Kindness, mercy, justice, and loving our neighbour—these are all wonderful Christian virtues, and the pages of the Bible drip with them. God loves these virtues; God commands them; and God displays them. And God’s people strive to emulate him in this. Of course we do; little children always want to be like their fathers! And by his Holy Spirit indwelling us, such virtuous mimicry is possible.
A key New Testament passage which is used to encourage this forward momentum is the Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. Jesus tells this parable to an expert in the law to show him what love for neighbour looks like, and he finishes with this command: ‘Go and do likewise.’ So, off we go, and we try to do likewise.
But what if we’re reading this story wrong? My argument here is that when Jesus told the religious leader to ‘Go and do likewise’, he did not intend for us to go and do likewise.
This may sound like a convenient heresy, but follow me through on this. If we read the story twice over, we’ll see that it brings life and grace and healing and beauty and everything else good that we have come to expect from our Lord Jesus. And the clues for this reading? They’re there, in the Greek. So let me walk you through the story in Greek. Twice. And then I’ll leave you to decide if you’re going to be a Good Samaritan or not.
1. The first reading: Don’t be a Good Samaritan.
The first thing to notice is that the person interacting with Jesus here is an expert in the Jewish law. He’s a smart guy. In fact, he’s smart (and cocky) enough to get up in front of everyone to engage Jesus in a battle of the wits. Now, this is fun to see, because just a few verses before, Jesus is hanging out with his uneducated disciples, and he’s having a good hearty chuckle with them over how God has chosen to hide spiritual truth and power from the wise and learned, and reveal it instead to duffers like them (10:21). Luke wants us to see that a spectacle is about to unfold, because he starts the story with και ἰδου, which is a fancy literary way of saying, ‘Αnd guess what happened then?’
So, guess what—some expert in the law stands up and puts Jesus to the test. He says to him—and here I’ve tried to capture the Greek—‘Teacher, what is it that, when I have done it, I will inherit eternal life?’ Now, more idiomatic English translations just have him asking ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ This is smoother, but misses the fact that the word do is in aorist tense. Aorist tense indiates an event in a sequence of events. So the expert in the law is asking, essentially, what task he must complete or ‘have done’ (event 1) in order to inherit eternal life (event 2).
Jesus then quizzes him on the Mosaic Law, and of course, he answers correctly; although, if you look carefully, you can see he beefs up one part and minimises the next. The bit about loving the Lord your God he is quite happy with: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength’—in fact, he’s so eager that he bumps the three-part quote from Deuteronomy 6:5 up to four, ending with a flourish that focuses on his intellectual acumen: ‘and with all your mind’.1
The next bit, however, is like a mumbled afterthought: ‘Oh… and your neighbour as yourself.’ He leaves out the ‘You shall love’ part. Let’s get that part over with quickly.
Jesus acknowledges he has answered correctly, but here’s the kicker: Jesus rebukes him on his verb tense. Jesus replies: ‘Do this and you will live.’ But he doesn’t copy the man’s use of aorist-tense-do; Jesus uses present-tense-do. Aorist-do implies one event following another; but present-do refers to an ongoing state-of-affairs, with the action happening at the same time as other stuff. Perhaps it’s not quite as blatant as the following translation, but what Jesus is saying approaches this: ‘Go on doing these things, and you will live.’
And it simply cannot mean, ‘Once you have done these things, you will live.’
The point is, Jesus’s response communicates—subtly, but certainly—that loving God and neighbour is not a task that can be accomplished, but an ongoing way of life. Go around doing this, and you will live.
Now, to the law-man this all sounds rather harder than hoped. He is not excited about the thought of loving God ongoingly. Well, maybe that would be manageable… but neighbour? Gah. Neighbours make too much noise. They nick my figs, and they bicker over boundary stones. Hmph. Well, then—if I absolutely must love them (and worse—love them ongoingly), then at least tell me who they are. If we define neighbour quite closely, I might be able to tick that one off too. Like, I’m pretty good at loving my immediate family… Surely that’s who you mean by neighbour, Teacher?
Such are the possible thoughts of the expert in the law. And so, he asks Jesus to define ‘neighbour’. Fingers crossed, Jesus’s definition will render this command achievable!
At this point, Jesus chooses to tell a story. I love this. He could just say ‘It’s everyone, dude’ but instead, he makes us imagine—and desire—the kind of neighbourliness God has commanded. The story is that of the Good Samaritan, and here it is.
A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.
A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him.
The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
Luke 10:30-35, NIV2011
Jesus wraps up the story with a comprehension question directed to the expert in the law. ‘Which of these three seems to you to have become a neighbour for the man who fell to the robbers?’ Now that word ‘become’ (γεγονεναι, from γινομαι) doesn’t tend to come through in English translations—but it’s important! Jesus is highlighting that the Samaritan wasn’t a natural-born neighbour to the man. But, seeing the need, he became one.
To the expert in the law, this was horrifying. Rather than narrowing the scope of required neighbourliness, Jesus has broadened it as far as you can go. Who is my neighbour? People from other countries. People you bump into on the street. People with terribly difficult needs which will cost you time and money to attend to, as you take them under your wing, looking after them just like you would look after own sorry self in such circumstances (v27).
Faced with this terrifyingly expansive definition of ‘neighbour’, the man answers Jesus (in another mumble, no doubt). And of course, he doesn’t name the good guy as a Samaritan—’cos Samaritans are the worst: half-blood scumbags who distort true religion! Let’s just skip over that unlikely detail. Who became the neighbour, you ask? ‘The one who had mercy on him.’
But wait a second! Hidden in that reply is our old Greek friend: the aorist-tense-do. Yes, it’s back! What the expert actually grunts out is more like, ‘The one who did mercy on him.’ Even in this moment of arms-crossed, pouting defiance, the expert in the law is still reducing the neighbourliness of the Good Samaritan to an event, an act that can be done and dusted, so that the (cough, cough) ‘one who did mercy’ can to move on to his next thing, and so that the expert in the law can likewise move on, do his deeds, and graduate to the inheritance of eternal life.
You might not notice this—you can’t, if you’re reading it in English—but Jesus certainly did notice it.2 You can see it in his reply. He says to the law-man, ‘Go, and you do likewise.’ Do likewise. Guess which tense Jesus used for this command? Aorist? Go, find a poor beat-up old foreigner and show them some loving, and then boom, mission accomplished, entry to eternal life is in the bag?
No. Jesus uses present tense. Go and do likewise, ongoingly. Neighbourliness is not something you do and then move onto the next thing. Loving neighbour, like loving God, is a way of life. It can’t be aorist-done: one event in a sequence of events. It must be our lifelong state of play. It can’t be reduced in scope, and it can’t be reduced in timeframe. Loving God, and loving neighbour, can never be completed.
How do you think the expert in the law felt? Verse 29 says that he had wished to justify himself, to prove that he had done enough to warrant entry into eternal life. Would Jesus’s parable have soothed his anxiety? Does it soothe yours? Have you done enough? Teacher—what must I do, so that, when I’ve done it, I’ll get eternal life? Jesus’s answer is ‘Love God with every component of your entire being, always, and give of yourself to fully meet the need of every human being whom you ever stumble across. Do this, ongoingly, and you shall live.’
It’s way too much. Of course it’s too much! Jesus knows it’s too much. This story is akin to, ‘Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ You want to do the law? Then you have to do it all, perfectly, all the time. Do this, and you will live.
Read this, and despair! You cannot live this way. If you try to enter eternal life by doing, you can never fill up the required doings. They are terrifyingly expansive.
So please—do not be the Good Samaritan. Do not read this story and think, ‘I must go and do likewise.’ Yes, you must do likewise—if you are planning to enter eternal life based on what you have done. The expert in the law had chosen his path—What must I do?—and he gets his chilling answer.
But there is another pathway to the life he sought, and a second reading of the story will show it.
2. The second reading: Be the Other Guy.
There’s hope in this story for the weary, the burdened, and the despairing—for those who fear they haven’t quite loved God with the entirety of their heart, soul, strength, and mind. For those who actually have, sometimes, ignored and rather despised their painfully needy neighbours, and feel they are more than likely to do so again.
Grace runs like an undercurrent to the main flow of this story; and once you’ve felt that undercurrent, it carries you fast and strong into the spiritual rest and assurance that honest people desperately crave. It comes from re-reading the questions that frame the Good Samaritan story, but this time, we read not from the perspective of the expert in the law, but from the perspective of Jesus.
The question that elicited Jesus’s story was, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ From the man’s ‘What-must-I-do?’ perspective, this question defines for him the group whom he must love. But Jesus is not operating from that perspective. When he sees this man, he doesn’t see a man full of the resources of love, compassion, money, and time, such that he can devote himself to the restoration of the world around him. Behind all that swagger, Jesus sees a soul battered up, naked, and bleeding; a man lying half-dead on the road, desperately seeking some kindness, longing for some assurance that life will yet come to him. Jesus sees a man surrounded by religious leaders—priests and Levites—who all turn away from his heart’s cry: ‘What do I have to do to live?’ Jesus sees a man who has found no satisfaction, no healing, no wellspring of life from the religious leaders of his day.
When Jesus hears this man ask, ‘Who is my neighbour?’, he isn’t thinking about who this man must get up and serve. He’s thinking, ‘Who is going to serve this desperate, half-dead man?’
Jesus’s story leads to a clear answer. Rescue will not come from the expected places: not from the priest, not from the Levite. Rescue comes from outside these narrow, death-promoting circles. Rather, rescue comes from the foreigner; from one who is mistrusted and despised in those circles; from one whose bloodline is mixed, whose religion is seen as tainted. Life breaks in from outside.
At the end of the story, Jesus probes the expert with a question of his own, ‘Which of these three seems to you to have become a neighbour to the one who fell to robbers?’ Here is a chance for the expert to identify himself in the half-dead man, to see that the religion he has devoted his life to has left him for dead on the path; here is a chance for him to seek life from some other place—somewhere entirely unexpected. Here is a chance for him to name the Samaritan: to give a sign that he was the tiniest bit open to accepting the need for help from someone he had previously held in suspicion. Here is a chance for him to admit the possibility that his religion was killing him, and then, to look up and see a man before him who is offering to put him on his donkey and carry him off to safety, healing, and perfect provision. Here, under the probing yet compassionate gaze of Jesus, is an invitation to life—the very thing he wished to secure—if only he can overcome his prejudice, and overcome his intense desire to place himself in the story as the Good Samaritan, rather than the half-dead guy.
Who became a neighbour to the half-dead man? The expert’s answer: ‘The one who did the act of mercy on him.’ No mention of the Samaritan. No flicker of recognition. No openness to grace from surprising quarters. Instead, all he milks from the story are further laws, detailing for him what he must aorist-do.
So Jesus says, ‘Go, and do likewise.’ And the half-dead genius turns away, leaving the Good Samaritan standing there, alone with his motley crew of disciples, and his free invitation to life forever with God.
So there it is. My application from this story is do not be a Good Samaritan. Rather, be the Hell-Bound Half-Dead Desperate Bleeding Naked Guy. That way, you have a fighting hope of letting deathly religion walk on by, then looking up, locking eyes with that surprising, unanticipated Good Samaritan, grasping his outstretched hand, and allowing him to carry you off to a healed, whole, bounteous, and beautiful life—all on his dime.
Amen, so may it be!
Postscripts:
This is why we learn Greek.
If you want more evidence that this is the true point of the Good Samaritan story, read on to the very next story Luke tells in 10:38-42. I won’t paste it here. I want you to actually get your Bible out and read it. The proximity of these stories is no coincidence, and it (quite literally) brings the Good Samaritan message home to people who already love and follow Jesus.
In particular, compare 10:27 with 10:42a. It’s just too good.Does this mean we shouldn’t eagerly pursue justice and mercy? Of course not! I just wouldn’t teach that particular lesson from this particular passage. This passage does nudge us towards that eventuality, though, as we see more of the shining example of our dear Lord and as we increasingly long to reflect his glory in the world; but I believe that the point of the text is not that.
Jesus also retells this command in four parts in Mark 12:30.
My husband pointed out that Jesus and the expert in the law were probably speaking in Aramaic, so Jesus can’t really have ‘noticed’ the man’s Greek verb tense. Well, that’s true enough. The thing is, I doubt Luke remembered the exact Aramaic words that were used; but he would have picked up the vibe of the conversation, and then just done his best to put it into good Greek. That’s what historical narrative writers do. I also know that Luke chooses his words with surgical precision; and in the end, those words are what we have to go on. So I will just proceed on the assumption that he is relaying the meaning of the original conversation skillfully, tense-play included.
The gospel writer Luke cannot possibly have remembered the conversation between Jesus and the expert. He was not one of the original 12. Most scholars agree that Luke drew heavily from the Gospel of Mark, and from other companions and first hand eyewitnesses. Chances are good that not everyone remembered the exact Aramaic words that Jesus used, and chances are that the Greek used by Luke is an approximation of the Aramaic since no language is an exact translation of another, tense included. I think that the simplest explanation of the passage as it relates to religion is that the priest and Levite failed to show mercy because they were more concerned with maintaining ritual cleanliness. They observed the external ritual and forms of the religion, without allowing it to touch their hearts. A modern day example might be to fail to render aid to people in a car accident because you don’t want to be late to Mass…
That's a lot of weight to rest on a verbal tense-form. It is tempting, for those who've gone to all the trouble of learning the original language, to feel that the grammar gives us this 'precision' reading of the meaning. But in most language, it doesn't function in quite that way. In this case, the aorist can convey a range of senses, and this idea that it means a one-time only event, complete and not needing repeating - this is not born out by other NT usage. I'm afraid you have fallen into the exegetical 'aorist fallacy'. See D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies.