MPV Commentary

25. A lawyer tested Jesus with a question to see how he would respond.

26. The lawyer asked, "What is written in the law?" This was an appropriate question for a doctor of the law, and it put him in turn to the test.

27. Jesus replied by quoting the answer He had given another lawyer (see Mark 12:29-33).

28. The lawyer said, "Right; this do, and life is thine." Jesus emphasized the word "this" to indicate where the real difficulty for a sinner lay, thus nonplussing the questioner himself.

29. The lawyer was willing to get out of the difficulty by throwing on Jesus the definition of "neighbor," which the Jews interpreted very narrowly and technically, excluding Samaritans and Gentiles.

30. A certain man, a Jew, was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, a distance of nineteen miles northeast through a deep and fertile hollow.

31-32. Thieves attacked him, and he fell among them. A priest came down the road, saw him, looked at him, and passed by. A Levite also came, saw him, and passed by.

33. The victim was a Samaritan, one excommunicated by the Jews, considered a heretic and devil (John 8:48).

34-35. The Samaritan had compassion on the man, bandaged his wounds with oil and wine, put him on his own beast, and took him to an inn, paying two pence for his care.

36. Which of these three men was a neighbor? This question turned the focus from "whom am I to love as my neighbor?" to "who is the man that shows that love?"

37. Jesus said, "Go and do likewise." O exquisite teaching! What new fountains of charity has this opened up in the human spirit! What noble Christian institutions have not such words founded? This parable magnifies the law of love and shows who fulfills it and who does not. The priests and Levites had not strengthened the diseased, nor bound up the broken (Ezekiel 34:4), while Jesus bound up the brokenhearted (Isaiah 61:1) and poured into all wounded spirits the balm of sweetest consolation.