Amy C Walters

The Parable of the Good Samaritan | Luke 10:25-37

Today, we look at the characteristics of the Good Samaritan: an unexpected hero who is moved by pity, risks his safety, and sacrifices his resources to help a stranger. Such an incredible display of love shows that this story is not pointing to greater religious effort but to a Great Savior.

In the previous post, we addressed some bad news. An expert in the law had come to Jesus, seeking to justify himself, wanting to make himself the hero of his story. But Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan reveals that the law expert was not the hero. He was the broken one, the one who had been robbed and beaten and left at the side of the road for dead. We too are broken and in need of a hero. 

But there is also good news, because this story points to the fact that there is a rescuer, there is someone who has come to help. Today we’ll look at the characteristics of that rescuer. 

First of all, Jesus says that the rescuer is a Samaritan. The Samaritans were hated by the Jews. They had intermarried with the people around them, and so they weren’t fully Jewish. They also had, in a sense, created their own religion. So these things created a lot of animosity between the Jewish people and the Samaritans. 

The intent of using the Samaritan as the hero is not to point to those specific details. Instead, it’s to surprise the listener with a hero they wouldn’t expect. 

The Good Samaritan, like the priest and the Levite, sees the man who’s been robbed. The man is stripped of his clothes so there’s nothing to identify his nationality, his status, his income, or his career. And that might have been one of the things that got in the way of the priest and the Levite going to help him. How would they know if he was someone worth helping? 

So the Samaritan sees him. But unlike the priest and the Levite, the Samaritan also has pity on the victim. Pity is a word that we tend to see as weak. We think of it as just feeling bad for someone and that’s it. But this pity is more potent because it leads to action.

The Samaritan goes to the injured man. He bridges the distance that the man could not cross himself because he’s lying there half dead. 

Now this is risky because there are robbers in the area. And if injured man has been beaten up and robbed, the same could happen to the Samaritan while he is helping him. It’s a risky situation that he’s put himself in.

We’re also told that the Samaritan bandages the man’s wounds, pouring oil and wine on them. So he’s getting his hands dirty. He is helping the victim in very tangible ways. And I’m sure it is a messy process if this man was beaten that badly, left for dead on the side of the road. This would not be a tidy job in the dirt, in the blood.

Then the Samaritan puts the man on his donkey. So now he has to walk. We don’t know how far it is to the inn, but the point is that he gives the donkey to the man and he does the walking himself. 

He also spends his resources to help this injured man. He takes out two denarii to give to the innkeeper. A denarii was worth about a day’s worth of pay. He also promises to reimburse the innkeeper for any extra expense that he incurs while he continues to care for the man. So the Samaritan enters into this open-ended financial agreement with the innkeeper. He puts himself on the hook to pay whatever additional expenses happen.

This is a chance for the innkeeper to exploit him. He could add a few things in addition, and the Good Samaritan would not necessarily know it. But the Samaritan doesn’t care. He is focused on the care and recovery of this man. 

The Samaritan also promises to return. “When I come back, I will reimburse you.” So there’s follow-up. He doesn’t just go on his way hoping that the man gets better. 

This story was in answer to the religious expert’s desire to justify himself. He wants to limit the definition of “neighbor” so that he can fulfill the law of loving his neighbor perfectly. 

And yet, if we look at the example of the Good Samaritan honestly, we say, wow, that is an amazing outpouring of love and help to a total stranger. That is a level of love and self-sacrifice that we really don’t see anywhere. 

There was only one person ever who satisfied God’s law perfectly in that way, and that’s Jesus. This story is not meant to point us to greater religious effort, but to a great Savior.

We need a Good Samaritan, and Jesus is the one that perfectly fulfills it. That is our key truth for today, that Jesus is the Good Samaritan. 

Jesus goes to those who are beaten up by this sinful world. He goes to those who are ignored by the religious people and religious systems. He pays the price for their healing. He sacrifices for our salvation, and he will return. Jesus perfectly fulfills God’s law. Jesus perfectly demonstrates his love for his people.

Think about, too, how the expert asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” It’s a strange question because “doing” and “inheriting” don’t really go together. And yet, that’s often what people look for to earn salvation.  If I do the right things, if I belong to the right groups. But what this story shows us is that the doing part of inheriting salvation is not what we have done, it’s what Jesus does for us. 

Also, when do you get an inheritance? When someone has died. Jesus’ death gives us the inheritance of eternal life.