Priests, Levites and Samaritans

Luke 10:25-37.

In this text a Jewish religious Lawyer asks Jesus what he must do to be saved. Jesus, in part, tells him to “love his neighbor”

The lawyer, of course being a lawyer, tried to justify himself and asked “who is my neighbor”?

Then Jesus tells him the famous parable about the “Good Samaritan”. First let’s identify the characters…

The Priest and the Levite were probably of the Pharisee class. As such they were doctrinally correct. They correctly believed in the afterlife and taught correctly about things like “tithing”.

The Samaritan was doctrinally incorrect… he didn’t worship in the correct place, he only believed in the first five books of the Old Testament, etc.

In this parable the doctrinally correct Priest and Levite ignore the plight on the hapless individual who had been beaten by robbers and was “half dead”. However the doctrinally incorrect Samaritan showed “love to his neighbor” and helped him.

Then Jesus asked the loaded and poignant question to the religious Lawyer… “which one proved to be the neighbor?” The Lawyer correctly answered… the one who showed mercy (the Samaritan).

Keep in mind the question has to do with salvation and Jesus elevates the doctrinally incorrect Samaritan over the doctrinally correct Priest and Levite.

Here’s another story. I know of a congregation who had a member who happened to be the son of the Preacher. This young man got hooked on drugs and while on drugs made several mistakes including evil mistakes and ended up in jail.

To my knowledge no one from his congregation went to visit him in jail. However, a denomination in the same town had a little jail ministry going on and visited this young man in jail and with their help he got clean and repented and had a much greater appreciation for the grace of God.

Here’s my question… which congregation proved to “love his neighbor”?...the one where he grew up or the one he met in jail?

Those are hard questions but here’s a learning point… we need to be correct doctrinally but at some point the rubber has to hit the road and we have to “love our neighbors” no matter what our neighbors have done

.

The Pharisees and religious Lawyers had become spiritually elite and spiritually arrogant as if their religious correctness was enough. Well guess what… it wasn’t.

Thank God there are religious people out there who may not have everything figured out (scripturally)… like the Samaritan… but whose hearts are in the right place.