Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJames Nisbet Commentary - Luke 10:29 - 10:29
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
‘But he, willing to justify himself, said …’
Luk_10:29
I. As good as my neighbour.—He, willing to justify himself, said, I have been looking round, and it strikes me that I am every whit as good as my neighbours. There is a disposition amongst us all, and exercised, more or less, to compare ourselves with one another. We must cease such a method of comparing advantages and honours, and must go to the absolute and final standard of righteousness.
II. ‘I trust to the mercy of God.’—But he, willing to justify himself, said, Though I do not believe and act as they do who call themselves Christians, yet I trust to the mercy of God. Where is His mercy? It is in the life, the ministry, the death, the resurrection, and the whole mediation of Jesus Christ.
III. Religion too mysterious.—But he, willing to justify himself, said, There is so much mystery about religion that I really cannot attempt to understand it. I answer, There is mystery about religion, but there is ten thousand times more mystery without it. Life is a mystery. All that is great touches the mysterious. In proportion as a thing rises from irregularity and commonplace, it rises into wondrousness, and wondrousness is but the first round of the ladder, whose head rests upon the infinite mysteries. There is a point in my religious inquiries where I must close my eyes, look no more, but rest myself in the grand transaction which is known as faith in the Son of God.
IV. So many denominations.—But he, willing to justify himself, came at last to this, There are so many denominations of Christians that it is impossible to tell which is right and which is wrong. Yes, there are many regiments, but one army; many denominations, but one Church; many creeds, but one faith; many aspects, but one life; many ways up the hill, but one Cross at the top of it. Don’t lose yourself among the diversities when you might save yourself by looking at the unities.
‘Who is my neighbour?’
Luk_10:29
I. A low spiritual standard.—But possibly the very interest of the parable and its universal application to ourselves may have dwarfed or hidden from us what I call the psychological interest of the incident in the development of the questioner himself. He addressed an inquiry to our Lord, probably in perfect honesty and good faith, an inquiry which represents very fairly the spiritual standard of his day. It was ‘What shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ And from the way in which our Lord treats it, it is evident, I think, that He detected in the question two total inadequacies in the man’s conception of life and its possibilities:
(a) That he regarded the eternal life hereafter as a possession to be entered into rather than a character to be acquired, as something to be bestowed from without, not something to be lived into from within; and
(b) As the inevitable consequence of that, that to him the highest conduct was simply a means to an end and not an end, a supreme end, in itself. This will come out further, I think, as we go on.
II. Conduct and life.—‘Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? What conduct here and now is required of me as a means to an end?’ Not, ‘What conduct is supreme and perfect in itself, and worthy to be regarded as an end without anything coming beyond?’ ‘That I may inherit eternal life,’ that is the reward purchased by conduct paid down; ‘I may enter into’ a possession to be bestowed upon him hereafter by God. Mark the conceptions. You see one of conduct and the other of life. Conduct as a means to an end, and life as a possession to be entered into. Our Lord appeals to a standard with which the man was well acquainted, into which he shows himself to have entered rather deeply, to bring out the inadequacy of his conceptions. ‘What is written in the Law? How readest thou?’ And the man replied with that glorious summary which reduced the whole Law to love. And when he has made this answer, our Lord rejoins to him, ‘This do, and thou shalt enter into life’? No; for that would have been coming down to his own conception: ‘This do, and thou shalt live.’ This do, and eternal life, which you look for hereafter as a possession, shall be realised by you as a character now. Then comes that which I have spoken of as apparently the turning-point; the two conceptions are before the man, and for that moment, at any rate, he chooses the lower. ‘He, willing to justify himself,’ wishing to establish the justifiability of the position with which he started, answered, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ That is to say, who is not my neighbour? To ask ‘who is my neighbour?’ acknowledges that there are those who are not your neighbours, limits your duty to those who are; in fact, brings the whole question of life and its possibilities, its character and its reward, back to the old level with which he started. From that we see the whole meaning and scope of the parable. What does it come to?
III. The parable.—Our Lord tells him that there were once three men, two of whom took that conception of conduct as a means to an end, not as the supreme end in itself, two of whom regarded life as a possession to be purchased and entered into and not as a character to be lived; but a third to whom life meant opportunity, to whom conduct was supreme, to whom eternal life, something to be begun here and now in the perfect development of one’s self by God’s help, and so, and so only, to be realised as a possession, assured, eternal hereafter. Shall we not say this of the good Samaritan, that if he never realised before what eternal life was, he began to live it there and then on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho!
Bishop Mylne.
A MORAL REVELATION
On what does the teaching of the parable rest?
I. It depends on a natural fact—the fact that we all derive our life from a common parent. ‘God has made of one blood all the nations of the earth.’
II. It depends on the high honour put upon our race by our Lord Jesus Christ. He took our nature upon Him. Our common nature has been ennobled by this companionship with our exalted Lord.
III. A lesson for all time.—In the darkest time the good Samaritan has lived on in the Church of the Divine Saviour; and he is just as difficult, and by God’s grace he is just as easy of imitation in our own day as ever. ‘Go and do thou likewise.’
Rev. Canon Liddon.
Illustration‘The parable shows how easy it is for men of the sanctuary to be far less tender-hearted than laymen, who pass their lives in matters which have nothing to do, for the most part, with the things of God. It gives us a rich and instructive lesson in the practical character of genuine philanthropy, and it shadows out the Divine charity, taking compassion in the fullness of the centuries, upon the wounds of suffering humanity, and placing redeemed man in the holy home of souls till the end of time. But we turn from these points to consider the one point, “Who is my neighbour?” Our Lord answers the lawyer by a counter question. “Which of the three, priest, Levite, Samaritan, was neighbour to the wounded man?” This word neighbour He implies involves reciprocal relationship. “As thyself.” Human self-love is to be the measure of Christian charity. The neighbour of the parable is the Samaritan, who feels that had he been the wounded man the Jew ought to have helped him. A Samaritan! What a neighbour to a Jewish imagination! He was a living outrage on all that a Jew revered and loved. Our Lord had chosen an instance which would prove in the clearest terms that this law of neighbourly duty has no frontier whatever within the human family.’