“‘And who is my neighbor’?…” – Luke 10:29
The parable of the Good Samaritan is a Christian favorite, challenging hearers to give of themselves to those in need even when the cost is great. The popular takeaway is to not be like the first two passerbys who were entirely unhelpful, but to be like the helpful one instead. Centering ourselves as the heroes of the story, which us westerners tend to do, modern readers finish the parable with renewed zeal to be more giving and helpful to those “less fortunate”.
That’s not a bad message to pull from the story. The actions of the Samaritan should inspire us to give, help, love, and serve. God wants His followers doing all of those good works (Acts 20:35). However, the context of the parable sheds a not-so inspirational light on the message.
The Lawyer, in asking about obtaining eternal life, wants to clarify the parameters of the command to “love your neighbor”. Jesus responds by daring to suggest the subject of their racism and nationalist ire displays more righteousness than they, shocking them into confronting the role their prejudice plays in disobeying God’s greatest commandments.
Pastor Paul Lawler from Memphis’ Christ Church points out that the lawyer in the story was the equivalent of a professor of Old Testament law. Although he was an expert in the knowledge of God’s word, he still sought out justifications for not loving everyone. The parable was meant to call out the hypocrisy of the religious while dignifying the sacred worth of the Samaritan people. Who might the characters be if Jesus were telling this parable to today’s religious westerners?
A Bible teacher stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What does the Bible say?” he replied. “How do you read it?” He answered, “‘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, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
In reply Jesus said: “A man was traveling from New York to Florida, when he was mugged. They took all his clothes, beat him, and left him for dead. A pastor happened to be driving down the same road, and when he saw the man, he kept driving. Next, a Christian influencer drove by, saw him, and kept driving. But an undocumented immigrant, as he drove along, pulled his car over; and when he saw him, he felt bad for him. He got out of his car and administered first aid. Then he put the man in his own car, took him to urgent care, stayed with him, then brought him to his own home to stay until the man’s family could come get him. The next day he took the cash he had saved from his farming wages and gave it to the clinic to cover the man’s bill. He gave the administrator his contact information and said, “If there are any additional charges, I’ll take care of them”.
“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who was mugged?” The Bible teacher replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
It’s very possible that the expert in the law was charitable and loving to his own countrymen. We don’t know. But race, religion, and borders were the lines where any love he may have had for his fellow image-bearers ended and superiority and disdain began. What he wanted from Jesus was validation for his love’s limits. He needed assurance that he could satisfy the commandments while withholding from those he deemed unworthy.
If I may play devil’s advocate for a moment, there’s a complex history of hard-fought nationhood and identity as God’s own people that made the ancient Jew’s opinions of Samaritans, while wrong, understandable. They were correct that God did set the Hebrews apart as His own people (Exodus 19:5-7), but not because he created them inherently better. They were to show Yahweh to the world through the flourishing they experienced by following His law (Deuteronomy 4:6).
Long before the Israelites or race or kingdoms was the intrinsic value of humanity bearing imago dei. Genesis 1 & 2 would have been understood by Ancient Near East audiences to be a 7-day temple inauguration ceremony, as was common then. The pinnacle of these ceremonies was the placement of an idol in the temple, which for them was the real representation of their god, not merely a symbol. The responsibility fell onto worshipers to care for this image; life and death, blessings or curses depended on it (The Holy Post, February 21, 2025).
By declaring human beings are His image, God is saying that ‘the way that you properly honor Me, the way you properly worship Me, the way you ensure your well-being in the land, is by taking care of My image’. – Skye Jethani
Jesus speaks to the seriousness of imago dei when he says, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me” (Matthew 25:35-40). What we do to/for others, we do to/for Christ (good, bad, or ugly) because they are His image bearers.
When the image of God was screaming for mercy as ICE ripped her child from her arms, you commented “Serves them right”…
Where are our lines where the love we have for our fellow image-bearers end and mistreatment begins? Like the Lawyer, we may have justifications for determining whom we deem worthy, even understandable ones: Fear, familiarity, security, national identity. But Jesus didn’t validate the lawyer’s justifications, He challenged them. And if the thought of Jesus describing the higher righteousness of someone whom we see as less than makes us feel a certain way, then the message of the story in its original context is still working today.
Reflections of a Variant 
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