The Good Samaritan
Today we’re going to spend some time with one of Jesus’ most well-known parables: The Parable of the Good Samaritan. For those of us who have spent any amount of time in a church, we’ve heard this one a lot. And, while I doubt most people could tell you what a Samaritan actually is, even outside the church, the term ‘Good Samaritan’ has become synonymous with helping those in need.
Before we get to the teaching text, I think it is important to note that Jesus used parables to provoke and challenge his listeners, to reveal new truths about the kingdom he was bringing about. But we’ve heard these stories so often they have become familiar and predictable. If you’re like me, hearing the title alone makes you groan a bit. This one again? I know, we’ve heard this one so many times. But for the original audience, this story was anything but predictable. Which means there is something in the story that should challenge us too. The truth of God’s kingdom is still provoking.
Let’s jump in. We’ll go to the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 10, starting in verse 25.
“One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: “Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?”
Time out! I want to point out two important contextual clues that are packed into this single opening verse. First, the man who asks the question is a lawyer. All lawyer jokes aside, in the Gospel of Luke, experts of religious law were not Jesus’ fave people. Jesus often calls out lawyers, along with the Pharisees, as unrighteous—they made it harder for people to come to God by piling on heavy religious rules. They cared more about how they appeared to others than if their hearts were truly seeking God. Second clue, if his occupation doesn’t already make his motives clear, the text explicitly states that this lawyer wanted to test Jesus. He is not asking an honest question or seeking an honest answer. He is doing that annoying thing where you ask a question you technically already know the answer to. He wants to see how Jesus’ answers stack up against his own. He is either trying to make Jesus look bad or trying to make himself look good. Or both.
In verse 26, Jesus replies, “What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?”
Classic Jesus, answering a question with a question—he knows this man’s motives and turns the test back around on him, potentially even playing to his ego as a religious expert. He asks, what do you think?
The man answered, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
28 “Right!” Jesus told him. “Do this and you will live!”
Our lawyer friend got the right answer, but he had asked the wrong question. Jesus wants us to ask the right questions. The lawyer’s original question, “what should I do to inherit eternal life?” was problematic. It revealed that he cared more about his future state than about living in the here and now. It assumed there was one single thing he could check off a list that would somehow earn his salvation. But eternal life is a gift given by God alone.
Jesus’ response emphasized that indeed loving God and loving others is how we should live, but he says nothing about a future eternal life. Jesus cares about how we live in the here and now.
And the story could have ended there, but the lawyer keeps pressing Jesus, who had, after all, evaded his clever test, and the exchange continues in verse 29.
The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
This is such a loaded question. It implies an underlying and unasked question: “Who is not my neighbor?” Who is in and who is out? Who do I have to love, and who can I use the law as a shield against to avoid loving? In response to another wrong question, Jesus replies with his parable.
“A Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and he was attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up, and left him half dead beside the road.
“By chance a priest came along. But when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by. 32 A Temple assistant walked over and looked at him lying there, but he also passed by on the other side.
The first surprise of this story is that both religious leaders fail to do what is right. The lawyer has already stated in his own words what the audience would have known well: the call to care for others was woven into Jewish Law and Scripture. And really, helping someone who is dying on the side of the road is not just a “religious” thing to do, it’s human decency.
But when the priest and the Levite both pass on by, the scene is set for the appearance of a third person, the one who the audience knows will be the hero. The audience would have followed the order of characters to an obvious conclusion: the coming hero will obviously be an Israelite. This would be like if I told you the first person was Harry Potter, and the second was Ron Weasley. This would lead us to think of the third obvious, and brilliant, choice for the hero: Hermione Granger. But, Jesus is telling this parable and Jesus loves a plot twist. He continues the story:
“Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him. 34 Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. 35 The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins,[e] telling him, ‘Take care of this man. If his bill runs higher than this, I’ll pay you the next time I’m here.’
Instead of Hermione, the rescuer turns out to be Draco Malfoy.
Jesus set up the reveal, but shocks everyone when he uses a hated enemy as the hero. The Samaritans were actually the descendants of the unlawful marriages of Jews and Gentiles during the OT time of exile. The Israelites and the Samaritans had lived violently at odds for generations. This twist would not only have shocked the crowd but also would have wildly offended them.
Again, Jesus turns the test back on the lawyer with another question:
“Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?”
I imagine the Lawyer answering Jesus through gritted teeth because he can’t bear to speak the word Samaritan, so he says, “The one who showed him mercy.”
Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”
Go and do the same. Go extend mercy to even the most hated person.
The lawyer had asked who qualified as his neighbor, likely hoping to be let off the hook in extending his love to certain people, but Jesus surprises him: even your enemy is your neighbor whom you should love like yourself.
Jesus redefined neighbor in a way that forced the lawyer to admit the truth of God’s kingdom: all humans are included in the word “neighbor.” Jesus was not about to let the lawyer hide behind the law to justify self-protective indifference toward others.
So what do we do with this story?
This is where we usually move quickly toward application: help the stranger, care for those in need, be a good neighbor. And that’s not wrong. Jesus absolutely calls us into concrete acts of mercy. But if we stop there, we risk missing the deeper work this parable is doing in us.
Because Jesus didn’t just tell a story about what to do. He told a story that reshapes who we think we are. So maybe the first question isn’t, “What would I do in this story?” but rather, “Where do I find myself in it?”
I suspect most of us naturally want to place ourselves as the rescuer—the one who notices, who stops, who does the right thing. Or, if we’re more honest, we might even admit there are moments we resemble the priest or the Levite—seeing and passing by.
But Jesus pushes our imagination further.
What happens if we see ourselves as the one in the ditch? Exposed, unable to save ourselves, dependent on the mercy of another? And even more unsettling: what if the one who stops is not who we would expect, or even who we would choose? What if it is a person we fear or hate?
Craig Blomberg puts it this way: Jesus forces the listener “to imagine himself receiving help from one to whom he can barely imagine offering help.”
This parable isn’t teaching us how to be a good neighbor, but instead helps us to see ourselves more honestly. It’s one thing to imagine ourselves as the one who shows mercy. It’s another thing entirely to imagine ourselves as the one who needs it.
Offering help is easier. Offering help can put us in a place of superiority, while accepting help puts us in a place of inferiority.
Why does Jesus do that?
Why does he want us to imagine the person we like the least—the one who makes our blood boil, maybe even someone who has held power over us—as the one who saves us?
Because this story forces us to look into the face of our enemy and see someone who is loved by God, someone who has the capacity for good as much as for evil.
And it also forces us to look into the mirror and see that we are not nearly as divided as we like to think—that sometimes we have the capacity for evil as much as for good.
And if that feels difficult to hold in theory, it becomes even more personal in practice.
Who is that person for you?
Who is the person that comes to mind when you hear the word “enemy”?
Maybe it’s someone who has hurt you. Maybe it’s someone you strongly disagree with. Maybe it’s someone you’ve quietly written off.
Just take a moment and notice who comes to mind.
Recently, I have become aware of my own incredible dislike of someone in my past. I see pictures of this person on social media and immediately think unkind things and want to rage about how terrible they are. My disappointment in this person’s past actions has grown into resentment and hatred over time—mostly without me even noticing.
And I want to be honest about what that is doing in me. My anger affects this person 0%. But it is burning me from the inside out. What do I do with that?
I believe we are invited to entrust our anger to God with honesty—an honesty that refuses to pretend we are morally superior, and an honesty that admits we need mercy just as much as anyone else.
Because enemies and the wounds they cause are painfully real.
The Samaritan and the Jewish man in this story are not abstract categories—they represent real histories, real pain, real reasons for division. But injustice does not justify hatred toward any person made in the image of God, nor does it justify violence.
Hatred and violence are the enemy’s tools.
And this is where I’m learning that prayer becomes so important.
The goal of praying honest and even angry prayers is not self-gratification, but healing. In prayer, anger is brought before God, where it becomes lament and petition. It is purified rather than weaponized. Prayer reminds us of God’s mercy toward us, and slowly forms in us the ability to release what we were never meant to carry alone.
This is part of what it means to follow Jesus in loving our enemies. And loving our enemies does not mean excusing their actions or pretending harm is not real. It means refusing to reduce any person to what they have done, and refusing to treat them as anything less than someone made in the image of God.
And I want to be really clear about something here: this is not a call to toxic forgiveness.
Too often, “forgiveness” has been used in Christian spaces to silence people who have been deeply wounded—to excuse harm, to protect abusers, and to place pressure on victims to move on before they are ready.
That is not what Jesus is doing.
You cannot love your enemy immediately after they have harmed you. You cannot forgive what you have not first allowed yourself to name, feel, and grieve.
And you cannot heal in a place where your safety is still compromised. If you are not safe—physically or emotionally—your first call is not to forgive, but to seek safety.
Bringing your anger to God does not mean letting go of accountability. It means refusing to let that anger consume you while still telling the truth about what has been done.
Real forgiveness, when it comes, is not rushed. It grows out of healing, out of honesty, and out of a restored sense of your own worth.
We are called to hold two things at the same time: the courage to name evil and the trust that God alone is judge, redeemer, and restorer. Only then, only from that place, can we begin to live without being formed by hatred or despair. Only then can we become people who bear witness to the God who is redeeming what is broken.
I think this is where Jesus is leading us in this story.
I think Jesus is confronting the way we draw lines—deciding who is worthy of our love and who is not. And he refuses to let us keep those lines intact. Because in God’s kingdom, all people are our neighbors—even those we despise.
This is no easy truth. And the reality is, sometimes we are going to be the ones who fail to act, who justify our distance, who hold onto anger longer than we should. But in God’s kingdom, being righteous does not excuse us from acting in love.
We are called to see differently—to look into the face of someone we would rather avoid, and to recognize someone who is still made in the image of God—and to remember how much mercy we ourselves need. And that doesn’t come naturally to us. Which is why we need God to form that kind of love in us.
Father God, help us to truly grasp that you love all people, even those we couldn’t fathom loving ourselves. Help us to focus our hearts on loving you and loving our neighbors, living out the very identities you created for us. Keep us from becoming consumed with trying to earn your favor, because we are already your beloved. And keep us from stripping other people of their God-given worth, because they are already your beloved. And where we have been wounded, help us to seek truth, safety, and a very real healing of our self-worth in your presence before anything else. Help us to look into the face of our enemy and see your reflection. Help us to love without expecting a return.
Amen