Like a Good Neighbor | Sunday, April 26, 2026

And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested Jesus, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" ... "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." ... But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" ... "So which of these three do you think was a neighbor to him who fell among thieves?" And he said, "He who showed mercy on him." And Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise." (Luke 10:25–37)

The most famous story Jesus ever told was aimed at a man who thought he already knew it all — and it reveals that only Christ can change the heart.

The Know-It-All Question

For nearly twenty years I had the privilege of teaching at a Bible college — basic doctrines, church planting, hermeneutics, homiletics, Isaiah, Jeremiah, the Gospel of John, Romans, the Sermon on the Mount. And almost every semester there would be at least one know-it-all student. The thing about know-it-alls is that they want you to know they know it all — and sometimes they want everybody to know they know more than the instructor.

I'm not a big fan of know-it-alls. I value what's called epistemic humility — being humble about what you know and don't know. The problem with know-it-alls is they don't know that they don't know it all. Don Rumsfeld called these the "unknown unknowns." That's the trouble with blind spots: you don't know you have one.

One way know-it-alls tip their hand is by publicly asking a question they already think they know the answer to — hoping to draw out approval, or to catch the teacher off guard. Peter does this in Matthew 18. He asks, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" You can tell it's a show-off question because he supplies the answer himself.

And what an answer. The rabbinical teaching of the day, drawn from Amos — "for three transgressions ... and for four, I will not turn away its punishment" — was that you forgave someone up to three times; the fourth time, you're out. Peter doubles it and adds one. He expects a pat on the back. Instead Jesus says, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven." How many of us are grateful today that God is a forgiving God who isn't up in heaven keeping a tally?

A Certain Lawyer

We meet another man asking a know-it-all question in Luke 10, and out of it comes one of Jesus's most famous stories. The context is everything. If you miss the context, the Good Samaritan becomes a moralistic plumb line used to bludgeon people — "Be nicer; be more like the Samaritan." That's true as far as it goes, but it misses the punch.

There are at least four things to notice in verse 25. First, "a certain lawyer stood up." A lawyer in the first century was not a legal representative who passed the bar; he was a scholar — an expert in the Pentateuch, the law of Moses. Often called a scribe, he spent his life with the manuscripts, copying them with painstaking care, knowing not just the syntax — the jots and tittles — but the semantics, the meaning. This is the PhD in the Pentateuch, well-versed in the rabbinical interpretations and the Talmud.

Second, he "stood up and tested" Jesus. To the expert, Jesus was just a carpenter from Galilee — and Galileans were known by their accent, the way Peter's speech later betrayed him. We tend to ascribe intelligence based on accent; our hearts are wicked that way. I've met Europeans with thick accents who speak five languages while I can barely manage one. Jesus likely had a Galilean accent too. And in that day, to be a rabbi meant you had studied under another rabbi — pedigree mattered, as it still does in the academy. Saul of Tarsus boasted he was trained under Gamaliel. But Jesus was the rabbi without a rabbi, the itinerant minister from Nazareth.

Third, the lawyer calls Jesus "Teacher" — Rabbi. I assume a certain tone in it: "So I hear you're a rabbi" — coming from a man who actually was one.

What Shall I Do?

Fourth, notice the question itself: "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" There's a discontinuity there. Do you do anything to receive an inheritance? No. This reveals the lawyer's worldview. A couple of years ago Dennis Prager — a Jewish scholar who has written excellent commentaries on the Torah from a Jewish perspective — said in a public conversation, "My faith is a behaviorist religion. We care about your behavior. We're not so worried about the interiority of your heart." But the most well-known Jewish rabbi in history, Jesus of Nazareth, held a different view. He was deeply concerned about the interiority of the heart.

This lawyer is like that. For him it's about behavior: "What do I do to inherit eternal life?" But inheritance comes to a person not by what they do, but by who they are. For the Christian, behavior follows relational position. For this man, standing is entirely about doing.

So Jesus, like a good rabbi, answers a question with a question: "What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?" The lawyer is the expert — so Jesus asks the expert. And notice what Jesus does not do. If someone asked you tomorrow, "What do I need to do to inherit eternal life?" you'd probably snap into evangelist mode — the four spiritual laws, the Romans Road, your testimony. Jesus doesn't do that. Jesus isn't trying to make a sale; He's trying to make a disciple.

The Law Demands Perfect Love

The lawyer surfaces the essential core of the law, the Shema from Deuteronomy 6: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength." And he adds Leviticus 19:18, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." He starts with the vertical relationship of loving God, then goes to the horizontal relationship of loving others.

Jesus's reply stuns me: "You have answered rightly. Do this and you will live." That stumbles me, because I don't believe you can merit eternal life by your works. Ephesians 2:8 says, "For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast." So why does Jesus say, "Do this and live"?

Point one: the law demands perfect love. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself" — that is perfect love. The law demands something I cannot do. If the lawyer went out and truly tried to do it, he would soon discover he can't. As Paul says, "By the law is the knowledge of sin." Jesus is leading this man to that discovery — moving him from his head to his heart. The lawyer knew how to love with his mind; that wasn't the issue.

The Heart Seeks Self-Justification

The conversation could have ended right there. But the lawyer is testing Jesus, so he can't stop. Underline these four words: "wanting to justify himself." That's exactly what the law and religion do — they want to justify themselves. "I did all the points, I checked all the boxes." So, like a good lawyer looking for a loophole, he asks, "And who is my neighbor?"

Point two: the heart seeks self-justification. I'm not pointing a critical finger at the lawyer — this is my heart too, and yours. I'd suggest that some seventy-five percent of marital fights have everything to do with self-justification. The lawyer knew the syntax — the order of the words, the jots and tittles — and he wanted the semantics, the interpretation. For him, syntax and semantics lead to praxis: the actions.

But Jesus injects something more — a sentiment. There's a movement here from the merely logical in the head down into the heart, and it's a hard move for us. Part of it comes out in the language. The original Shema in Deuteronomy 6 says "heart, soul, and strength," but here the lawyer says "heart, soul, mind, and strength." Why the addition? About 300 years before Christ, translators rendered the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek in the Septuagint, and they added "mind." The Hebrew mind made no division between intellect and emotion within the soul — they were one. But the Hellenistic world, shaped by Aristotle and Socrates, divided head from heart, so to capture the full Hebrew meaning the Greek translators had to spell out "mind" as well.

The problem is that we, like all Hellenistic thinkers, make divisions God doesn't make. When He says "heart, soul, mind, and strength," He isn't giving us categories to work through one at a time — "I've got loving God with my heart down, now let me work on my soul." He's saying: love Me with your whole being, and love your neighbor wholly, the same way you love yourself. We even split it further now — left brain, right brain — but God simply wants us to love Him and others with our entire being. Every married man has had that conversation: "I'm just not sure you love me." "I really do — think of all the things I do for you." We divide it into categories. God says, love Me completely.

The Story

So how do you inject a new variable into a mind-centered lawyer? Jesus tells a story — perhaps the most famous He ever told. A man travels from Jerusalem to Jericho — two towns only seventeen miles apart, but separated by a 3,000-foot descent through rocky, desolate, cave-filled country notorious for robbers. A man being robbed on that road isn't newsworthy; it's a Tuesday. It would be newsworthy if it didn't happen.

First comes a priest — one who performs the sacrifices in the temple. He sees the man and passes by on the other side. Then a Levite — among the priests, the Levites were the teachers of the law. He looks, and he passes by on the other side. By now the scribe expects the hero to be a scribe like himself. Instead Jesus says: a certain Samaritan.

The Jews and Samaritans hated one another with a hatred we can hardly capture. Let me frame it for our day. A man fell among thieves, and Greg Laurie came and passed by on the other side — "No way, not Greg." Then John MacArthur looked and passed by — "That would never happen." And then Gavin Newsom came, and he was moved with compassion and tended to him — "Not him! Please, not him." That's the shock the lawyer felt.

Here's the amazing thing: the priest and Levite could show you legal reasons for their indifference. Leviticus 21 forbids a priest to defile himself for the dead, and Numbers 19 says he who touches a dead body is unclean seven days. This man might be dead. "I know the letter of the law. I'm legally required not to get involved." They had the syntax and semantics figured out. But a certain Samaritan saw him and was moved with compassion.

The Law of Love

Point three: the law of love moves us to merciful compassion. I don't have to spend hours dividing heart, soul, mind, and strength, or working out exactly what "love your neighbor as yourself" requires. The law of love simply moves us to merciful compassion — and that looks like the Samaritan, who bandaged the wounds, poured in oil and wine, set the man on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and paid for his care.

Then Jesus levels the punch: "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to him who fell among thieves?" He flips the script. The lawyer asked, "Who qualifies as my neighbor?" Jesus asks, "Who acted like a neighbor?" That's a huge difference. The answer is obvious, yet the lawyer can't bring himself to say "the Samaritan." He says, "He who showed mercy on him." And Jesus says, "Go and do likewise."

That's the application — but the frame is completely different. Here's the key: it isn't just about behavior. This is the problem with religion; it tends toward mere behavior modification. Do this, don't do that, check the boxes, and call yourself righteous. But Jesus doesn't hand us bullet points. He says, "This is what love looks like" — and it may look different in your context, for the person God puts in front of you to love. Now you have to sort that out.

Christ Transplants the Heart

It isn't just about behavior modification, right thinking, or right action. There's something more, and this is where Christ comes in. With enough effort you can change your thinking — a good cognitive behavioral therapist and some work can make a better you. You can change your actions; that's what every self-help book on Amazon is about. But you cannot change your heart. There is, however, Someone who can.

Point four: Christ transforms our heads by transplanting our hearts. That's the gospel. It was prophesied 500 years before Jesus by Ezekiel: "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep them" (Ezekiel 36:26). That is the promise of the gospel — and the good news I need every day.

Closing Prayer

God, thank You for Your word. It is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, and it challenges us at such deep levels. It reveals the thoughts and intents of my heart. It challenges me where I think I've done all the things — I followed the syntax and the semantics and the praxis, I checked all the boxes — and You say, "No, there's something more I want to deal with." God, would You deal with that in me, at the heart level? Help me understand that it's not just about the doing and the thinking and standing in the right place at the right time, but about the thing only You can do — transforming our hearts and changing us from the inside out, more and more into the image and likeness of Your children. Do that work, we pray. We ask it in Jesus' name, and all those who agreed said, Amen.