Trust in the Good Samaritan, then be like Him, too

Sermon for Trinity 13

Galatians 3:15-22  +  Luke 10:23-37

What shall I do to inherit eternal life? That was the lawyer’s question in today’s often-misunderstood Gospel of the Good Samaritan. There are two different answers to that question. You either buy your way in, or you accept God’s invitation to enter for free. In other words, you either have to be the Good Samaritan, or you have to trust in the Good Samaritan.

Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? What shall I do? The one asking the question, as an expert in Old Testament Law, was looking for a Law answer, and so Jesus gave him one. What is written in your Law? You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself.’ You have answered rightly; do this and you will live. That’s the Law answer. You buy your way—you earn your way into eternal life by loving God with your whole self and by loving your neighbor in the exact same way that you love yourself, as if your neighbor were another you. Do this. Satisfy the Law, and you will live.

The lawyer begins to understand that this could be harder than he thought. The price of eternal life is very high. The Law requires a lot. Much more than most people imagine. People figure, “Well, I certainly love the Lord!” Do you? How well do you love Him deep down? Do you love Him so much that you’re always content with what He sends, with what He allows, with the life He has given you? Do you love Him so much that you’re always patient when you’re suffering? Always eager to hear His Word? Always zealous to pray? Always willing and eager to do what God says instead of what’s expedient at the moment, or what would bring pleasure and momentary happiness? Even if you lived up to the high standard of the Good Samaritan, truly loving your neighbor as yourself, it’s even harder to live up to the command to love the Lord your God.

But even if you think you’ve managed to love the Lord as much as the Law requires, there’s the other summary of the Law: Love your neighbor as yourself. Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. Do for your neighbor everything you want someone to do for you. And do it from the heart, with no hesitation, with no hard feelings, and with no regret.

The price of admission to eternal life is high, if you’re going to buy your way in. The lawyer in the Gospel was hoping he could lower the price a little by whittling down the number of people he had to love as himself. The lawyer, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” In answer, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan.

To summarize, a man, walking along the road, was mugged, beaten half to death, and left on the side of the road to die. Two Jewish men walk by—a priest and a Levite, representatives of the Law of Moses. They do nothing for the injured man. They just keep walking. Then a Samaritan walks by—half Jew, half Gentile, a natural enemy of the full-blooded Jews. He has compassion on the injured man. He lovingly tends to his wounds, lifts him up onto his own animal, takes him to an inn, tends to his wounds some more, and leaves money with the innkeeper to care for him until he gets back.

That’s just one example of what it truly looks like to love your neighbor as yourself. That’s what it would look like if people actually kept the Law to “love your neighbor as yourself.” In a word, it looks like mercy: care and compassion for your neighbor that begins in the heart as you’re moved to pity by another person’s desperate need. If it’s genuine mercy, it doesn’t stay in the heart, but expands into action. Every day. All the time. That’s loving your neighbor as yourself that satisfies the demands of the Law.

It’s beautiful. And it’s horrifying. Because the Law doesn’t say, Do this once in a while. And it doesn’t say, Try to do this. It says, Do this—continually, in every case, every time, throughout your life, even while you continue to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength—and you will live.

The price of admission to eternal life is really that high, if you’re going to buy your way in.

But Jesus told the Parable of the Good Samaritan, not to urge anyone to buy their way, but to bring us all to despair of ever buying our way in. And once we despair of that, He has a different answer for us. What shall I do to inherit eternal life? Accept God’s invitation to enter for free. That is, trust in the Good Samaritan, Jesus.

He saw us injured by the devil, and by our own sinfulness. He saw us unable to help ourselves. And He saw that the priest and the Levite—that is, the Law with its demands and punishments—could do nothing to help people who were already sinful and unclean. So He took pity on us. He joined Himself to our human race. He fulfilled the Law’s demands. He satisfied the Law. He loved God His Father as a man, and He loved His neighbor by giving every moment of His life, and even His life itself, for our healing. And even when He ascended into heaven, He left us in the care of innkeepers—the ministers of the His Church—to keep tending to our wounds, to keep forgiving our sins, to keep giving us the Holy Sacrament, that “medicine of immortality,” to keep helping us to get better, so that we love more and sin less, even though that recovery will never be complete in this life. That’s what Christ has done for us, with the promise that all who trust in Him, our Good Samaritan, will surely inherit eternal life as a free gift.

You see, this is the Gospel that so many in Israel didn’t understand from the Old Testament, even though the promises were there all along. Abraham himself, long before the Law of Moses was given, received the promise of inheriting eternal life as a gift—a gift to be received by faith, not by works.

That’s why Paul’s letter to the Galatians is so helpful—the Epistle you heard today. It spells all this out in unmistakable clarity. God made His covenant with Abraham as a promise. I will be your God and the God of your offspring, the God of your seed. That seed of Abraham included all who were born of Abraham until The Seed of Abraham came. That’s Jesus, the promised Seed of Abraham. The promise wasn’t made on the condition that Abraham must love the Lord with his whole heart and love his neighbor as himself. That law wasn’t added until hundreds of years after Abraham died. The Law, Paul says, was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was actually made. In other words, the Law wasn’t added to give people a way to earn eternal life. The Law was given by Moses to show the Israelites how full of transgressions they were, to show them that the harder they tried to keep the Law, the more sins they would commit, to show them how desperately they needed God’s mercy, how desperately they needed the Seed, the Christ, that they might be saved through faith in the promise.

That’s why Jesus said to His disciples in the first verses of today’s Gospel, Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see; for I tell you that many prophets and kings have desired to see what you see, and have not seen it, and to hear what you hear, and have not heard it. The time of the Law was fading away. The time of the Gospel had fully come. Stop trying to buy your way or to earn your way into eternal life. It has never worked. Instead, as Paul answered the jailor in Philippi who asked a similar question to the lawyer, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?—He said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.

But the Holy Spirit isn’t done with us when he’s brought us to trust in God’s mercy, to trust in Jesus our Good Samaritan. Trusting in Christ the Good Samaritan will begin to turn you into a good Samaritan. It must! With faith comes new life. With faith comes love. Love for God. And love for your neighbor. Faith allows a person to see this parable in a new light, too. Not as a, “This is what you have to do if you want to earn God’s favor and escape His condemnation.” But as a, “This is how your merciful Father, who has saved you and adopted you and made you His child by mercy, wants you to be toward your neighbor.” Be like Jesus. Be like the Good Samaritan. Go and do likewise!

You Christians have been set free from buying your way into heaven. You’ve been led by the Holy Spirit to accept God’s invitation to enter for free by faith in Christ Jesus. As sick people who have been tended by the loving hand of the Good Samaritan, who have already been healed through the forgiveness of sins and are now on the path of healing to be renewed in godliness day by day, learn from the Good Samaritan, both to trust in Him and to grow in love and mercy by watching Him. Then you will have used this parable rightly. Amen.