If I were to describe you as a “good Samaritan”, it would likely be a way of thanking you for helping me in some way. My car may have a flat tyre and you stopped to help me on the side of the road, even though it was raining, or you answered my call to come pick me up, even if it meant that you were running late for your next obligation.
A “Good Samaritan” has become a clichéd way of describing a doer of good deeds—even if those citing it might not even know they are referencing a story from the Bible. We borrow from this story to celebrate being a Good Samaritan to such a degree that we even have laws that protect those who step in to help others in “Good Samaritan”-like ways. As a society, we encourage people in doing good for each other and to protect them from potential legal risks when they genuinely step up to help.
As such, this is probably the one story from the New Testament that is more well-known than any other. Found only in the Gospel of Luke, this story was written down by an early Greek convert to Christianity, so it might have been attractive to him as an outsider to the Jewish faith from which Christianity had its beginning. It is also traditionally believed that Luke was a medical doctor, so the story of a stranger stopping to help a man who had been beaten up and left “half dead beside the road” may have also caught his professional attention, as would the specific description of treating the man’s wounds.
The story is relatively simple and retold by Luke in just a few sentences (see Luke 10:30–35). A Jewish man was travelling down the treacherous road that wound down the Wadi Qelt from the ridge-top city of Jerusalem to Jericho on the plain by the Jordan River. He was attacked by bandits, stripped of his clothes and badly beaten. The next two people to come down the road were a priest and a “temple assistant”, or Levite—but they both passed by, stepping to the other side of the road to avoid becoming involved.
But the third passer-by did not pass by. He was a “despised Samaritan”—someone who, because of cultural history and racial prejudice, would not be expected to stop, particularly by the Jewish audience to whom Jesus was telling this story—but “when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him” (10:33, NLT1) and proceeded to tend to the man’s wounds, before loading him onto his donkey and delivering him to the next inn along the road, making payment for his initial care and promising to cover any further costs.
It is a valuable moral tale, urging that its hearers be alert to opportunities to do good to others—even if it comes with personal cost—and pushing back against racial and cultural division. It was told in response to a question Jesus was asked, “Who is my neighbour?” to which Jesus’ answer was, effectively, “Don’t try to narrow who you might be responsible to care for, but go and be a neighbour.” Ultimately, a neighbour is anyone who might need our help with whatever compassion, time, resources or opportunity we might possess.
But there is a still-larger context for this story that was an important part of Jesus’ teaching and a further insight into the expectations about what following God’s law means for a life well lived. This story was not only about a practical demonstration of doing good. It began with a religious argument and a question posed to Jesus by “an expert in religious law”. This religious lawyer asked the perpetual question of religious study: “What should I do to inherit eternal life?” (10:25, NLT). What is the requirement for salvation, for goodness in this life and for reward in the next?
Jesus’ response was to ask the lawyer how he would summarise the teachings of the Jewish Scriptures: “What does the law of Moses say?”
The lawyer gave an answer exactly like one given by Jesus to another question in the Gospel of Matthew, when He was asked what the most important commandment in the law of Moses was (see Matthew 22:36–40). Rather than picking a favourite—or top priority—among the Ten Commandments or the many other laws that can be found in the Jewish scriptures, both Jesus and the lawyer quoted two verses that summarised the whole of these laws. The first was to love God with “all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind”. The second was the jumping off point for Jesus’ story: “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Luke 10:27).
But the relationship between the two is important. Jesus’ answer in Matthew added the important phrase that this “second is equally important” (Matthew 22:39, NLT). There is a risk both in religious thinking and in sequential logic that we would read this as “love God” then “love neighbour”—even after the assertion in Jesus’ answer that they were equally important. But Jesus’ “Good Samaritan” story really pushes against our temptations to that kind of religious thinking, however holy it might seem.
When we go back to Jesus’ story with this larger context, we notice that the first two passers-by were religious: a priest and an assistant in the Temple. They devoted their lives to religious work, to pursuing the greatest command of loving and serving God, perhaps even encouraging and leading others in that work and worship. They might have even had good religious reasons for not wanting to get involved with this man half-dead on the roadside, given the purity laws that were part of their Temple responsibilities.
Whatever their thinking, they were not the heroes of Jesus’ story. It seemed they had “loving God” down professionally, but their failure to “love neighbour” demonstrated something missing in their faithfulness. By contrast, the Samaritan was someone whose religious beliefs, practices and devotion would have been criticised or even condemned by these previous two men and by most—if not all—of those who were listening to Jesus. Our unlikely hero’s primary qualification was taking the time to notice and have compassion, upon which he acted. His was the example Jesus urged His listeners to emulate.
Our unlikely hero’s primary qualification was taking the time to notice and have compassion, upon which he acted. His was the example Jesus urged His listeners to emulate.
As was common elsewhere in Jesus’ teaching, His harshest criticism was aimed at those who claimed to be religious but showed little concern for others. As one commentator on this Bible story has put it, “In the story of the good Samaritan, Christ illustrates the nature of true religion. He shows that it consists not in systems, creeds or rites, but in the performance of loving deeds, in bringing the greatest good to others, in genuine goodness.”2
As Jesus said to the religious lawyer, “Do this and you will live!” (Luke 10:28). While the original question was aimed at inheriting eternal life, it seems Jesus had also reframed this context to point the lawyer to what it means to do good and live well in this present life. Much of the remainder of the Christian writings of the New Testament make it clear that we do not and cannot earn eternal life or merit with God, but neither are we expected to. Instead, we are invited into living life with God, learning to love and trust Him and to be a neighbour to those around us. In the law of God, this is “genuine goodness” and the greatest way to live.
1. Bible quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
2. Ellen White, The Desire of Ages. Pacific Press Publishing Company, 1898.
