Deeper Commentary
10:1 Now after these things the Lord appointed seventy others, and
sent them two by two ahead of him into every city and place, where he was
about to go- According to some texts, Luke records that the Lord sent out 72 preachers. The Jews understood that there were 72 nations in the world, based on the LXX of Gen. 10. Surely Luke’s point is that they went only to the Jews, thus highlighting the gap between the disciples’ understanding at the time, and the Lord’s further reaching intention of a mission to the Gentiles.
The Lord sent out the 70 “before his face into every city to where he himself would come”. They were heralds of His presence; and He goes on in this context to tell them that they were “as lambs among wolves”- i.e. they were like Him, the lamb- and that therefore “he that rejecteth you rejecteth me” (Lk. 10:1,3,16 RV). Yet significantly, having told the 70 to proclaim His face to the cities where He would come, we find the comment: “Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few [i.e. only 70]: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest. Go your ways…” (:2). Could this not mean that He would have travelled more extensively around Israel in His ministry than He did, but He was limited in the places He witnessed in by whether there were enough heralds to go there in advance and prepare the way? The dearth of workers meant that places He otherwise would have visited, He didn’t- for it seems that He had a policy of only Himself working in areas where His men had broken the ground. And is there not some worrying relevance of all this for our work in this day, in this hard land…?
10:2 And he said to them: The harvest indeed is plenteous, but the
labourers are few. Therefore pray to the Lord of the harvest, that He send
out labourers into His harvest- The Lord had to comment that the harvest was great, but the labourers [i.e. the disciples] were few or weak [Gk.]. And yet He delegated so much to them- authority, the power of miracles, the Gospel itself (Lk. 9:1-6), despite their weakness, and despite the fact much harvest was spoilt or not harvested by their weakness. They were His representatives to the world (:16)- and yet they still didn’t know how to pray (Lk. 11:1). We marvel at the way the Lord used them, and yet we end up realizing with a similar amazement that the same Lord has entrusted His Gospel to us, with all our weakness and dysfunction.
The Hebrew writer asked his brethren to pray for him “that I may be restored to you the sooner” (Heb. 13:19). The amount of prayer seems significant. The Lord Himself seems to have asked the disciples to add their prayers to His in asking the Father to send forth more labourers into the over-ripe, unharvested fields (Lk. 10:2), which, by implication, He alone couldn’t satisfactorily gather.
Volume of prayer is significant, although this is not to say that 'just'
one prayer of faith is ineffective.
10:3 Go your way. See, I send you forth as lambs in the midst of
wolves- As He was the lamb of God sent forth for the salvation of men, so those in Him are sent forth with that same Gospel, as lambs.
This was the language of the Jewish teachers about the role of Israel in
the world; but the Lord is implying that His preachers are the new Israel,
and the Jewish world is as the unbelieving Gentile world. Judah is spoken
of as “One sheep attempting to survive among seventy wolves” (Esther
Rabbah 10:11).
10:4 Carry no purse, no wallet, no shoes; and greet no one on the way- As we read the preaching of Jesus, one cannot but be impressed by the gravity of His message. He never spoke of His message, of His person and His Kingdom, in a take-it-or-leave-it way, as thought it didn’t matter how His hearers responded. And we ought to preach as He preached. He realized that how His hearers responded would determine the structure of their whole lives and what their eternal destiny would be. He urged His preachers to exchange no greetings on the road as they pressed on to take His Gospel to others. This would have been seen as most unusual and even offensive in first century Palestine. The people would have had their attention arrested by this- these preachers of the man from Nazareth had an urgency about them, a sense of utmost priority in the work they were about. They were to be known as men in an urgent hurry. They were to go on their preaching mission without pausing to greet others, such was their haste (cp. 2 Kings 4:29). The Greek word translated ‘greet’ also carries the idea of joining together with others. People rarely travelled alone unless they were in great haste, but rather moved in caravans. But for the Lord’s messengers, there was to be no loss of time. Every minute was to be precious. In a world full of time wasting distractions, information we don’t need to know… this is all so necessary. No wonder that when those men finally came to themselves, realized their calling, and hurled themselves in joy at this world after the Lord’s ascension… they preached repentance, immediate conversion and quick baptism, right up front.
To not carry spare shoes is an allusion to God's miraculous provision
for Israel in the wilderness. The preaching of the Gospel is a fundamental
part of our wilderness journey. We are on a mission, a journey; and part
of that mission is sharing the message with others.
10:5 And into whatever house you shall enter, first say: Peace to this
house- The Lord raised everything to an altogether higher level. It
was, for example, customary for Semitic peoples to greet each other [as it
is today] with the words 'shalom!' or 'salaam!' ['peace']. But there was
little real meaning in those words. The Lord said that His peace, His
'shalom', He gives to us, not as the [Jewish] world gave it. Likewise He
told His disciples to say "Peace be to this house" when they entered a home. Yet this was the standard greeting. What He surely meant was that they were to say it with meaning;
and wish the household peace with God through His Son.
10:6 And if a son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it,
but if not, it shall return to you- "Peace" meant peace with God; it
had been John the Baptist's mission to guide the feet of Israel into the
way of peace (Lk. 1:79). Very many had responded to John's message, but
they failed to fully accept Jesus as Christ when it actually came to it.
The mission of the apostles was likely to those who had responded to John;
that would have been the logical program in any case, to go visit and
develop interest amongst those who were already known to have responded to
John the Baptist.
10:7 And in that same house remain, eating and drinking such
things as they give. For the labourer is worthy of his wages. Do not go
from house to house- See on Lk. 9:4.
Preaching is all about relationships. The Lord commanded to not go from house to house but rather build up a base in one home. I take this to mean that He saw the importance of relationship building in preaching, rather than a surface level contact with many people of the type achieved in more public addresses.
He envisioned these houses as becoming the focus of house churches, which
were to be the building blocks of the wider body of Christ.
Preaching is essentially about building relationships, not platform evangelism. The Lord taught that His preachers were not to go "from house to house" but rather to remain within an acceptive household and make that their base. In modern terms, I think we could interpret this as meaning: 'Focus on building relationships; don't build up a shallow relationship with a lot of people, but rather try to get deep with one household'.
The reference to eating and drinking what was offered, as noted on :8,
would seem more likely to mean 'Accept their offer of table fellowship on
whatever basis they offer it'.
The saying that "the labourer is worthy of his hire" is quoted as
"Scripture" in 1 Tim. 5:18, on the same level of acceptance as the Old
Testament. This indicates that the gospel records were in circulation in
written form from an early stage after the events, and were accepted by
the church as Divinely inspired. Higher criticism is simply wrong to claim
that the gospels were written long after the events by men with dim
memories.
As in all ages, it was common in the first century for religious
teachers to expect payment. But here the Lord redefines that 'payment' as
being no more than subsistence level.
10:8 And into whatever city you enter, if they welcome you, eat such
things as are set before you- See on 1 Cor. 9:22; 10:27. I don't
think the Lord simply means 'Don't be fussy about your food, be grateful
for what's on your plate'. To eat together had religious dimensions. You
ate together as a sign of fellowship. So I take the Lord to be meaning
that they should accept whatever fellowship was offered to them, and work
from within that setting to convince men of the truth of Christ.
10:9 Heal the sick that are therein, and say to them: The kingdom
of God comes near to you- This again is the language of John's
ministry; I suggested on :6 that the households being visited were those
who had originally responded positively to John's message. The healing of
the sick was to serve as an acted parable and exemplification of the
gospel of the Kingdom.
10:10 But into whatever city you shall enter and they do not welcome
you, go out into the streets of it and say- The language is very
similar to that in 14:21, where Israelite rejection of the Gospel was to
lead the preachers to go out into the streets of such cities- and drag in
absolutely anyone they could find living on those streets.
10:11 Even the dust from your city, that clings to our feet, we wipe
off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God comes
near- Whether or not Israel accepted the Gospel, the Kingdom of God
as it was in Messiah Jesus would still come. If the coming of the King and
His Kingdom was not dependent upon Israel's acceptance of it, the
implication had to be that the Gentiles would accept it, and therefore it
would come.
The disciples were to shake off the dust of their feet against
unbelieving Israel (Mt. 10:14; Mk. 6:11; Acts 8:51), in allusion to the
Rabbinic teaching that the dust of Gentile lands caused defilement. Israel
who rejected the Gospel were thus to be treated as Gentiles. Time and
again the prophets describe the judgments to fall upon Israel in the same
terms as they speak of the condemnations of the surrounding nations (e.g.
Jer. 50:3,13). The message was clear: rejected Israel would be treated as
Gentiles. Thus Joel describes the locust invasion of Israel in the
language of locusts covering the face of Egypt (Joel 2:2,20 = Ex.
10:14,15,19). Israel’s hardness of heart is explicitly likened to that of
Pharaoh (1 Sam. 6:6); as the Egyptians were drowned, so would Israel be
(Am. 9:5-8). As Pharaoh’s heart was plagued (Ex. 9:14), so was Israel’s (1
Kings 8:38); as Egypt was a reed, so were Israel (1 Kings 14:15). As
Pharaoh-hophra was given into the hand of his enemies, so would Israel be
(Jer. 44:30). Even if we are separated from this world externally, we can
still act in a worldly way, and share the world's condemnation by being
finally "condemned with the world" (1 Cor. 11:32).
10:12 I say to you, it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom,
than for that city- Jer. 20:16 has a graphic description of the people of Sodom screaming out in anguish, both mental and physical, as the judgments of God fell upon them: "The cry in the morning (when the judgments began, Gen. 19:23,24), and the shouting at noontide". This is in reality a picture of the rejected in the last days. And
yet those who heard the Christian Gospel and rejected it will be
resurrected to a worse judgment than Sodom. The degrees of judgment ("more
tolerable...") reflect degrees of responsibility to God according to
varying levels of knowledge. The Sodomites had seen Lot's way of life and
presumably been told by him that their behaviour was wrong. Their refusal
to repent means that "in that day" of the Lord's coming they will be
resurrected and punished; but those who hear the Christian gospel and
reject it shall have a far greater punishment than Sodom had or will have.
10:13 Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty
works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which were done in you, they would
have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes- See on Lk. 19:42.
The pain that arises from knowing what might have been is really the
essence of grief and tragedy; and the Father and Son who know all possible
futures must therefore feel so pained. The connection between grief and
knowing what might have been is so poignantly brought out by the grief of
Martha and Mary over their brother's death- they knew that if Jesus had
have been there, Lazarus wouldn't have died (Jn. 11:21,32). Jesus as God's
Son had something of this ability to see what might have been- hence He
could state with absolute confidence that if Gentile Tyre and Sidon had
witnessed His miracles, they would've repented in sackcloth and ashes. He
lamented with pain over the fact that things would have been so much
better for Jerusalem if she had only known / apprehended the things which
would bring her ultimate peace (Lk. 19:42). The Lord Jesus was deeply
pained at what might have been, if the things of God's Kingdom had not
remained willfully hidden from Israel's perception. His pain was because
of realizing what might have been. In this He was directly reflecting the
mind of His Father, who had previously lamented over Jerusalem: "O that
you had hearkened to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like
a river" (Is. 48:18).
10:14 But it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the
judgment, than for you- The Lord taught His preachers that if people rejected their message, in that day when they did this, “it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city”. But He repeats Himself later on: “It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the judgment than for you” (Lk. 10:12,14 RV). “In that day” clearly refers to the day on which the preacher’s message was rejected. But that day was effectively their judgment day.
10:15 And you, Capernaum, shall you be exalted to heaven? You shall be
brought down to Hades- Some will be exalted and others brought down
at the day of judgment ("come up higher... go down lower", 14:10).
Capernaum was expecting commendation an exaltation at judgment day; but
that was to be the very reason why she would be cast down to destruction.
And in essence, that judgment process is ongoing whenever people hear the
Gospel (:18).
As He sent the 70 away on their preaching mission, the Lord commented that Capernaum was exalted to heaven, and yet at the judgment would be thrust down to hell; and yet when they returned, He said that He had seen Satan falling from heaven to earth (Lk. 10:15,18), in anticipation of how it will at judgment day (Rev. 12). The connection is not co-incidental. He was countering the disciples' joy at the superficial response by saying that He has seen it another way; He had seen the Satan of the Jewish system already condemned, hurled from heaven to earth, by their rejection of the Gospel preached.
10:16 He that hears you hears me; and he that rejects you rejects
me, and he that rejects me rejects Him that sent me- Here we see the
Lord Jesus personally equated with His word in the Gospel, preached by His
followers. Attitudes to that word are attitudes to Him. The rejection of
some at the last day will be because they themselves rejected the Lord.
They made the answer in their attitude to His word; in that sense those
who "reject" (s.w.) the Lord are judged by His word at the last day (Jn.
12:48). Attention to His word is therefore critical. Whoever rejects us as
we preach therefore rejects God (1 Thess. 4:8 s.w.).
10:17 And the seventy returned with joy, saying: Lord, even the
demons are subject to us in your name!- As noted on :9, the miracles
were to back up the preaching of the word of the Kingdom; but the
disciples failed to properly perceive this. They considered that the
miracles they had done were of themselves the most impressive thing;
whereas the Lord always gave priority to the preaching of the word over
miracles, and Himself used an economy of miracle to get His message over.
He therefore urges them to rejoice more in the fact that they personally
will be saved in the Kingdom (:20).
10:18 And he said to them: I saw Satan fall like lightning from
heaven- No sinful being can be tolerated in God’s presence in Heaven
(Mt. 6:10; Ps. 5: 4,5; Hab. 1:13). The Lord is using parabolic language - “as lightning fall from
heaven” (AV)- so this “Satan” or adversary fell. Lightning comes from heaven in the sense of
the sky, not as in the dwelling place of God. It doesn't literally fall from
heaven to earth. Any attempt to link this with the prince of this world being cast out
is difficult, because that happened at Christ’s death (note “now” in
Jn. 12:31), whereas this falling of Satan occurred during His ministry. According to popular thought, “Satan” is supposed to have fallen from
heaven in Eden, so that he was on the earth at Job’s time, yet Jesus is
described as seeing this occurring at His time. Weymouth adds a marginal
note on Lk. 10:18 in his translation of the Bible: "The thought is not that
of Milton's rebel angel banished for ever from the abide of bliss". If an evil being and his host of followers fell down on to earth
literally, why did only Jesus see it and not the disciples? Why is there no
other record of this strange event? Falling from heaven is figurative of losing authority, e.g. it is used
about the demise of the king of Babylon in Isaiah 14. See also Lamentations
2:1 and Jeremiah 51:53.
The apostles had just cured many people and were blinded
by their great physical power over disease (:20). The real cause of
illness and disease is our sin prone nature. That sin is the ultimate reason
for illness is stressed in Mt. 9:12 and 12:11, where a sheep gone
astray, a clear symbol of a sinner (Mt. 18:13), is equated with a sick man.
The principle is summed up in Mt. 9:5 “Which is easier, to say, Your
sins be forgiven you; or to say, Arise and walk?”. Thus Jesus said, “I
beheld Satan fall”, i.e. “In My view the great thing was that the power of
sin was being overcome”. There must be a connection with the fall of
Capernaum in :15. Is Jesus implying that
“Satan”, the ways of the flesh, which were so well exemplified in Capernaum,
were being overcome? Notice that Capernaum was “exalted” in Jewish eyes.
“Satan” often referring to the Jewish system, maybe
Jesus is equating Capernaum with “Satan” and commenting how the sin which
was at the basis of this system was being toppled by the preaching of the
Gospel.
10:19 See, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and
scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall in any
way hurt you- See on Mk. 16:18; Jn. 8:44. This is a promise repeated
in the context of preaching the Gospel in Mk. 16:18. The gift of the
Spirit continues to assist Christian preachers, but only in the first
century was it manifested in such miraculous forms; and even then, only in
specific times and places during the course of missionary work. Paul taking
up a viper in his hand and being unharmed on Malta would be an example.
10:20 Nevertheless, rejoice not that the spirits are subject to you,
but rejoice that your names are written in heaven- This implies that their elation at being able to pull off miracles was wrong, or at best immature; rather should they have rejoiced that their names were written in Heaven;
that the good news of future salvation in the Kingdom they preached was so
personally true.
10:21 In that same hour he rejoiced in spirit, and said- This was
the kind of rejoicing in spirit (cp. rejoicing about subject spirits in
:20) which they should have had- a glorying in the Father's way of working
with the simple and marginalized.
I thank You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You hid these
things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to babes. Yes,
Father. For so it was pleasing in Your sight- See on Lk. 1:47; 9:45.
This is the standard Jewish thanksgiving before food: "I thank You, O
Father, Lord of heaven and earth...". We expect to hear thanks for food,
but instead find praise for how the Father works with people by revealing
truths to babes rather than the worldly wise. As was the case with the
Samaritan woman, the Lord found the Father's working with other people His
food and drink which sustained Him. And it can be so with us too. This is
one reason for meeting together and sharing testimony of the Lord's work
in our lives.
The disciples didn't have totally correct understanding; they believed
in ghosts and demons, and were too maxed out on miracles (:20). But still
the Lord rejoices in what has been revealed to them, the babes; and those
same truths had not been revealed to the Jewish leadership who claimed to
be wise and understanding. We note that truths are "revealed" by God in a
sovereign way. It's not simply that whoever reads the Bible understands.
There is a higher hand at work than that; the way of God's grace,
revealing truths to the "babes".
10:22 All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one
knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is, save the
Son, and he to whomever the Son wills to reveal Him- Again as noted
on :21 there is a distinct revelation of the Father to people through the
Son. This can mean simply that in the Son, we see the Father reflected.
And yet the language goes somewhat further than that, in saying that the
Son chooses some to whom to reveal the Father. This is by the work of the
Spirit of Christ, which refers both to the spirit of the character and
personality of the Lord Jesus and also to how that spirit transforms human
hearts, under His direction. "Knows" is in a continuous sense, implying
that the Father and Son grow in knowing each other; the knowledge in view
is the Hebraic sense of knowledge as relationship, rather than increments
of factual knowledge. The "all things" delivered to the Son may be the
power of salvation for all men.
Nobody, the disciples included, to whom the Father had ‘revealed’
repentance, fully knew the Son nor the Father. There is a parallel to be
observed here between ‘knowing the Father’ and repenting; for the context
in Mt. 11 speaks of how the majority had not repented despite the Lord’s
miracles. The little ones, the babes, the disciples, had repented- but
this had been ‘revealed’ to them by the Father (Mt. 11:25). Now, the Lord
speaks of how the Son ‘reveals’ the Father. The life of repentance is the
life of knowing the Father. To know God is to know our sinfulness and
repent. And this is the “rest” from sin which the Lord speaks of in Mt.
11:28.
Whether or not Joseph died or left Mary by the time Jesus hit adolescence, the fact was that Joseph wasn’t His real father. He was effectively fatherless in the earthly sense. As such, this would have set Him up in certain psychological matrices which had their effect on His personality. He could speak of His Heavenly Father in the shockingly unprecedented form of ‘abba’, daddy. He grew so close to His Heavenly Father because of the lack of an earthly one, and the inevitable stresses which there would have been between Him and Joseph. A strong, fatherly-type figure is a recurrent feature of the Lord’s parables; clearly He was very focused upon His Heavenly Father. He could say with passionate truth: “No one knows a son except a father, and no one knows a father except a son” (Mt. 11:27; Lk. 10:22
Gk.).
The idea is not that the Lord Jesus had a list of humanity and chose a few from that list. He has earlier spoken of the freedom of choice to ‘receive’ (Mt.
11:14) God’s message, and He was urging all men to do so. Although all men are potentially delivered to Him, the Father is revealing Himself to only some of them. The Father is revealed in the Son, as John’s Gospel makes clear. It’s not that some people are chosen by the Son to have this revelation; rather is it a statement of fact, or method- the knowledge of the Father is through the Son revealing Him. And this is why He goes straight on in
Mt. 11:28 to urge people to come to Him. The ideas of coming to Him and ‘whomsoever’, anyone, are very much the language of John’s Gospel and the Revelation, which concludes with an appeal to ‘whosoever will’ to ‘come’ to Christ and salvation.
The revealing is by the Spirit
(1 Cor. 2:10; Eph. 3:5). It was not flesh and blood that revealed the Lord
to Peter (Mt. 16:17). As noted on 1 Pet. 1:21, relationship with God is
predicated upon relationship with the Son; He is the only way to the
Father. Academic Bible study, consideration of the apparent evidence of
apologetics, will not reveal God as Father to men. It is the Son who
reveals Him. If we take the jump of faith in accepting Him, only then will
He reveal the Father to us.
10:23 And turning to the disciples, he said privately: Blessed are
the eyes which see the things you see- See on Lk. 7:9. As noted on
:22, to have the Son reveal the Father to us is the work of the Spirit,
and is of grace. The idea of predestined calling is discussed by Paul in
Romans in the context of explaining how the Spirit works. The fact we have
been called to know Him is grace indeed.
10:24 For I say to you, that many prophets and kings desired to see
the things which you see, and did not see them, and to hear the things
which you hear, and did not hear them- The blessedness of :23 also
relates to where we stand in human history. There was a desire amongst the
Old Testament heroes to know more about the Lord Jesus; but then was not
the time for the full manifestation now given. We who have the completed
New Testament, and easy access to it, are perhaps even more blessed. This
insight into 'blessedness' is helpful when in moments of depression we may
consider that we lack blessing, and all we have are vague, dimly revealed
ideas that somehow 'God loves me'. We can indeed count our blessings and
name them one by one. And where we stand in history is one of them,
according to the Lord's reasoning here. It may well be that we are blessed
to be the generation which see the Lord's return- the only generation to
never taste of death.
10:25 And a certain lawyer stood up, and to test him, asked: Teacher,
what shall I do to inherit eternal life?- When the lawyer asked Jesus what he must “do to inherit eternal life”, the Lord could have lectured him on salvation being by grace rather than works. But He doesn’t; instead He tells the parable of the good Samaritan, running with the lawyer’s misunderstanding for a while [as His gracious manner was]. The essential basis of inheriting eternal life is of course faith, but the Lord’s answer to the question shows that we can safely conclude: ‘Faith must be shown in our care for the salvation of this world if it is real faith’.
10:26 And he said to him: What is written in the law? How do you
read it?- The Lord was not searching for a right or wrong answer,
ready to respond to the effect that 'Ah well, you just misunderstood a
bit, now let Me correct you'. His questions are nearly always rhetorical.
Whatever the answer, the Lord would work with it. We note the Lord
doesn't ask 'what' he read in the law, but "how"- how did he interpret it?
10:27 And he answered saying: 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 neighbour as yourself- He quotes Dt. 6:5
along with Lev. 19:18. Dt. 6:5 along with Dt. 11:13 was repeated by the
Jews morning and evening, and was the text written in the phylacteries.
But this zealous lawyer added Lev. 19:18 about loving neighbours.
The Greek can mean "Love your neighbour as if he was yourself"; this
removes the vexed question of self love. The answer is in the parable of
the Samaritan and the challenge to go and do likewise. The parable
explains this "as if he was yourself". The Lord Jesus is the good
Samaritan. He looks at us in our suffering for sin as if He was us and we
are Him. He 'comes' to us in total identity with us as our representative;
and we respond by baptism and life lived in Him, likewise identified with
Him. So it's not a question [as the lawyer supposed] of who is worthy of
our mercy. Rather, the Lord reasons, is it a question of our realizing our
desperation, our salvation by utter grace, and acting to others as we
would act toward ourselves- in grace and immediate understanding, whoever
they are. There are therefore no categories of worthiness, no distinctions
about who is worthy. Rather we act to others as we would toward ourselves.
The lawyer's intention was to lead the Lord to the question of "Who is my
neighbour?", knowing that the standard interpretation of Lev. 19:18 was
that your neighbour was "any of your people", and not Gentiles nor
Samaritans: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of
your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself”.
10:28 And he said to him: You have answered correctly- We have eternal life insofar as the life that Jesus lived and lives, He will eternally live. If we live that life, we are living the essence of the life which we will eternally live. The lawyer asked the Lord what good thing he must do “to inherit eternal life”. The Lord replied that he must properly love his God and his neighbour: “this do, and
you shall live”. By living a life based on this, he would be living the life which he would eternally live (Lk. 10:25,28). And thus the Lord responds to the query about inheriting eternal life by changing the emphasis of the question- He replies by speaking of the life we should be living now.
That God is one is not just a numerical description. If there is only one God, He therefore demands our all. Because He is the One God, He demands all our worship; and because He is One, He therefore treats all His people the same, regardless, e.g., of their nationality (Rom. 3:30). All true worshippers of the one God, whether Jew or Gentile, are united in that the one God offers salvation to them on the same basis. The fact there is only one Lord Jesus implies the same for Him (Rom. 10:12). Paul saw these implications in the doctrine of the unity of God. But that doctrine needs reflecting on before we come to grasp these conclusions. Christ taught that the command that God was one and therefore we must love God included the second command: to love our neighbour as ourselves. The first and second commands were in fact one command; they were inseparably part of the first commandment (Mk. 12:29-31). This is why the 'two' commandments, to love God and neighbour, are spoken of in the singular in Lk. 10:27,28: "this do…". If God is one, then our brother bears the one Name of God, and so to love God is to love our brother (cp. 1 Jn. 4:21). And because there is only one God, this demands all our spiritual energy. There is only one, the one God, who seeks glory for men and judges them (Jn. 8:50)- therefore the unity of God should mean we do not seek glory of men, neither do we judge our brother.
This do and
you shall live- The context is that the lawyer asked the Lord Jesus what he should do "to inherit eternal life" (Lk.10:25), and in a sense we ask the same question. But we mustn't be quite like him, in thinking that if we physically do certain things, then we will at some future point be given eternal life as a kind of payment; and nor should we think that the eternity of the Kingdom life is the most important aspect of our salvation.
In Lk. 18:18 "a certain ruler asked him" the very same question: What he should do to inherit eternal life.
The Lord's response was that if he kept the commandments in the right spirit, he would "have treasure in heaven". When the man found this impossible,
the Lord commented how hard it was for the rich to "enter into the kingdom of God" (Lk. 18:24). So there is a parallel here between inheriting eternal life, having treasure in heaven, and entering the Kingdom. We are told that now is the time, in this life, for us to lay up treasure in Heaven (Mt. 6:20). So here and now it is possible to have treasure in Heaven, to have eternal life in prospect. In a sense we now have eternal life (1 Jn. 5:11,13), in a sense we are now in the process of entering into the Kingdom. We have been translated, here and now, into the Kingdom (Col. 1:13). The very same Greek construction used in Col. 1:13 occurs in Acts 14:22, where Paul says that through much tribulation we enter into the Kingdom; in other words, entry into the Kingdom is an ongoing process, and we experience this on account of the effect of our trials. Entering the Kingdom is used to describe our response to the Gospel in Lk.
16:16: "The kingdom of God is preached, and every man presses into it". Unless we receive the Gospel of the kingdom as a child, we will not enter it; i.e. respond fully to that Gospel (Lk. 18:17).
In prospect we have been saved, we are now in Christ, and therefore the great salvation which he was given is therefore counted to all those who are in him. We shy away from the positive promises that we really can start to enter the Kingdom now, that we do now have eternal life in prospect. But this shying away is surely an indication of our lack of faith; our desperate unwillingness to believe so fully and deeply that our salvation really is so wonderfully assured. That eternal life dwells in us insofar as the eternal spirit of Christ is in us. And so as we face up to the sureness of these promises, we earnestly want to know what we must do to inherit this eternal life, to have this great treasure of assured salvation laid up for us now in Heaven. Of course we are saved by our faith, not our works (Tit.
3:5-7); yet our faith, if it is real, will inevitably be shown in
practical ways.
10:29 But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus: And who
is my neighbour?- The Lord's open attitude towards Gentiles had
provoked anger amongst the lawyers; hence this scribe had incorporated
Lev. 19:18 into his standard quotation as to Jewish duty. He suspected the
Lord considered the Gentile world as His neighbours. The man's plan for
self justification was going to be demolished by the Lord turning it all
around to show that justification is by grace, not works- the very ideas
which Paul states more specifically and theologically in Romans.
The Lord never answers a question directly in the terms of the question.
He always turns it around to higher principle. His parabolic answer, on
reflection, shows that we are the desperately injured man. Who exactly is
my neighbour... becomes an irrelevant question. The issue is that we are
the injured man dependent upon the Lord's grace. And to accept that, we
must for all time ditch our presuppositions, our racism, our intuitive
dislike of "Samaritans". Whoever they may be to us in our worldviews. The
Lord indeed says "Go and do likewise". We can only be the Samaritan if we
have first known what it is to be the desperate man. The lawyer
sought to justify himself. Buy we know from Paul that no man can do this.
Justification is by grace alone. "No man shall be justified by works", he
writes. But the lawyer asked what works he should "do" in order to
inherit, by right, eternal life; and thus justify himself by such works.
The lawyer's question was a trick. It was based on the
contemporary argument over the meaning of the command to love your
neighbour as yourself. They called it the lere’aka kamoka and
liked to translate it as “your neighbour who is like yourself”,
as one similar to one’s Israelite self. The Lord is going to turn the
question around, to show that it is He and not the lawyer or any Israelite
who is the Samaritan, and who shows grace to His neighbour who was like
Himself. This is typical of how the Lord dealt with questions- about
divorce, giving tribute to Caesar, defining the most important of the 10
commandments etc. The lawyer along with all men lies naked and half dead
on the road. The Lord Jesus was the "neighbour who is like yourself". In
this again we have a window onto the Lord's own understanding of His
humanity. He used it to save others, and "Go and do likewise" is an
invitation to do the same. The picture of the wounded man is exactly that
of the Lord on the cross- naked, bleeding, dead. He was a neighbour
through His being "like yourself", like that man. And that fits in with
the translation "Love your neighbour as if he were yourself". The Lord saw
us in Himself, as the Samaritan saw himself in the injured man.
If the Lord had said 'Only Jews are neighbours' then He would
have been coming down on the side of the hard line religious Jews. If He
replied to the intent that Gentiles and even Samaritans are your
neighbours, they would have criticized Him for failing to see the
significance of the boundaries around God's people. As in answering other
questions, the Lord doesn't come down on one side or the other, but turns
the question around. If we interpret the parable as meaning 'You must be a
neighbour to everyone including Gentiles', then we are forcing the Lord
into coming down on one side- the liberal side. But instead He is saying:
'You aren't in a position to choose. You are desperately wounded. You need
to accept the grace of a Samaritan saviour, whom you would despise in
secular life; spiritually, you're not in a position to worry about who is
your neighbour. You need to accept My grace'. See on :30. Likewise the
parable engages with the question "What shall I do to inherit
eternal life", as if eternity was some kind of preordained right and
preexisting inheritance. Eternal life is not a natural inheritance,
somehow actualized by good deeds. You are a desperately, mortally injured
man and you're not going to inherit anything nor be a neighbour to anyone,
Jew or Gentile. You desperately need salvation.
10:30 Jesus answered and said: A certain man was going down from
Jerusalem to Jericho, and he encountered robbers who both stripped him and
beat him, and departed leaving him half dead-
The road was 17 miles [27 km.] long and descended 3300 feet [1
km.], to Jericho which is 770 feet [235 meters] below sea level. Famed for
bandits, it was known as ‘the red or bloody way’. All a picture of man's
descent from the city and things of God.
The wounded man is all of us- "a certain man" (Lk. 10:30) is a phrase more usually translated 'any man', 'whomsoever' etc. The idea of journeying downwards from Jerusalem to Jericho has some definite OT connections, not least with wicked King Zedekiah, who ignored repeated prophetic please to repent and fled from Jerusalem to Jericho, only to be overtaken on the way by the Babylonians and sent to Babylon to condemnation (2 Kings 25:4). ‘You’re every one a Zedekiah’, is the implication- but we’ve been saved from out of that condemnation by the Samaritan’s grace. Another allusion is to the incident in 2 Chron. 28:15, where the captured
and injured Jews are marched from Jerusalem to Jericho
by the Samaritans, the men of the 10 tribes whose capital was then
Samaria, and yet by grace they are given clothes, food and water
after the prophet Oded ordered the Samaritans to show grace: "[they] took
the captives, and with the booty they clothed all that were naked among
them; they clothed them, gave them sandals, provided them with food and
drink, and anointed them; and carrying all the feeble among them on
donkeys, they brought them to their brothers at Jericho. Then they
returned to Samaria". In all these allusions, Jesus is radically reversing all the roles. The true people of God are the repentant enemies of the people of God, the “thieves” who spoil the people of God are the Jewish elders (Hos. 6:1,29), the Divine Saviour is not a Jew but a Samaritan etc.
One of the many Old Testament quarries for this good Samaritan parable is found in 2 Chron. 28:15 (Another
will be found in Hos. 6:1,2,9, which seems to equate the Jewish priesthood
with the thieves which attacked the man. This was also Christ's estimation
of them (Mt. 21:13; Jn. 10:1). This allusion would have been especially
relevant in the first century context. Another connection will be found in
2 Kings 25:4). Here we read how Israel attacked Judah whilst Judah were apostate, and took them captives. But then they realized their own shortcomings, and the fact that Judah really were their brethren; then they "clothed all that were naked among (he captives taken from Judah), and arrayed them, and shod them, and gave them to eat and to drink, and anointed them, and carried all the feeble of them upon asses, and brought them to Jericho...to their brethren". Now there is allusion after allusion to this scene in the Samaritan parable. Surely our Lord had his eye on this incident as he devised that parable. The point he was making as surely this: 'In trying to follow my example of total love for your brethren, your spiritual neighbours, remember your own shortcomings, and what the Lord has done for you by His grace; and then go and reflect this to your brethren'.
The helplessness of the injured man is a fine picture of our weakness. We can only accept salvation; there is nothing we can do to earn it. Hence the Lord warned those who seek to save their own lives (Lk. 17:33)- He uses the same two words to explain how He is the one who seeks and saves (Lk. 19:10). Acceptance of salvation is perhaps what faith is all about in its barest essence.
As the man was stripped and wounded, so identical language is used about the sufferings of
the Lord on the cross (Mt. 27:28,29; Lk. 20:12; Zech. 13:6). As his would-be neighbours passed him by on the other side, so the neighbours of
the Lord stood aloof from his stricken body on the cross (Ps. 38:11 AVmg.). Through this he can fully enter into our broken hearts, into our intense spiritual loneliness without him (if only we would realize it) and therefore he will come alongside us with a heart of true compassion. So because of his sufferings which we now behold, he can so truly, so truly and exactly, empathize with our spiritual state.
The description of the stricken man being "stripped" of his clothing
uses the very same word, rarely used in the NT, to describe the
'stripping' of the Lord Jesus at the time of His death (Mt. 27:28,21; Mk.
15:20). Likewise the robbers 'left him' (Lk. 10:30), in the same as the
Lord was 'left' alone by the disciples to face the end alone (Mk. 14:50
s.w.). The robbers "wounded him" (Lk. 10:30), a phrase which translates
two Greek words, 'to lay upon' and 'stripes'. The cross was 'laid upon'
Jesus (Lk. 23:26 s.w.); and we are familiar with the idea of the Lord
being 'wounded' and receiving 'stripes' in His final sufferings (Is.
53:5). The connection is surely that in the process of His death, the Lord
came to know the feelings of the stripped and stricken people whom He came
to save. No wonder He can powerfully "have compassion" upon us. And it’s
been pointed out elsewhere that the ‘two pennies’ paid by the Samaritan
are the equivalent of the half shekel atonement money under the Mosaic
Law, whereby a man could be redeemed.
It's easy to think that the focus of the parable is upon being like the good Samaritan; but the focus equally is upon seeing ourselves in the wounded man. The Lord's answers to questions nearly always seem to provide a simple answer to them, and yet more subtly turn them upon their head, and redefine the terms. The parable was told in response to the question "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?". One answer appears to be: 'Recognize you're the injured man. Accept the Good Samaritan's salvation; for the Law which you so love can't save you'. Indeed if read the other way around, the Lord's answer would appear to be 'If you want eternal life, you must do lots of good works, after the pattern of the good Samaritan'. But this would contradict the whole message of salvation by pure grace which was central to the Lord's teaching. It seems to me that the parable is often interpreted that way- and it’s actually the very opposite of how the Lord wished us to read it. No matter how much good we do to people along the way, this cannot give us the life eternal.
The context of the parable is the question about 'Who is my
neighbour?'. Was it only a Jew, or all men? In this we see the
significance of the fact the man had been stripped naked. Those who
interpreted "my neighbour" as Jews only had to define who was a Jew. One
school of rabbinic thought was that a Jew was identified by clothing.
Particularly having the tassels (tzitzit) on the four corners of
their garments, one of the tassels being blue, in obedience to Num.
15:37-39; Dt. 22:12. But the Lord presents the man as naked. There were no
identification marks on him. All the external markers which divide men
were no longer. Being half dead, we assume he was unconscious, unable to
say who he was. And this is how we too have to look at men, colourblind
and focused solely on our common humanity. 'Going and doing likewise' is
to act like this to their salvation. The three passers by, Priest, Levite
and Samaritan, were all faced with the naked body at a point where nobody
was watching their response, apart from God. And here we have the essence
of Christianity and all spirituality- who we are, when nobody is watching.
10:31 And by chance a certain priest was going down that road; and
when he saw him, he passed by on the other side-
"By chance" is repeated of the Levite who "in like manner", i.e.
"chance", encountered the injured man (:32). Why this stress? This is
notably not said of the Samaritan. At the risk of over interpretation, we
could say that the impression may be that the Samaritan set out to help the
injured man, perhaps having heard of his plight from the Priest and Levite.
That would explain why he travelled with bandages, oil and wine. In which
case, we have a sense of the Lord's purposeful setting out for our
salvation. The representatives of mere religion, faced with death, looking
at a naked, bleeding, dying man, were unable to save. Only Jesus saves from
the ultimate issue of death. The Greek kata sunkurian translated
"by chance" can as well be rendered "fortunately", 'luckily enough', and is
used this way in modern Greek. We are set up to expect a salvation from the
Priest and levite, but we are dissapointed. Just as legalism and all
religion ultimately dissapoints. "Going down that road" can refer to the
literal steep descent from Jerusalem to Jericho; but in a religious sense,
men 'went up' to Jerusalem, such as the priest to do his service, and 'went
down' from Jerusalem when they returned home. The priest had done his
service, his religious thing. And he still wasn't thereby empowered to save
a man, to give salvation.
Josephus says that when Herod the Great dismissed the 40,000 men
who had been employed in building the temple, many of them became robbers on
the Jerusalem-Jericho road. Again there is the theme that the temple was
finished, just as the Priest and Levite were going home having finished
their temple service. It is claimed that there were 12,000 priests and
Levites living at Jericho; and so they would have been constantly travelling
on that road.
The radical nature
of the Lord Jesus is reflected in His teaching style. His parables work
around what I have elsewhere called "elements of unreality". They involve
a clash of the familiar, the comfortable, the normal, with the strange and
unreal and radical. The parables are now so well known that their radical
nature has been almost buried under the avalanche of familiarity. The
parables begin by getting the hearers sympathetic and onboard with the
story line- and then, in a flick of the tail, the whole punch line is
turned round against their expectations, with radical demands. The story of a man travelling the Jerusalem-Jericho road alone would've elicited sympathy and identity with the hearers- yes, that road is awfully dangerous. And then the priest and Levite pass by and don't help. That was realistic-"priests and
Levites were known to have quarters in the Jordan valley near Jericho where they retreated from the beehive of activity surrounding the temple". The common people were anticlerical, and yes, they could just imagine the priest and Levite passing by. "Typical!" would've been their comment. They're all set up to expect the Messianic Jewish working class hero to stride in to the rescue. But... it's a despised Samaritan who stops and gives saving help. They had expected a Jewish Saviour- and Jesus, the teller of the parable, claimed to be just that. But... in the story, He's represented by a Samaritan. Remember that Samaritans and Jews had no dealings, and people were amazed that Jesus would even speak with the Samaritan woman at the well. Even in desperation, a Jew wouldn't have wanted to be helped by a Samaritan. You had to be utterly desperate to accept such help. Moments earlier, the audience had been identifying with the injured Jewish man. But... were they really that desperate, did they appreciate their desperation to that extent, to keep "in" the story, and accept that that desperate man was really them? They wanted to be able to identify with the hero. But no, they had to first of all identify with the wounded, dying, desperate Jew. And only then were they bidden "Go and do likewise"- 'be like the Samaritan'. The Lord's initial audience would have been left with knitted eyebrows and deep introspection at the end of it. The whole thing was too challenging for many. They quit the parable, quit identifying with the story... just as we can when it gets too demanding. It's a tragedy that this amazing story, crafted in such a radically demanding way, has been reduced to merely 'Be a good neighbour to the guy next door, so long as it doesn't demand too much of you'- which is what the story has come to mean for the majority of professed Christians today. That of itself indicates a discomfort with the radical nature of the demands.
It's the same with Nathan's parable to David. It elicited David's sympathy- and then it was turned back on David: "You are the man!". But he didn't quit the parable. He acted on it, as we have to. The parable of the self-righteous older son is just the same. The parable's story line leads us to expect that the wayward son repents and is accepted back by his father. But then right at the end, the whole thing takes a biting twist. We suddenly realize that the prodigal son and the need to forgive your wayward son isn't the point of the story- for that's something which comes naturally to any father and family. The whole point is that the son who played safe, who stayed home and behaved himself... he is the one who ends up outside of the family's joy because of his self-righteousness. He ends up the villain, the lost son. Again, there'd have been knotted brows and an exit from identity with the story line. And the way generations of Christians have described the story as "the parable of the lost / prodigal son" shows how they [we] too have so often missed the essentially radical point of the story.
10:32 And in like manner a Levite also, when he came to the place
and saw him, passed by on the other side- See on :31. When we analyze this good Samaritan parable, it becomes clear that we are
not simply intended to do good deeds to people we meet, copying the
Samaritan. We are also aptly represented by the wounded man; it is the Lord Jesus who is the good Samaritan. The Law of Moses, symbolized by the priest and Levite, came near to man's stricken condition, and had a close look at it. Lk. 10:32 (Young's Literal) brings this out: "Having been about the place, having come and seen...", the Levite passed on by. The Jews regarded Christ as a Samaritan, so they would have immediately understood the Samaritan of the parable to represent Jesus (Jn. 8:48
"Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and
demon-possessed?”). The good Samaritan having compassion on the man and being moved to do something about him has echoes of the Lord's compassion on the multitudes (:33). His promise to come again after two days (he gave two pence, and a penny a day was a fair rate, Mt. 20:2) is a clear connection with the Lord's promise to come again (after 2000 years from his departure?).
We enquire why the Lord chose the priest and Levite in this
story. His teaching, especially in Luke, was always aimed at the scribes and
Pharisees. Not the priests and Levites. Perhaps He wishes His audience to
figure that if the priest or Levite had touched the body, they would have
been unclean and unable to serve in the temple (Lev. 21:1-4,11). To help the
man, representative as he was of humanity, meant an end to temple service.
We are perhaps invited to imagine the priest and Levite weighing up in their
minds between helping the man, and serving in the temple. For perhaps they
were on their way to the temple to start their duties. And they chose
religion over spirituality, as so many do. Although it is perhaps
significant that the priest was going "down" the road (:32), and the road
went "down" from Jerusalem to Jericho (:31). In which case, we imagine he
switched into auto pilot, always putting a fence around the law; and doing
his religious duties was above absolutely everything for him. Helping the
man was a deed which would not have been observed by anyone. But the essence
of spirituality is who we are when nobody is watching. Likewise the law
about not serving when unclean actually only strictly applied to the Priest
and not to the Levite. But he too had fences around the laws, in his own
mind. They both failed to realize that God wants mercy and not [the
performance of] sacrifice (Hos. 6:6). And there was also the economic
aspect. If indeed the man were dead, the Priest at least would have been
rendered unclean. It has been commented: "If the priest became unclean, he
must return to Jerusalem, stand by the Eastern gate with the unclean, and go
through the process of purification.. This ritual would not only take time,
but it would result in the loss of wages. He would have to buy and offer a
heifer, which
would take up most of a week and be of significant cost to him,
his family, and his household". We are invited to imagine these issues
playing subconsciously in his mind- all such a contrast to the Samaritan.
In reality, it is unnatural to pass by a wounded man in the way
presented in the story. Most human beings would have stopped and helped- if
there were no other factors in play. Humanity generally responds to humanity
in such a situation. The fact neither of the two men do stop and try to help
is in fact an element of unreality in the story. We are left, then, with the
question highlighted- why did they not respond? What factor was
greater than even their basic humanity? The factor was religion, their fear
of defilement, fear of possible religious consequence. The commands about
defilement related to touching a dead body, and the man was still alive. But
it was their instinctive placing of a hedge around a law that led them to
assume they must not touch a man who was near death but not yet dead. And
the priest and Levite had finished their term of service in Jerusalem and
were heading home, so they had no real practical concern about being unable
to serve at the sanctuary whilst unclean. The story well portrays how
'religion' and the religious mentality is even stronger than basic humanity
and common human decency. It drags man even lower than he already is. They
failed to properly interpret Lev. 21:1,2: “No one shall defile himself for a
dead person among his relatives, except for his nearest kin: his mother, his
father, his son, his daughter, his brother". That wounded man ought to have
been treated by them as their nearest relative. For the parable is
implicitly critical of the priest and Levite. They failed to see themselves,
spiritually, in that man. Organized religion is hereby shown to be useless.
And putting the Gospel records together, we note that almost immediately
after giving this parable, according to Matthew and Mark, the Lord goes on
to prophecy the destruction of the temple, Jerusalem and the Jewish system.
10:33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was,
and when he saw him, he was moved with compassion-
The Samaritans rejected the Jerusalem temple, as witness the
Lord's conversation with the Samaritan woman in Jn. 4. This Samaritan is
travelling either from the temple down to Jericho- an element of unreality,
in that no Samaritan would usually make any journey to or from Jerusalem. He
is an unusual Samaritan; despised by the Jews but having at least some
respect for the Jerusalem temple. An exact fit with the Lord Jesus.
Stereotypes are turned on their head. Lk. 9:51-54 has just demonstrated that
Samaritans weren't hospitable to Jews. But this Samaritan is different. He
has a heart of compassion for the dying Jew.
'Coming to where he was' speaks volumes of the Lord's humanity,
being with us where we are. He came near to the man, whilst the others went
away from him, passing by on the other side. We think of how "sinners were
all drawing near to hear Him" (Lk. 15:1). The moving with compassion is the
same word used of the Father having compassion on the prodigal (Lk. 15:20);
and the master having compassion upon his indebted servants (Mt. 18:27). The
Lord's compassion is so often noted in the Gospels (Mk 1:42; 6:34; 8:2;
9:22; Mt 14:14; 20:34). That compassion is based upon identity; for the Lord
likens Himself to the sick, rejected, hungry and unhelped in Mt. 25:35-40.
His 'going down' from Jerusalem to Jericho is the equivalent of John's
language of the Lord 'coming down' to save man. He has walked the path of
man's descent into sin, not as a personal sinner but through identity with
us. And this was shown in His death as a sinner, for "cursed is every one
who hangs on a tree". In this sense, even sin does not separate us from the
love of Christ. And "go and do likewise" challenges us to in our lives do
this work of the Lord Jesus, coming down and going close to men stricken in
sin.
The Samaritan "was moved with compassion" by the man's (spiritual) state. This is the same phrase as used concerning how Christ "was moved with compassion" by the multitudes. The connection with the good Samaritan parable would invite us to read the Lord's compassion as fundamentally spiritual. The reason for the miracles was to confirm the spoken word (Mk. 16:20), to lead men to see the wisdom of the message they were validating (Mk. 6:2). Are there any examples of Christ doing miracles for reasons unconnected with preaching? They often (always?) had symbolic meaning; and were designed to inculcate faith (Jn. 20:31) and repentance (Mt. 11:21). And in any case, His miracles were largely to benefit the Covenant people, or those closely associated with them. The apostles didn't do mass benefit miracles (e.g. feeding thousands of people) to back up their preaching in the Gentile world; even though they had the power to do "greater works" than did the Lord (Jn. 14:12). 'Charitable' giving ought to be associated with preaching, surely, if we are to follow the example of Christ's compassion with the multitudes. In practice, the work of providing welfare and conducting fresh preaching is done by the same brethren in the mission field.
The Lord Jesus "knew what was in man", not only by direct revelation from the Father and the Old Testament word, but also from His own observation of our own nature, both in Himself and the surrounding world. The sensitivity of Jesus is reflected in this realization which He reflects. As the Samaritan came near to the wounded man (the ecclesia), realized the extent of his problem (the ravages of sin) and was thereby moved with compassion, so Christ was motivated by His consideration of our position (Lk. 10:33,34); the Lord realized His humanity more and more, and progressively humbled Himself, achieving a progressively fuller identity with us by so doing, until He crowned it all by His death (Phil. 2:6-8). The main lying helpless on the Jerusalem - Jericho road was surely modelled on Zedekiah being overtaken there by his enemies (Jer. 39:5). See on Lk. 14:9.
10:34 And came to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on them oil and
wine, and he put him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took
care of him-
He "bound up his wounds", alluding to the manner in which Christ was to bind up the broken hearted (Is. 61:1). He cured those mental wounds by pouring in oil and wine, symbols of his word and his blood respectively. So the brutal beating up of that man, leaving him half dead, refers to the broken-heartedness which the sin of this world and our own natures inflicts upon us. Picture the scene on that Jericho road, the body covered in blood and dust, massive bruises swelling up, flies buzzing around on the congealed blood, face in the dust, frightened donkey neighing among the scrub somewhere. That is the very picture of our broken heartedness, the broken heartedness which Christ came to heal. The physical grossness of those wounds is a picture of our mental state. Yet the flesh deceives us that there is nothing really that wrong with our minds, with our natures. Yet there is, and we need to come to terms with it more and more completely, to realize our deep mental need for Christ's healing. Once we do this, we will be able to see the need, the urgent need, for his healing of our minds through his spirit, his perfect, clean mind, being in us. And how were those wounds healed? How are our mental wounds healed? By the Son of God tearing up his own garments to bandage up the wounds (how else did he do it?), and healing us with his blood and his word.
"He brought him to the inn" can also be translated "He led it [the donkey] to the inn". In this case, the Samaritan is acting as a servant, for it is the master who rides on the donkey and the servant who walks on foot, leading it there. Remember how Haman has to lead the horse on which Mordecai rides (Esther 6:7-11). All this speaks of how the Lord took upon Himself the form of a servant in order to lead us to salvation- when at the time we could do nothing, and had no awareness of the huge grace being shown to us. The Samaritan was of course making himself vulnerable to attack by robbers by doing this. But think through it some more. There was an eye-for-eye vengeance syndrome alive and well at that time. If a Samaritan turned up with a wounded Jew, it would look for all the world like he was responsible for the damage. It would be the first time a Samaritan was known to have done such an act of kindness. And he risks himself all the more, by staying at the inn, leaving, and then returning there, thus willing to face the inevitable suspicion that he had attacked the man, or was somehow involved in the incident. This risking of His own salvation was what the cross was all about. The parable gives a rare window into the Lord's self-perception on this point. And so for us- we may stay up all night serving someone's need, only to make ourselves irritable and impatient and more prone to sin ourselves the next day. And in any case, it's my experience that no good deed goes unpunished; we have to pay various prices for it in this life. In all these things we are living out the spirit of the Samaritan saviour.
Until the good Samaritan's return, the man was kept in the inn, with everything that was needed lavishly provided. Surely the inn is symbolic of the ecclesia; in the ecclesia there should be a common sense of spiritual improvement, of growing in health, of remembering our extraordinary deliverance, realizing our weakness, looking forward to seeing the Samaritan again to praise him for the wonder of it all. This ought to characterize our gatherings
as the church. Who is the innkeeper? He may just be part of the furniture of
the parable, as I have yet to find a convincing interpretation.
The parables, especially those which Luke records, appear to end leaving us with unanswered questions. Does the wounded traveller survive and get better? When does the Samaritan return? How much does it cost him? Was the beaten man happy to see the Samaritan when he returned? Who inherits the property of the rich fool? Does the barren fig tree produce a crop in the end? Does the elder brother finally join in the party? Does the unjust steward succeed in getting himself out of his problems after his dismissal? What happens to the rich man’s five brothers, seeing Lazarus isn’t allowed to go and warn them? Do they hear Moses and the prophets? Do the riff raff come in from the lanes to the Great Supper? Does the unjust judge actually resolve the widow’s complaints? How does the rich merchant survive, after having sold all he has for the one pearl, thus discarding his entire past, his life’s work…? And what does he do with the pearl? He, presumably, sits and treasures it, but can do nothing with it in order to prosper materially… And yet we are left to reflect upon this. See on Mt. 13:44; Lk. 14:32.
In the culture of the time, strangers were to be welcomed and put
up for the night according to their culture of hospitality. "Hotels" as we
know them weren't common. The word used for "inn" is rather strange and one
commentator says that "These places had a dubious character: everybody was
welcome, monies had to be paid for lodging, and the female workers at the
inn offered sexual favors to guests as a rule". And yet the Lord used this
word for a place which represented His church. A different
word is used for the Government operated lodging houses- and most travellers
in those days were on Government service. A different word is used for the
"inn" where Joseph and Mary stayed in Bethlehem. But the Lord doesn't use
that word for this "inn". Wealthy travellers would rather pitch tents and
sleep in them for the night, protected by their own guards, rather than use
an "inn". Strabo, Philo and other ancient writers all give a negative
picture of "inns", as noisy and immoral, frequented by lower classes and
outcasts / criminals who had no relatives nearby to stay with, and to be
avoided by all good people. Strabo speaks of inns as brothels. And
innkeepers are always presented as not trustworthy and morally dubious. We
note the confusion in describing Rahab as both an innkeeper and a
prostitute. Samaritan doesn't just put the injured man there for one night,
as an emergency. He chooses this as the place of healing for him. The
ambience of an inn was not conducive to rest or recuperation- they were
typically associated with noise, theft, drunks and prostitutes. The church
is indeed a strange place. Again we have an inversion of stereotypes; just
as the 'bad' Samaritan becomes the good Samaritan, so the despised innkeeper
plays a part in the man's salvation. Contra to the idea that two pennies
meant a return after two days, "According to Joachim Jeremias, a day’s board
cost one twelfth of a denarius; the Samaritan’s advance payment was
sufficient for several days and bound the inn-keeper to look after the man
as long as was necessary". He envisaged, in this case, a long stay. In a
questionable place that was usually only stayed in for one night. Again, the
church is presented as unusual... and not as secular people would like to
imagine it.
Given the bad reputation of innkeepers, the Samaritan is
entrusting the innkeeper with money. And promising to pay anything else that
might be needed. This is an element of unreality in the story. The Samaritan
seems both wealthy, or generous, and very trusting of a stereotypically weak
and dubious person. In this we see something similar to the parables which
speak of the Lord giving His wealth to others to manage, in an apparently
too trusting manner and extent. In this we see the Lord's empowerment of His
weak church to do the work of saving sick humanity, and He will give all the
resources required for this. The Samaritan "took care of him" and then uses
the same words to tell the innkeeper in :35 to "Take care of him". He is
asking the innkeeper, dubious as he supposedly was, to show the same care as
the Samaritan had shown, to save the man. This is an exact picture of the
Lord's delegation of His own saving work to the church, and His assurance
that He will provide all human resources to enable that. We could argue that
the two characters who failed to help / care (Levite and priest) are matched
by two characters who did care- the Samaritan and the innkeeper. The
Samaritan and innkeeper would thereby be linked together as co-workers in
the man's salvation.
10:35 And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the
host, and said: Take care of him, and if you spend more, I, when I come
back again, will repay you- "If you spend more..." was
perhaps to guard against the way that unpaid debts could lead to the
indebted person being enslaved (as in Mt. 18:23-35) or otherwise abused
until they had paid the debt. The Samaritan, like the Lord, is absolutely
thoughtful and sensitive to our every possible spiritual need. And the
gift of the two denarii to the dubious innkeeper was an act of entrustment
by the Samaritan- for typically, the innkeeper would have kept the money
for himself and then billed the Samaritan a huge amount at his return.
There is no contract made, not even a verbal agreement as to what the
innkeeper's duties are. He is simply asked to care for the person as the
Samaritan had cared for him. And being an innkeeper, he might appear the
least qualified. He is a dodgy innkeeper, not a medical man. We would be
more comfortable if the Samaritan brought the man to a physician and paid
him in advance to care for him. The Samaritan's example so far in the
story was the pattern- and it speaks of the Lord's death on the cross. He
expects the dubious innkeeper to grasp that, and continue it. The trust
and lack of agreed contract is an element of unreality that would have
caused the first hearers to shake their heads muttering 'That wasn't
wise'. The Lord likewise entrusts us with His wealth, as the parable of
the talents makes clear. He trusts us to not act as we humans typically
do. But to be moved by His example of loving salvation of others, to with
integrity do the same and play our part with Him in the ultimate salvation
of others. And the innkeeper also had to show some faith / trust- because
for all he knew, the Samaritan wouldn't return, or might himself be mugged
along that notorious road. And he accepts that, accepting that he might be
left out of pocket if the Samaritan doesn't return. And caring for a "half
dead" man, who would take weeks to recover and might still die from
infections, was no small thing to undertake. And quite possibly it might
stop him from serving his regular or usual customers. Especially with no
rock solid guarantee that the Samaritan would return and reimburse him.
The two pennies were indeed a deposit guaranteeing the return [cp. the
Holy Spirit gift]. But still faith was required by the innkeeper. The
Samaritan's example [cp. the cross] was what inspired him to rise out of
his shrewd, short termist, calculating mindset and accept the challenge.
And so with us. Both the Samaritan and innkeeper take a risk, they risk
their own possible loss in order to save. If this inn were at the top of
the Jerusalem-Jericho road, it would have been near Bethany- and a house
in Bethany is the next scene in Luke's account.
We note that these are the only recorded words in the parable.
The parable largely functions without words, because contrary to the
attitude of the lawyer to whom the parable was first addressed, the issue is
all about action and not words. Nor is it about striving over words and
meanings to do with the word "neighbour". The injured man had no money- he
had been robbed. The Samaritan paid for him. This isn't a story about the
need to be generous to strangers; but more is it a challenge to accept we
are naked and without anything to our names, no money, and purely dependent
upon the grace of the Samaritan Saviour.
"The next day" suggests the Samaritan also stayed a night in the
inn, and then left. We note that innkeepers and staying in inns were all
somewhat stigmatized. Inns weren't good places. But the inn was used to heal
the injured man. This has quite some implications, once we interpret the inn
as the church. His promise to come again after two days
(he gave two pence, and a penny a day was a fair rate, Mt. 20:2) is a clear connection with the Lord's promise to come again (after 2000 years from his departure?).
The ‘two pennies’ paid by the Samaritan are the equivalent of the half
shekel atonement money under the Mosaic Law, whereby a man could be
redeemed. Our redeemer is of course the Lord Jesus. The redemption was
‘paid’ in His blood- which implies His putting us on His beast of burden and carrying us to the inn, where He paid the money, is a picture of His final sufferings which lead up to the actual shedding of His blood.
The parable of the good Samaritan explains how Christ took compassion on the stricken spiritual state of us His people, picked us up, made Himself vulnerable to attack by placing the man on His donkey, and caused us to be fully healed. The Samaritan was less vulnerable than the robbed man, on account of having a donkey. But he made himself even more vulnerable than the robbed man had been, in order to take him to the inn. The picture of the wounded man straddled over the donkey and the Samaritan walking patiently alongside shows what easy prey they would have been. The whole process of the man's redemption by this Samaritan is an account of the cross of Christ (not least the pouring in of wine and oil). The implication is that through seeking to save us, Christ made Himself more vulnerable than He would have been if He sought only His own salvation. And the Samaritan's speed of progress was more than halved; he had to walk rather than ride, keeping the wounded man balanced on the donkey. This parable seems to reveal that Christ realized at least in some abstract sense that His concern for us in some ways made it more difficult for Him; although the reality was that the motivation for His victory was largely due to His sense of responsibility for us. The idea of him taking care for the man is expressed in the language of Ex. 21:19, which says that if a man wounds another, "he shall pay... and shall cause him to be thoroughly healed". This somewhat odd allusion (at first sight) surely indicates that the Lord took upon Himself the full blame for our stricken condition, presumably in the sense that as the second Adam He took upon Himself the guilt of Adam. This is why there are so many connections between His death and the effects of Adam's sin (e.g. the crown of thorns, the Garden etc.). The way Christ compared Himself to a Samaritan, half Jew and half Gentile, shows that especially on the cross, this is how He felt. He was mindful of both Jewish and Gentile aspects of His future body as He died. The Jews (and His own brothers, Ps. 69:8) treated Him as half Gentile (from a Roman soldier, the Midrash claims).
So we are as it were in the inn, thinking back to our salvation by that suffering Samaritan, the strangeness and yet the glorious wonder of it all. I'm sure
we are meant us to fill in the unspoken details in his parable. Of course
the saved man would have re-lived time and again his wondrous salvation, how
he had come to with the eyes of that man peering earnestly into his, the
laying on the ass, and the slow journey to the inn. As Israel remembered
their Passover deliverance through the Passover feast, so we lie on our sickbed in the inn, as it were, and remember our great salvation.
10:36 Which of these three, do you think, proved a neighbour to him
that encountered the robbers?-
"Proved a neighbour" takes us back to the initial question; to
love God is to love our neighbour as ourselves The Samaritan parable appears to be an example of the way the Lord left His parables open to multiple interpretations and reflections, all of which express aspects of the many truths He was expressing to us. We need to reflect who the ‘neighbour’ actually is. The parable is told in extension of the Lord’s approval of the statement that to love God is to love our neighbour, and vice versa (:27). The Lord was explaining that what we have to ‘do’ to get eternal life is to perceive that God is our neighbour. This is and was a challenging idea. As challenging and provocative as when a black sister in southern USA said to me once ‘Ya know, God’s ma nigger’. She meant, ‘God’s my buddy, my close one’. The turning point of the parable is in it’s end stress [as so often in these stories of the Lord]: “Which of these three… was neighbour unto him that fell among thieves?” (Lk. 10:36). Obviously, the neighbour was the Samaritan, whom we have shown to be symbolic of God and His Son. This is the answer to the question of the lawyer: ‘And who is my neighbour?’. Answer: God / Jesus. The lawyer was wondering to whom he should do his good deeds. So he asks ‘Who is my neighbour?’. He misunderstood the whole thing, as people do today. The Lord was turning the question around. Who is your neighbour? God / Jesus is your neighbour. You are lying there stricken. Your fellow lawyers and legalists / Priests / Levites can’t help you. To receive eternal life, you must let God be your neighbour. This is the work of God, to believe on the one whom He sent (Jn. 6:29). This was the Lord’s response to a similar question about what good works ought to be done. And the Samaritans were despised and rejected… yet the Lord chose them as a symbol of Himself. It's easy to under-estimate just how much the Jews despised Samaritans- "The Samaritans were publically cursed in the synagogues; and a petition was daily offered up praying God that the Samaritans might not be partakers of eternal life" (W.O.E.
Oesterley, The Gospel Parables In The Light Of Their Jewish Background
(London: SPCK, 1936) p. 102). We see the sheer bravery of the Lord in framing the parable as He did. He doesn't chose to speak of a good Jew helping a stricken Samaritan; it's the other way around. The watchful student will find up to 12 allusions in the Good Samaritan parable back to Hosea 6:1-10- which portray the Jews as the robbers, and God as the Samaritan saviour. It is none less than Yahweh Himself who "will bind us up... revive us... raise us up... come to us"- all the very things which the Samaritan did. In all this was a huge challenge to the Lord's audience- as to whether they would accept His grace. "Oil and wine are forbidden objects if they emanate from a Samaritan" (J.D.M.
Derrett, Law In The New Testament (London: Darton, Longman & Todd,
1970) p. 220)- hence the challenge to the Jews in accepting the Lord's teaching. We in our turn struggle with the extent and purity of His grace.
But of course, we are intended to be the Good Samaritan too- in that we are to manifest and replicate the saving work of Jesus in our lives and in our interactions with people. There are details in the parables that need to be thought about, the story reconstructed. The Samaritan ‘happened’ to have “oil and wine” with him, i.e. medicaments for a wounded man (the wine would have been an antiseptic). And he was travelling alone, when people usually travelled in convoys. And the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans, they wouldn’t even talk with them on the street (Jn. 4:9). So perhaps the Lord intended us to figure that the Samaritan was actually going to help one of his fellow Samaritans who needed attention, but on the way, he met one of another race in even greater need, and changed his plans in order to save him. In all this we have an exquisite example of the self-revelation of Jesus in His own parables- for He saw Himself as the Samaritan. And for us too, the call to save often comes when we are on our way to do something else, at the most inconvenient moment, to people we would never have considered would need nor accept our help towards salvation.
The parable of the good Samaritan needs careful reflection before we see in it a command to concentrate on giving to the world. It is used as Biblical evidence for a social gospel. The Samaritan was "neighbour unto him that fell among thieves" (Lk. 10:36)- i.e. the story shows how he fulfilled the command to love our neighbour. We have shown above that this command refers to love for those related to the Covenant. The Samaritan represented Christ. The mugged man was those He came to save; not the world generally, for they have not all accepted His healing. We must go and do likewise; in showing the love of Christ to the world. But we have earlier defined that love as being paramountly spiritual, and relating to the work of the cross. The parable was teaching the inability of the Law to save man spiritually, not materially.
The injured man is every man. But he can do nothing. Apart from
accept grace. He has a passive role in the story. So again the Lord is
turning the lawyer's question on its head. It's not about what we can do,
nor to whom we should do good. We can in fact do nothing, but accept grace.
10:37 And he said: The one who showed him mercy. And Jesus said to
him: Go and do likewise- The lawyer could not bring himself
to say the word "The Samaritan". They were hated and despised so deeply.
There's ample evidence that the despised Samaritan of this parable refers to the Lord Jesus. He was 'neighbour' to stricken humanity, he came near to us, binding up our broken hearts, and carried us to the haven of the ecclesia. "Go and do likewise" is therefore a real challenge to us: to have the same dedication for others' salvation as Christ had. His zeal to achieve God's plan of redemption should be ours. Remember how the good Samaritan parable is an exposition of how to love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind (:27). Every fibre of the Lord's mind and body was bent for us , for bringing about God's plan of redemption. He loved us, his neighbour, as himself. Because of this it is impossible to separate Christ from the work He came to do, i.e. our redemption. The point of the good Samaritan parable is to teach us that his same devotion to the work of conquering sin should be seen in us; our concern for the salvation of others should be as great as that for our own. We need to be totally filled with the idea of bringing about God's glory, of seeing the conquest of sin achieved through Christ. So all our strength, our mind, will be given over to the conquest of sin in ourselves, to the spreading of the Gospel to others, and to the binding up of the broken hearts of our brethren.
The preface to the good Samaritan parable is there in :27,28, about
loving God with all our strength and our neighbour as ourselves; and "this do,
and you shall live" (eternally). To define this statement more closely, the
Lord told the good Samaritan parable. "Go and do likewise" is referring back to
:28, where the Lord commands the man "this do", i.e. loving God with all the heart, soul etc. So the example of the good Samaritan is a practical epitome of loving God with all the heart, soul etc. To love our neighbour as
ourselves is to love God with all the heart and soul and strength and mind. Therefore the good Samaritan needs to represent us,
although we are also the wounded man.
"Be going on, and do likewise", the Lord concluded (:37 YLT). Verse 38 appropriately continues: "Now it came to pass, as they went" , in the same way as the Samaritan Saviour "as he journeyed" (:33) showed such energetic compassion, with all his heart and strength, to the stricken man. We must be able to use our own realization of our own desperate need for Christ's grace to motivate us to zealously devote ourselves to ministering to others. Our lack of zeal in this is largely due to our own failure to appreciate our own need, and the degree to which this has been satisfied by
the Lord. He knew (and knows) the feelings of the stricken man.
Like most Jews, the Lord would have prayed the shema ("The Lord our God is one") upon rising and going to bed- just as He had a garment like that of the Pharisees, with the traditional
tassels hanging from its edge (Mt. 9:20; 23:5). Yet He thought about what He prayed. When asked which was the greatest of the commandments, He replied that it was the fact that God is one. He saw the unity of God as a commandment that elicited action; and He says [note His grammar] that this plus the command to love our neighbour is the [singular] great commandment (Mk. 12:31). And He again combines these two commandments in Lk. 10:27,37, saying that to love God with all our heart is parallel with loving our neighbour and showing mercy to him. He quoted two commandments as one, so deeply had He perceived that we can't claim to love God without loving our brother. How had He worked that out? Perhaps by daily reflecting upon what to many was merely a ritual saying of words. And we too read and have pass our lips, ideas which can work radical transformation in us if only we will put meaning into the words and reflect upon them. He speaks of giving His shalom [peace] to us, not as the [Jewish] world gives it; each time He called out shalom across the street or to the guys at work each morning, He meant it. And He perceived that it would take His death on the cross to really achieve what He was giving to them in His words.
A feature we need to bear in mind with all the parables is the almost constant stress on the end of the story as the part which makes the main point which the Lord is seeking to get over. Likewise the emphasis is often upon the last person mentioned in the story, the last action, the last words. Think of the parable of the prodigal; or how the Samaritan, the last man on the scene, is the example for us. “Go and do likewise” (Lk. 10:37) invites us to go forth and be like the Lord Jesus in bringing salvation to others. Or the man who buried his talent and did nothing with it; the crux of the story is that indifference to our potential is so awful. The parable of the sower focuses in the end on the good seed which brings a great harvest. The fact so much of the seed is lost is in itself an element of unreality- but the focus is on the fact that some seed brings forth wonderfully. And isn’t this just the encouragement every preacher needs? That despite all the hard hearts, the initial responses that come to nothing, all is worth it because someone responds truly.
We wonder if the Lord closed the parable with a gentle smile on
His face. The parable engaged with the question of 'Who is my neighbour?',
but also with 'What shall I do to inherit eternal life?' (:25). The answers
to that is, nothing. We can "do" nothing. The parable turns everything on
its head. We are the stricken man. Not anyone else in the parable. The story
of course invites us to think we are to act as the Samaritan. But any
thoughtful reader comes to see that this is not the point. The Lord is the
Samaritan. We are the stricken man, unable to do anything to be saved. To
fret about questions about the definition of "neighbour" was to ask the
wrong questions. There are actually no questions to be asked. It's a case of
accepting the grace of a saviour. The real question is 'So will you let the
despised Samaritan save you?'. To read the parable as simply meaning 'Be a
top bloke to random people' is to fall into the same trap as the layer was
in.
10:38 Now as they went on their way, he entered into a certain
village, and a certain woman named Martha welcomed him into her house-
This incident is recorded perhaps to demonstrate the outworking of 'going
and doing likewise' in the preceding parable (:37). But the 'doing' was
not doing works, but rather listening to the Lord's teaching of salvation
by grace and believing it.
The parable of the good Samaritan features Jesus as the Samaritan helping
the stricken man, representative of us all. However, the parable is followed
immediately by the account of the Lord visiting the Bethany home of Martha
and Mary. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho went via Bethany. The home
where the sick man was taken was surely intended to be understood as that of
Martha and Mary. The attacked man is called “a certain man”, and then we
read straight on that the Lord was entertained by “a certain woman”, Martha
(Lk. 10:30,38). The Samaritan “as he journeyed” came to the stricken man;
and yet “as they went on their way, he entered into a certain village…” (Lk.
10:33,38). The Samaritan Jesus ‘cared for him’; and yet Martha unkindly
challenges the Lord ‘Don’t you care…?’ (Lk. 10:35,40). The similarities
aren’t just co-incidence. Surely the Lord is teaching that whether or not
Martha perceives it, she and Mary are actually the wounded man of the
parable, and He is taking care of them, not vice versa as Martha thought, in
the teaching He was giving them in their home. He was spiritually pouring in
oil and wine. And yet Martha and Mary, especially in Martha’s
incomprehension of the Lord’s spiritual and saving care for her, are set up
as types of all of us who are saved and cared for in Christ.
The disciples literally did give up most of what they had and follow the Lord. And yet there were evidently others who responded to His teaching without doing this- Peter’s family (Mk. 1:29); Mary and Martha (Lk. 10:38); Simon the leper Mk. 14:3). They made use of the Lord's concessions to human weakness.
10:39 And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at the Lord's
feet and heard his word- See on 8:27. "Also sat" is a positive
comment on Martha; despite her obsession with hospitality, she also loved
the Lord's words and was His disciple- 'sitting at the feet' is an idiom
for being a disciple of a rabbi. What is challenging is that many Jewish
teachers considered it better for the Law to be burnt than to be taught to
a woman. But the Lord taught women, as He did the Samaritan woman; and
Martha and Mary were also amongst those 'at His feet'. This again is
typical of how Luke emphasizes the Lord's radical acceptance of women and
the marginalized.
10:40 But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up
to him and said: Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve
alone? Tell her then to help me- We can so easily be like Martha,
"distracted" even by the secular dimension to our supposed service of the
Lord. The parable of the sower can be interpreted as fulfilling every time
we hear the word sown in us. Thus some seed is "choked with cares" (Lk.
8:14)- exactly the same words used about Martha being "distracted" with
her domestic duties so that she didn't hear the Lord's word at that time.
We bring various attitudes of mind- stony, receptive, cumbered etc.- to
the word each time we hear it. And it is our attitude to it which
determines our response to it.
"Do you not care?" is the language of the distracted disciples in the
boat at Mk. 4:38. His whole life and death were because He did so
care that they would not perish (Jn. 3:16). It’s so reminiscent of a child’s
total, if temporary, misunderstanding and lack of appreciation of the
parent’s love and self-sacrifice. We note in Mk. 12:14 that the Lord was
again accused there of 'not caring'. The most ultimately caring person was
at times perceived as not caring; and when our care is ignored or misread,
we can take comfort from this.
10:41 But the Lord answered and said to her: Martha, Martha, you
are anxious and disturbed about many things- Nearly every one of the
19 occurrences of the Greek word for "anxious" is in the Lord's teachings
not to take anxious thought but instead to focus upon the things
of the Kingdom. The focus upon only "one thing" in life empowers us to
handle the stress of "the many" secular things. Without that focus, life
appears full of "many things" and the fact we cannot sufficiently
multi-task leaves us stressed and distracted from that one thing which is
needful.
10:42 But one thing is needful. For Mary has chosen the good
portion, which shall not be taken away from her- Martha was “anxious and
disturbed about many things” (:41), but the Lord perceived that Mary was anxious and troubled about the “one thing” that was “needful”- and the context demands we understand this “one thing” as hearing the Lord’s words. For her, as she sat there at His feet, it was an anxious and troubling experience. To hear the Lord’s words is in this sense a troubling experience. Whilst we are saved by grace, the extent of the imperative within the Lord’s teaching is without doubt ‘troubling’ to the sensitive believer in Him. For we cannot hear Him without perceiving the enormous imperative which there is within those words for the transformation of our human lives in practice. See on Phil. 4:6. The one thing that was needful is surely to be connected by the incident, also recorded by Luke, where the Lord tells the rich young man that he lacks “the one thing” (Lk. 18:22)- which in his case, was to give his wealth away. Yet Mary did this, when she poured out her life savings on the Lord’s feet. Sitting at His feet, hearing His words, led her to anoint those feet. She chose “the one thing”, of anxiously hearing His words, the lines in her forehead showing in intense concentration. And yet that learning of Him issued in something practical- she gave her life to Him in practice, by giving all she had to those feet. The rich young man lacked the one thing- for he was not then ready to give his life’s wealth to the Lord. Moving the spotlight onto ourselves, we can hear, and yet do nothing. We can read our Bibles without the intensity of devotion which Mary had, and without there being any direct translation of what we hear and read into practice. We can be as the rich young man, intellectually impressed, and yet totally failing to accept the tremendous practical demands behind the most simple, basic teachings of the Lord.
Local Jewish culture stressed that the place of the woman was about domestic matters rather than spiritual ones. Yet in the incident of Martha and Mary,
the Lord commended Mary for neglecting her domestic duties in order to concern herself with spiritual development. She sat at his feet, as if a student at the feet of a rabbi.
As noted on :39, it’s easy to forget that to sit at the feet of a Rabbi [and the Lord was called ‘Rabbi’] meant to be a disciple of that Rabbi. And women… couldn’t be disciples of a Rabbi. It was all radical stuff.