THIS touching parable was related by the Saviour as a rebuke to a caviler, who had challenged Him as to what he should do to inherit eternal life (Luke 10:25-37). To an honest inquirer, He would have replied that eternal life is the gift of God to those who believe on His Son; but to a caviler He could only speak of the law of Sinai. Unabashed and unconvicted (though a professional exponent of the divine law) His questioner then asked: “And who is my neighbor?” This parable was then given, which not only furnished a complete answer to the question, but also shows in a vivid, way man’s utterly ruined condition as God sees it. No one who understands the parable of the Good Samaritan would ever seek to obtain eternal life by meritorious works of any kind.
The man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and who experienced so disastrous a journey is a representative character; in him every man may see his own portrait, if he will. It is folly to speak of human progress; man’s course has been retrograde ever since the catastrophe in Eden. He has fallen into the hands of the hosts of evil, who have stripped him of his once-fair robe of innocence, injuring him mortally in so doing. His condition is hopeless so far as creature aid is concerned.
Two persons passed by as the stricken traveler lay weltering in his blood, the one a priest and the other a Levite; but neither proffered a helping hand. Yet the law taught that even the ass of an enemy was to be succored if he was seen groaning under his burden (Ex. 23:5). But why did the Saviour select, out of the many classes and ranks of men, the priest and the Levite as those who did nothing for the dying one? Surely to teach us the utter inability of the system which these characters represented to meet the need of ruined man. The priest’s business was with religious forms and ceremonies, and the Levite was responsible to instruct the people in the law of God; yet both of these are represented by a divine hand as doing nothing for a man in his hour of deadly peril. What a lesson is here! Yet so little heed has been paid to it that to this hour multitudes in their quest for salvation cast themselves, some upon priests, and some upon moralists, to meet their deep need. The blunder of it is painful to contemplate.
“But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.” Thus graphically the Saviour describes His own mission of grace. From heaven’s glory He journeyed, going ever downward until Calvary was reached, where He bowed His head in death as an atonement for human guilt. Man being righteously under sentence of death, He must needs suffer and die in order to lift him out of his degradation and ruin. The Jews once called Him a Samaritan in contempt (John 8:48); in our parable He meekly accepts the title. Yet the scorn of man could not be suffered to dry up the springs of His grace, hence His loving provision of oil and wine, typifying the Spirit’s application to the soul of the healing efficacy of His precious blood. In the picture before us we have the man, cured, carried, and cared for in every way. There is yet a higher aspect of saving grace—the sinner brought into the Father’s presence, to be forever a sharer of divine joys. But this is shown to us in the later parable of the prodigal son.