Sermon text: Luke 10:25–37
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
You sang it in the first hymn. It’s a couple of sentences — or a half a sentence or two — in the opening hymn, from “Salvation unto Us Has Come”: “By grace none dare lay claim to merit. Our works and conduct have no worth.” That’s a lesson that our lawyer friend in the parable this morning needed to hear and needed to learn.
When translating, interpreting, and understanding Jesus’s sayings in parables, context — even the most subtle context — matters. So when you come across one of Jesus’s parables, you have to keep in mind, number one: why He’s telling them, and two: who His primary target is. This is particularly true in one of His most well-known of all the parables, one that conservative, liberal, Christian, and non-Christian alike like to quote in order to urge you to be a better person: and that is the parable of the Good Samaritan.
The reason for the telling of the parable is that an expert in the law — that means he was an expert in oral tradition, the rules and regulations, like how many steps you can take on a Saturday — was well acquainted with the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, the Torah of Moses. But his questions that he puts to Jesus are not born of good intentions. He has come to put Jesus to the test. The lawyer is doing the very thing Jesus said don’t do. When Jesus was in the wilderness, being tempted by the devil, He said, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” In other words, don’t try God’s patience.
It’s worse than that. The lawyer didn’t ask the follow-up question, “Who is my neighbor?” because he really wanted to know, or he wanted to become a good neighbor himself, or he wanted to know just how inclusive this command to have compassion for a neighbor went. You see, he had a different agenda: he went there desiring to justify himself before Jesus, and thus asked the question, “Who is my neighbor?” No innocent question. In fact, there is no innocent question in the Old or New Testament. Quite frankly, most of them are questions that center around the article of justification: How is one saved?
And that second stanza of that opening hymn: why, you confess in singing those words — if you thought about them — that you have in fact no merit or worthiness in you at all to merit any favor from the Lord God, Yahweh Elohim.
Verse 29 and 33, along with the principle that I mentioned a couple of Sundays ago, the analogy of faith, are key to understanding the parable of the Good Samaritan. The analogy of faith says this: that the primary and overarching teaching of the Bible, of the Christian faith, is that a person is righteous — viewed righteous before God — by grace through faith in Christ Jesus alone, for Christ’s sake alone, apart from good works. As such, all Bible passages, stories, sayings, parables are to be interpreted and understood in light of this supreme mandate given to us in the scripture itself. That’s how we’re justified.
Now, what does the word “justified” mean? It means to be pronounced by God to be righteous: that is, holy, that is, without sin completely. It means to be declared innocent of all charges that the devil, the world, and your old sinful nature bring against you. Justified means that we are declared innocent of all charges. We could also say, with the Book of Concord: justification is the forgiveness of sins. The Confessions go on to say, “People are freely justified for Christ’s sake, through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor and that their sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake. By His death, Christ made satisfaction for our sins.” And God counts this faith for righteousness in His sight.
This means that the parable of the Good Samaritan cannot be a parable about good deeds done in order to please God and make Him happy with us. Just as the Ten Commandments were given to show us how far we fall short of the glory of God, to show us how often we actually sin and to what measures we do sin — why? That’s the purpose of the Ten Commandments. And that’s the purpose of a great many of Jesus’s parables. They are the Ten Commandments put into a story.
When Jesus said to the lawyer, “You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live” — remember, the lawyer is putting Jesus to the test in order to justify himself. So Jesus gives him a command that the lawyer has been unable thus far, and will continue to be unable, to keep. A person is not justified — innocent, or forgiven (all synonyms in the biblical text) — by one’s own agency. That’s a fancy way of saying by one’s own powers. You do not have the power to be righteous before God or to fulfill even the slightest of His laws. Instead, justification has more to do with what Jesus does for you and did for you than anything you will ever do for Jesus or your neighbor.
Once we understand that the Bible teaches everywhere that forgiveness of sins and salvation come by way of grace through faith in Christ, then we no longer see parables as self-help instruction stories for the purpose of becoming righteous or making God even happy in a particular moment of time. Salvation by works of the law never — and I mean never — achieves salvation. They in fact add sin to sin. Luther says, and rightly so: Dr. Luther came to see that righteousness is not something he could earn, but rather it’s something that was freely given in Christ. Once Luther came to understand the nature of the free gift, he began to see all the scripture in a different light. In fact, he wrote, “I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning. Whereas before, ‘the justice of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven” — Romans 1:17, Paul writes, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
The lawyer, on the other hand, went the other direction. He stood up to Jesus and put Him to the test: “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” The emphasis on what shall I do to inherit? The lawyer, the expert in the law, like most everyone else, sought an inheritance that comes through the law. But inheritance is not a matter of what is owed. It’s a matter of what’s being given. You don’t inherit because someone owes you something. You inherit because you are an heir to the inheritance.
In the Old Testament, God often reminded the Israelites that they would retain their inheritance of the land as long as their behavior complied with His law: Exodus 20:12 and Deuteronomy 5:33. Behavior was always and only understood as an expression of faithfulness: one behaved because one was faithful. Obedience to the covenant was always assumed to have faith as its underlying basis, as its foundation. And the Lord often equally criticized His people for outward obedience that was devoid of faith. That is simply going through the rules and regulations, going through the motions.
Inheriting eternal life, then, was never based on the works, as Paul says in Galatians 3:18: “For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.” The old sinful nature likes to live apart from the Lord, tries again and again, without the Lord’s help, by works of the law. In so doing, the one who seeks to justify him- or herself by works of the law, by an outward compliance and obedience, adds sin to sin. Again, Luther — that’s the point. Romans 3:20: “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”
Why give commandments you cannot obey? So that you’ll know that you’re not obeying the commandments of God. Simple. That’s how the word of God works. The law always condemns. The gospel always frees.
“Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus replies, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” Jesus now turns the tables. He questions the expert. The answer of which, by the way, to the question the expert knew: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” It’s a no-brainer for the teacher of the law. Jesus then says to him, “You have answered correctly” — Jesus points out he’s got the right answer — and then He says, “Do this, and you will live.”
So if a person, be it lawyer or layman, wants to inherit eternal life, all he has to do — or she has to do — is to love the Lord God with all of his or her heart, with all of his strength, with all the soul, with all of mind, perfectly, every moment of every day. It’s that simple. Do that and you live. But who can do that? Matthew 5:48 — again to scribes and Pharisees and lawyer types: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” That’s what we’re called to be. But we can’t. We don’t have the agency, the power to do that.
And this particular lawyer thought he was doing pretty well when it came to his relationship to his neighbor and to the law. But wishing to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” And the parable of the Good Samaritan is His answer. Jesus constructs a parable where the main character is a Samaritan: a man who belonged to a race that was despised by Jews almost universally. A Samaritan — a scoundrel — is the hero of the story.
Without the analogy of faith, the Samaritan story would simply be a model of holy living: love and compassion to which we are called to be. Love, compassion, righteousness, and holy living are supposed to be the qualities of religious people, Christians — especially of those who hold offices, like the priest and the Levite in the parable story who passed by on the other side of the road. They didn’t want to get their hands dirty with such a bloody mess. It would make them themselves unclean. Then they’d have to perform the rituals and the tasks to become clean again.
In asking the question, “Who is my neighbor?” the lawyer was not looking — he was looking for a loophole. But Jesus closed the loophole. A person’s neighbor is the one who is despised the most and in need. That’s our neighbor. Jesus constructs a parable that teaches that there’s no place for self-righteousness. We fall short of the glory of God. Jesus commands the lawyer — and us — saying, “You go, and do likewise.” And we, like the lawyer, fail at that time and time again.
To sinners, Christ says, “You’re guilty.” And to sinners who parade their works before Him, He says, “Do this and you’ll live. Go and do likewise.” As Luther and the Heidelberg Disputation observed, the law says, “Do this,” and it is never done. The law doesn’t give life. Galatians 3:21 and 22: “For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin” — that is, the law has imprisoned all of us under sin — “so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.” And then again, in a shorter way, in Galatians 2:21: “If righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.”
What help did the priest and the Levite provide the man who was bloody and half beaten to death? None. So the law provides the same kind of help to us: none. Yes, the law says “do this,” and it is never done. Luther went on to say: but faith says, “Believe in Christ,” and everything is already done.
Against your sins stands the blood and the cross of Jesus Christ. Against your works are His works, credited to your account, received by faith alone. There’s no alternative. It is either one way by the law, or the other way by the gospel. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.
The Lord’s word and gifts to dying sinners like us are completely free. You have them and you can never earn them. You don’t deserve it. You may deserve a hamburger, but you don’t deserve this: the eternal mercy of your heavenly Father.
On the one hand, the parables show us what we are supposed to be, but we fail to be. On the other hand, they are stories about the one who in fact keeps the law, who loves the Lord God with all of His heart, with all of His strength, with all of His mind, with all of His soul: Jesus. Just as the Good Samaritan poured oil and wine to cleanse and disinfect the wounds of the beaten man, Jesus cleanses us with Holy Baptism and disinfects us from sin. He pronounces your sins forgiven in absolution. He places you in the inn, which is the church, and has the innkeeper, the pastor, minister to you with His words and His sacraments.
So also with the Lord’s Supper: you can trust Jesus’s judgment about you — that is, you’re sinful and don’t deserve His body and blood. But you can also judge His word: that it is indeed His body and blood, given and shed for you for, quote, the remission of your sins. And so, doing the Good Samaritan, Jesus forgives you — that is, justifies you — from all your sins. So, welcome to the inn. Enjoy the healing. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.