What Can We Learn from the Good Samaritan Parable?

It started out with a single woman who noticed the driver slumped over the steering wheel as the car began to move out into a busy intersection. As the woman tried to help the driver by pounding on the window, she soon realized that this was not a case of someone falling asleep at the wheel, but a real medical situation that could be dramatically worsened if the car and driver careened into other vehicles. The woman trying to help started motioning other people to come over and attempt to stop the vehicle. Soon five more people joined and were able to stop the car. They eventually broke the rear passenger-side window, and a man was able to climb in and unlock the doors. Soon, medical help arrived, and the driver was taken to the hospital, where she was treated.

Presupposing a Biblical Worldview

The people involved were called “public heroes” and Good Samaritans. And it is not hard to see why, when compared to the biblical parable told by Jesus in Luke 10:30–37. Like the Samaritan, these heroes did not know the victim, and they selflessly acted to save another person at their own expense. Indeed, as they were trying to stop the car, had one of them slipped or another driver been careless, they could have been seriously injured or killed. But like the Samaritan, they cared little about the consequences or expense to themselves. They helped the female driver because they had compassion and because it was the right thing to do.

But why was it the right thing to do? It’s doubtful that if you asked each of the six people involved in the episode that they would declare upfront that their worldview was what motivated their desire to help the driver of that car. But in reality, it was crucial. After all, in a secular humanistic/evolutionary worldview, there are no moral absolutes. No one creature is more worthy than another, and if (relativistic) truth be told, mankind is viewed as a plague to the rest of nature. But that worldview held no sway over these people as they saw a human being, made in God’s image (whether they consciously thought of this or not is unknown), in danger, and they leapt into action to save her and possibly other humans. They acted altruistically and at probable cost to themselves (perhaps this made them late for work or appointments of their own).

In the video, other drivers left the scene or stayed in their cars, unconcerned, too busy, too scared to help, or perhaps even unaware of the plight of the woman or the unfolding potential tragedy. But these six people stood out from the crowd, precisely because they had compassion on the female driver’s condition. Whether they knew it or not, their worldview that human life is precious can only stem from a biblical worldview.

From Modern-Day Heroes to the Good Samaritan Parable

Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan, not just to expound a lesson on heroism or selfless action, but to demonstrate who our neighbors are and how we are to treat them. Jesus radically expanded the concept of “who is our neighbor” with this parable. It was not just friends or people who lived locally, nor was it only fellow countrymen, but Jesus deliberately used a Samaritan man in his parable. Samaritans were despised by the Jewish people because they had different religious traditions, including a syncretistic worship of idols (2 Kings 17:29–33), which was not in accord with what God had decreed in the Old Testament, and were only half-Jewish or less (2 Kings 17:24; Ezra 4:9–10). And Samaritans still harbored resentment toward the Jewish people because they worshipped God in the temple at Jerusalem and not on Mt. Gerizim, which they considered sacred (cf. Luke 9:51–53; John 4:20).

Jesus used both negative and positive examples in his parable. And while we often focus on the Good Samaritan because he was the one who took action, we should not overlook the negative examples.

How Not to Be a Neighbor

Jesus told the parable to a lawyer who had somewhat mockingly asked, “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29) in response to his own quote from Leviticus 19:18. Jesus then started his parable with a robbery. This would have been a familiar theme at the time, as the road from Jerusalem to Jericho had become infamous for the many thieves who watched the road, hoping to make a quick strike robbing travelers and looting caravans without sufficient guards. The robbers were obviously not good neighbors, but they were only the beginning of the negative examples Jesus was going to use.

After the robbery occurs and the traveler has been beaten and left for dead (Luke 10:30), we meet two other poor examples of neighborliness. The first is a priest who deliberately crossed to the other side of the road so as not to have to come in contact with the wounded man (Luke 10:31). A Levite did likewise (Luke 10:32). These two religious leaders were fellow countrymen to the traveler. Seeing a wounded Jewish man on the side of the road should have stirred some sympathy and caused them to stop and help. As religious leaders especially, they would have been familiar with Leviticus 19:18, which told Israelites, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”; Psalm 15:3, which extols the man who “does no evil to his neighbor”; Proverbs 14:21, which states, “Whoever despises his neighbor is a sinner, but blessed is he who is generous to the poor”; and Zechariah 8:17 (NKJV), which warns, “Let none of you think evil in your heart against your neighbor.” Just like the lawyer who asked Jesus this question, these men failed to realize that all people they could help were their neighbors. But even that is no excuse, for this man was a fellow Jew. Scripture would furthermore call these leaders who failed to show any compassion wicked: “The soul of the wicked desires evil; his neighbor finds no mercy in his eyes” (Proverbs 21:10). They could not even try to use their religious service as an excuse to not help a person in need, for God had told the Israelites, “For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, And the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6 NKJV).

How To Be a Good Neighbor

But Jesus pivots the story at this point with an unexpected hero: a Samaritan. Now the Samaritan could have refrained from getting involved, claiming that he was not a fellow Jew, or he could have told himself that the robbers might come back and used that as an excuse to hurry away. But Jesus relates that the Samaritan saw the injured traveler and had compassion (Luke 10:33). Although not fully Jewish, the Samaritans did accept the Pentateuch as inspired Scripture. He might have remembered Leviticus 18:19 and even recalled that all people are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27, 9:6). But whether he recalled those passages or not, he put that compassion into action. Jesus is here giving us an example of agape love.

This Samaritan bound up the traveler’s wounds, put him on his animal (likely a donkey), and took him to the closest city where he paid for the wounded Jewish man to be lodged in an inn and taken care of (Luke 10:34–35). This was a self-sacrificing compassion, involving both emotion and action, unlike another negative example: “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?” (James 2:15–16). John also mentions this same type of negative example in 1 John, “But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:17–18). This Samaritan loved in truth and showed his love by his deeds.

As the people in the video who acted in compassion when they saw a driver in medical need, the Samaritan likewise did everything at his own expense and at his own risk. He did not do so grudgingly, but his heart was moved by the plight of the injured man. And today, God calls us to be the same kind of neighbor—with compassion, patience, forgiveness, and kindness.

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. (Colossians 3:12–14)

But showing love and compassion for Christians does not only apply to us taking care of others’ physical needs. Recall that Jesus said that “the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10), referring to those who did not yet believe in his name, and Peter later recalled Jesus’ command to his disciples “to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (Acts 10:42–43). The apostle James expanded on this same theme of showing practical love by preaching the gospel in James 5:20: “Let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.”

As Christians, we are called to be good neighbors to everyone we come into contact with. The parable of the Good Samaritan is not just a nice story about some nebulous “social gospel” but is an example of sacrificially and practically loving someone who hates you. And who despises Christians more than those who do not know Christ as their Lord and Savior? In Matthew 10:22, 24:9, Mark 13:13, and Luke 21:17, Jesus tells his disciples that they would “be hated by all for my name’s sake.” And in John 15:18–19, Jesus told them plainly, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” Yet the command of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19–20) still stands, and we are to all be Good Samaritans to our neighbors.