“But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Luke 10:29
You may be familiar with this passage. I read it again today in my quiet time. It’s one of those passages that we know so well that we may think we have all that it is saying, but there may be something fresh for us yet.
So, just for background, this lawyer guy asks Jesus how to inherit eternal life. Jesus turns the question back to him and asks him “what is in the Law? How do you read it?” The man answered well by saying that the law dictates that we love God completely and our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus said, “Right! Now go do that.”
This is when the man wanted to justify himself and asked “and who is my neighbor?” Jesus tells the famous Parable of the Good Samaritan at this point. I’ll let you go read that in Luke 10:30-37 if you need a refresher. But if we are not careful we may think that Jesus is somehow playing by this guy’s rules. We could think that Jesus tells this story to answer the lawyer’s question, “who is my neighbor?”.
But, Jesus ends the story by asking a completely different question that totally reframes the concerns we are to bring to the story. Remember, the lawyer wants to know “who is my neighbor?” But Jesus tells the story to ask a different question, “which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?”
Jesus isn’t telling a story that limits who our neighbor is, He is telling a story that tells us how to be a loving neighbor to anyone and everyone. Here’s the danger for us. “Limiting questions” according to this passage can be a sign of self-justification for what I already want to do. “It’s only these kind of people, right?” But the kingdom response is not to be limited to certain kinds of people, the kingdom response is expansive because it is founded in the ever-increasing self-sacrificial love that imitates our Savior. The kingdom response doesn’t ask questions that limit like “who do I love?”, rather it asks expansive questions like, “how can I love?”