Who Is My Neighbour

Modern Christianity teaches that the law was set aside and that eternal life is obtained some other way now. This passage opens with a man asking the exact question that doctrine claims to answer, and it is answered in front of a crowd by pointing him back to the law.

And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love Yahuah thy Elohim with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live. — Luke 10:25-28

The man is a lawyer — trained in the law of Moses and paid to teach it. He came to test Yahushua, not to learn from Him. And Yahushua gives him no new arrangement, no new terms, nothing the man had not already read. He asks him what is written in the law and how he reads it.

The lawyer answers out of Moses. The first half of his answer is Deuteronomy 6:5. The second half is Leviticus 19:18. Yahushua tells him the answer is right and gives him one instruction: do it. In the parallel account Yahushua recites the opening of that same passage before the command to love — Yahuah our Elohim is one Yahuah (Mark 12:29). The greatest commandment in Scripture names one, and the man who repeats it is told he answered right.

That frame has to be faced before the story inside it is read. A man asked how to inherit eternal life and was sent to the law. He recited the law and was told he was correct. He was ordered to go and do it. Then a parable was told, and the parable ends by ordering him to go and do it a second time. Every part of this passage is the law. The question is answered from it, the story is argued out of it, and the verdict is a command to keep it.

There is no way to preach the parable of the Samaritan and also teach that the law was done away with. Both ends of the passage have to be cut off before the middle can be used, and that is exactly what is done with it. What is left is a lesson about being decent to strangers, which is not what the man was told to go and do.

One thing should be said plainly as a courtesy, because the passage itself says nothing about it. Nothing here describes how a man comes in. The way in is by blood, and it always was — without shedding of blood there is no remission (Hebrews 9:22). Yahuah provided the lamb Himself (Genesis 22:8), and there is no other door.

But that is not what the lawyer asked. He asked what a man does, and what a man does is the walk that comes after the door. The answer given him for that walk was the law, twice. The error in modern teaching is not that it preaches entry by blood. It is that it stops at the door, calls that the whole of it, and then treats the walk as though it were abolished — while this passage has Yahushua answering a question about the walk out of Moses and confirming the answer as right.

A Loophole in the Commandment

The exchange was finished at verse 28. The parable exists only because the man asked a second question, and Luke names his motive before the story starts: willing to justify himself, he said, And who is my neighbour? (Luke 10:29)

The man was not confused. He was looking for a loophole. He wanted a limit set on the commandment he had just recited — a definition of neighbour small enough that the people he already loved would be all of it. If the word can be kept small, the commandment can be finished. A man with a short list has already done everything required of him.

That is what the parable answers. Not who is righteous. Not how to be kind to strangers. How far the commandment reaches, and where a man is allowed to stop.

He had quoted Leviticus 19:18 and stopped at the words as thyself. Fifteen verses later, in the same chapter he was reading from, the law answers the question he asked.

And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am Yahuah your Elohim. — Leviticus 19:33-34

It is the same command and the same words — love him as thyself — laid on the man who is not one of your own. And Moses goes further than the stranger. The obligation reaches all the way to the enemy.

If thou meet thine enemy’s ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again. If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his burden, and wouldest forbear to help him, thou shalt surely help with him. — Exodus 23:4-5

A law that orders a man to stop for the animal of someone who hates him has already settled whether he stops for a man lying half dead in the road. The same command is repeated to the next generation before they cross into the land (Deuteronomy 22:1-4).

There was no loophole to find. The law he was quoting had already answered the question he was asking, and had answered it long before he asked it.

Two Men Who Held the Law

A man goes down from Jerusalem toward Jericho. He is set upon, stripped, wounded, and left half dead. A priest comes down that road, sees him, and passes by on the other side. A Levite comes to the place, looks at him, and does the same (Luke 10:30-32).

The two are not the same man twice. The priesthood was given to Aaron and his sons alone (Exodus 28:1; Numbers 18:7). The rest of the tribe of Levi was given to Aaron as help — they kept the tabernacle and carried it, but they did not come near the altar (Numbers 3:6-9; Numbers 18:2-6). The Levites carried a second charge instead. They shall teach Jacob thy judgments, and Israel thy law (Deuteronomy 33:10). Jehoshaphat sent Levites through the cities of Judah with the book of the law to teach the people (2 Chronicles 17:8-9), and it was the Levites who read the law aloud and caused the people to understand it after the return from exile (Nehemiah 8:7-8).

So the two men on that road are the altar and the school. Between them they hold both halves of the service of the house — the man who brings the offering, and the man who teaches the people what is written. Both of them saw the man in the road. Both of them went around him.

Scripture gives no reason for either one. No excuse is recorded, no thought reported, no obstacle named. It says only what each man saw and what each man did with what he saw. The silence is deliberate. No reason is supplied because no reason would be accepted.

The Man the Temple Shut Out

Then a Samaritan comes down the same road. The choice is not incidental and it is not a lesson about tolerance. It is about the house of Yahuah, and most readers have never been told what a Samaritan’s standing actually was.

When Assyria carried Israel away, the king brought men from Babylon, Cuthah, Ava, Hamath and Sepharvaim and settled them in the cities of Samaria (2 Kings 17:24). A priest was sent back to teach them the manner of the Elohim of the land, and the record of what came of it is plain twice over: they feared Yahuah and served their own gods (2 Kings 17:33), and they feared Yahuah and served their graven images (2 Kings 17:41). Generations later, when the exiles returned to rebuild the house, the people of that land offered to build with them and were refused outright — ye have nothing to do with us to build an house unto our Elohim (Ezra 4:3).

That refusal is the Samaritan’s standing. He was not merely disliked. He was shut out of the house in writing by the men who ran it, and the quarrel between his people and Judah was a quarrel over where Yahuah is worshipped — our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place (John 4:20). The word carried enough weight as an insult that it was thrown at Yahushua Himself (John 8:48).

So there are three men on that road with a claim on the house of Yahuah and one without. The priest serves at the altar. The Levite teaches the law. The Samaritan has no part in either and had been told so. And it is the man the temple shut out who stops — which is its own answer, because Yahuah never asked for a building. He asked for a dwelling among His people (Exodus 25:8), and the two men who served the building walked past the place He dwells.

He comes where the wounded man is, sees him, and has compassion on him. He binds up his wounds. He sets him on his own beast. He brings him to shelter, pays for his care, and pledges whatever more it costs (Luke 10:33-35). Those are not ordinary acts of decency. They are the exact acts Yahuah named when He brought charges against the shepherds of Israel.

The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost; but with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them. — Ezekiel 34:4

That is the priest and the Levite, written down centuries before the road to Jericho. And when Yahuah finishes the charge, He says what He will do Himself: I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken (Ezekiel 34:16).

The Samaritan does what Yahuah said He would do. He does the very things the men holding the offices were charged with failing to do. And that is not a coincidence dropped into the story — it is the standard the chapter the lawyer was quoting from had already set. Leviticus 19 opens with it: Ye shall be holy: for I Yahuah your Elohim am holy (Leviticus 19:2). The commandment to love the neighbour sits inside a chapter measured by the character of Yahuah Himself. The Samaritan met that measure. The two men with the offices did not.

Go, and Do Thou Likewise

Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Yahushua unto him, Go, and do thou likewise. — Luke 10:36-37

The question comes back to the lawyer turned around. He had used the word neighbour to mean the person he would be required to love — a category to be settled before he acted. Yahushua uses the same word to mean the man who did the loving. In the law, neighbour is not a description of who deserves help. It is a description of the man who gives it. No one decides who his neighbour is. He becomes one, or he does not, by what he does when he sees.

The man’s own opening question is answered by the same line. He asked what he must do. He was told twice — this do, and thou shalt live, and then, go, and do thou likewise. Both times the answer was the law he already held. Moses had said the commandment was never far off, that it was in the mouth and in the heart, that thou mayest do it (Deuteronomy 30:14). The lawyer had it in his mouth. That was the whole of what he had.

He came testing and stayed to justify himself, and that is what the parable takes from him. He had been measuring himself by a commandment he had already trimmed to a size he could clear. The parable set the untrimmed commandment back in front of him and left him nowhere to stand.

This is the passage that will not survive the doctrine laid over it. A man asks how to inherit eternal life and is sent to the law. He recites the law and is told he is right. He is ordered to do it. He goes looking for a loophole, and the law is opened wider in front of him until there is nowhere left to hide — the stranger, the enemy, the man in the ditch with nothing on him to identify whose he is. Then he is ordered to do it again. From the first question to the last word there is not one line in it pointing anywhere but the law.

A house that teaches the law was set aside cannot read this passage out loud without contradicting itself. So it does not read it out loud. It lifts the story from the middle, preaches a lesson about being decent to strangers, and leaves the question and the verdict on the floor. But the verdict is still standing where it was spoken, and it has not moved. Go, and do thou likewise.