acquiring something.
Jesus’ response to the lawyer focused on two key points he made in his teachings, as indicated in the Gospels. He put the question back to the lawyer, who should have known the answer already. The Law refers to the Old Testament, especially the Torah, the first five books, traditionally attributed to Moses. What Jesus taught was no different from the Hebrew Scriptures. There were not two ways to be saved. Salvation has always been by faith in God’s gracious forgiveness. But faith must also be shown by obedience to the law; otherwise, it is not truly faith in God. Obedience must be done as an act of faith.
The lawyer was perceptive and already knew the answer to his question (Luke has the answer coming from the lawyer, while Mark and Matthew have Jesus giving the answer). His response comes from two important passages in the Law. Loving God with our whole being is mentioned in the Shema, the essential passage from Deuteronomy 6:5 that faithful Jews recite, even to this day. The essential command that guides everything that follows in verse 27 is love (agapēseis), a future tense verb with the force of a command. The most important thing we can do in life, the very reason we have been created, is to love God. Adam and Eve were in perfect love with God in the garden before their fateful decision to disobey and love themselves more than God. Ever since, the human race has struggled to return to that perfect love. Only in Jesus Christ and through the presence of the Holy Spirit can we love God as God desires. Loving God is a life-long journey in which we grow step by step in the commitment of love.
The original passage in Deuteronomy has three areas of one’s being that should love God: heart, soul, and strength. The lawyer adds mind. What each of these terms represents has been much discussed and debated for millennia. The heart can represent one’s emotions and will, the part of our being that makes decisions and gives responses. The soul can represent one’s life, awareness, or consciousness. The strength represents the motivation and action that responds to the decisions made by the heart. The mind represents one’s thinking, intelligence, and ability to learn. The heart is supported by the mind. The mind influences and guides the thinking and actions. Rather than attempting to break apart the human into segments, we can see these four as describing the person as a whole: every part of us ought to be devoted to loving God. Loving God is an act of both faith and obedience.
The second command is given in a short phrase that assumes the main verb of loving from the first quotation. The same love we show to God ought to be shown to our neighbor. The short statement is a quote from Leviticus 19:18. It is also quoted in Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14; and James 2:8. Most people love themselves by caring for themselves in many ways. Without God in one’s life (the first command), love will deteriorate into selfish love, though people can also express love in positive ways without a clear love for God. God has granted love as a gift to humanity that is not dependent on faith in him but is best experienced in its fulness by first loving him. The key point that Jesus picks up on and elaborates further is the meaning of neighbor. For Jews, the neighbor was another Jew, and sometimes this was narrowed even more to Jews who lived righteously. The parable that follows explodes this narrow vision and should have helped the lawyer see the connection between loving God and loving the neighbor. Jesus points out that the lawyer was correct in his summary, but the challenge was if he lived it out. Would he find eternal life through the path of love?
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