The Enemy Who Stopped

Imagine a teacher tells the class, "Invite everyone to the party." A boy puts up his hand. "Everyone in the whole class? Or just the people I like?"

He is not really asking a question. He is looking for the edge. He wants to know who he is allowed to leave out.

A grown man once asked Jesus that kind of question about God's command to love. Jesus answered with one of the most famous stories ever told. Most people remember it as "be kind to strangers." Read slowly, it says something harder. The man wanted to know who he could leave out, and Jesus made that person the hero.

Where this happens

The story is in Luke, one of the four books that tell the life of Jesus. Jesus is walking toward Jerusalem, the capital city, where he knows he will die (Luke 9:51).

Not long before, he passed through a village in Samaria, a region in the middle of the country. Jews and Samaritans worshipped the same God, but on different mountains, and for hundreds of years they had hated each other. The village refused to welcome Jesus. Two of his closest followers, James and John, asked if they should call fire down from heaven to burn it. Jesus turned and told them off (Luke 9:52-55).

Now an expert in God's law stands up to test Jesus. He is not a courtroom lawyer but a teacher of the commands God gave Israel. He asks what he must do to inherit eternal life, the life with God that never ends.

Jesus asks what the law says. The man answers with two lines from it: love God with everything you have (Deuteronomy 6:5), and love your neighbour as yourself. Jesus says, "You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live" (Luke 10:28).

That should end the talk. It does not.

1. He wanted to know who he could leave out

But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

Luke 10:29

To "justify himself" means to make himself look right. So he tries to shrink the command until it fits what he has already done. If "neighbour" only means my own kind of people, maybe I have kept the rule after all.

His own Bible had already closed that door. The command he quoted comes from Leviticus, a book of God's laws for Israel. Read alone, it sounds like it is only about "your own people," other Israelites (Leviticus 19:18). But sixteen verses later, the same chapter says this:

You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

Leviticus 19:34

A stranger who "sojourns" is a foreigner living among them. God told Israel to love that outsider too, because they knew how it felt. They had once been foreigners and slaves in Egypt. The line the expert wanted to draw was already crossed out in the law he knew by heart.

People kept drawing the line anyway. Jesus said so in another talk, written down in Matthew, another book about his life:

You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I say to you, Love your enemies...

Matthew 5:43-44

No verse in God's law says "hate your enemy." People had added it because it felt fair. Jesus did not move the line further out. He took it away.

That does not mean you must fix every problem on earth. Paul, a leader who wrote letters to the first churches, told some believers who were tired of doing good:

So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.

Galatians 6:10

"The household of faith" means fellow believers, God's family. Paul admits there is an order. You cannot help everyone in the world, and you owe something special to those closest to you. But he starts with "everyone," and "opportunity" means the person in front of you. Love can have an order. It cannot have a list of people you may ignore.

2. The man who stopped was the enemy

Jesus does not answer with a definition. He tells a story. A man was walking the lonely road down from Jerusalem to Jericho, a town far below in a desert valley. Robbers took his clothes, beat him, and left him "half dead" (Luke 10:30).

Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite... But a Samaritan... came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.

Luke 10:31-33

A priest served at God's temple in Jerusalem, the building where Israel worshipped. A Levite was a temple helper. These were the most religious men on that road. Luke never says why they walked past, so we should not invent a reason. But notice that all three men "saw" him. Seeing was not the difference. What they did next was.

Then comes the shock. The man who stops is a Samaritan. Not long after James and John wanted to burn a Samaritan village, Jesus makes a Samaritan the hero. He has compassion: he feels the man's pain enough to do something.

He cleans the wounds with oil and wine, the first aid of the day, and bandages them. He puts the man on his own animal and walks him to an inn, a roadside place to stay. He pays two silver coins, about two days' wages, and promises to cover whatever more it costs (Luke 10:34-35).

How deep did the hate go? The book of John records a Samaritan woman's surprise when Jesus, a Jew, simply asked her for a drink of water:

How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)

John 4:9

"No dealings" means they would not even share a cup. Now picture the kid everyone at school makes fun of being the only one who stops when you fall, while your friends keep walking.

The Samaritan's help cost him something real: oil, wine, his ride, his money, his time. John wrote about that kind of love in a letter to churches where some people talked a lot about loving God:

Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

1 John 3:18

"Little children" is John's warm name for the readers he cared for. A "deed" is something you actually do. John means that love you only talk about is not yet love. The priest and the Levite may have felt sorry. Feeling sorry did not bandage anything.

3. Jesus turned the question around

"Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy." And Jesus said to him, "You go, and do likewise."

Luke 10:36-37

The expert asked, "Who is my neighbour?" He meant, who do I have to love? Jesus asks, "Who acted like a neighbour?" The question is no longer who deserves your help. It is whether you will be the one who stops.

Mercy is kindness to someone in trouble who cannot pay you back. Notice the expert's answer. He does not say "the Samaritan." He says "the one who showed him mercy." Maybe he could not bring himself to say the word.

"Do likewise" means do the same. Here the story gets uncomfortable. The man first asked how to inherit eternal life, and Jesus said, "do this, and you will live." Who loves like that every day? Not the priest, the Levite, the expert, or us. If life with God depends on loving perfectly, nobody gets in.

That is where Jesus himself comes in. He did not tell this story as a hidden picture of himself; its plain point is for the expert. But the pattern is hard to miss. Once, while arguing with him in Jerusalem, some of Jesus' enemies insulted him by calling him a Samaritan (John 8:48). They meant he was an outsider who did not belong to God. The one they called a Samaritan is the one who stopped for us.

Paul explained to the Christians in Rome how God makes peace with people:

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us... while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son...

Romans 5:8-10

Sinners are people who do wrong against God. "Christ" is a title for Jesus, the King God promised to send. "Reconciled" means brought back together as friends after a fight. God did not wait for us to become good. While we were still his enemies, Jesus died on a cross to bring us back. The Samaritan paid two coins. Jesus paid with his life.

That is also where the strength to "go and do likewise" comes from. John put it simply: "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). Real love does not start with us trying harder. It grows in people who know they were the one lying in the road, and someone stopped.

What to do with this

Name the person you would leave out. Think of one person you would rather not help: the classmate everyone avoids, the neighbour who complains, the relative who hurt you. This week, do one useful thing for them that costs you time, money, or pride.

Go over, do not walk past. When someone is crying, left out, or carrying too much, go over and ask, "What do you need?"

Do something, not just say something. If a friend is sick, do not only send a message saying you are sorry. Take them the homework they missed, or a meal.

Remember who stopped for you. Tonight, thank Jesus by name for coming to you when you were on the wrong side.

The expert wanted a short list of people he had to love. Jesus gave him a road and a man lying on it. The question is not who counts as your neighbour. It is whether you will stop, because Jesus stopped for you.