By Priest Isaiah White
There are questions that appear simple until Jesus answers them.
A lawyer approached Jesus with a profoundly important question: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus directed him back to the Law. The man answered correctly: love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and “your neighbour as yourself” (Luke 10:27).
But then came the question that exposed the limits of his understanding: “And who is my neighbour?” (Luke 10:29).
Jesus did not give him a definition. He gave him a story.
A man travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho was attacked, stripped, beaten and left half-dead. A priest saw him. A Levite saw him. Neither stopped. Then came a Samaritan – the very person a Jewish audience would least expect to become the hero of the story.
The Samaritan saw the wounded man and had compassion on him. He treated his wounds, placed him on his animal, took him to an inn, paid for his care and promised to return.
Jesus then asked: “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbour to the man who fell among the robbers?”
The lawyer replied, “The one who showed him mercy.”
Jesus said, “You go, and do likewise” (Luke 10:36–37).
Jesus therefore turns the question upside down. The lawyer asks, “Who qualifies as my neighbour?” Jesus asks, in effect, “What kind of person are you becoming towards the person in need?”
That distinction remains important today.
Who were the Samaritans?
To understand the shock of Jesus’ story, we must understand the history between Jews and Samaritans.
The Samaritan question was not merely about ethnic difference. It involved centuries of political, religious and cultural conflict.
After the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom, populations were deported and other peoples were settled in the region of Samaria (2 Kings 17:24–41). The biblical account portrays the resulting religious situation negatively, describing a population that feared Yahweh while continuing other religious practices.
However, the identity and origins of the later Samaritan community are historically more complex than the traditional claim that they were simply “half-Jewish”. Modern scholarship cautions against reducing Samaritan identity to a simple racial mixture.
The conflict intensified after the Jewish return from exile. According to Ezra 4:1–3, people identified as enemies of Judah and Benjamin offered to participate in rebuilding the temple. Their offer was rejected. Opposition subsequently developed against the rebuilding of Jerusalem (Ezra 4:4–5; Nehemiah 4:1–9).
The Samaritans eventually developed their own religious centre on Mount Gerizim, while Jews centred worship on Jerusalem. The conflict was therefore not simply “Jew versus foreigner”. It involved competing claims about Israel’s identity, legitimate worship and the proper place of God’s sanctuary. Samaritan tradition itself claimed continuity with ancient Israel and regarded Mount Gerizim as the legitimate sanctuary.
The hostility eventually became severe. The Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim was destroyed by the Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus around the late second century BC, further deepening the antagonism.
By the first century, relations between Jews and Samaritans were sufficiently hostile that John 4:9 observes that Jews and Samaritans did not normally associate with one another. Luke also records Samaritan hostility towards Jesus’ travelling party (Luke 9:51–56).
Consequently, Jesus’ decision to make a Samaritan the compassionate hero of the story was deliberately provocative.
He was not merely saying, “Be kind to strangers.” He was saying that the person you have been taught to distrust may be the very person who demonstrates what obedience to God looks like.
The robbers: When property trumps people
The Jericho Road was notoriously dangerous, with a steep, rocky descent and places where travellers could be ambushed. The men who attacked the traveller were not merely robbers; they were driven by greed.
The story begins with violence. The robbers attack a man, strip him, beat him and leave him for dead. They reduce a human being to an opportunity for economic gain. His possessions matter more than his person.
This is one of the great moral diseases of every society: when things become more valuable than people.
The robbers do not ask, “Who is this man?” They ask, implicitly, “What can I take from him?”
That question remains with us.
Human beings are exploited for money, land, political influence, sexual gratification, labour, votes, social status and economic advantage. Sometimes societies become so accustomed to inequality that suffering becomes almost invisible.
The robber therefore represents more than an individual criminal. He represents a worldview in which another human being is valuable only insofar as that person can serve his interests.
Greed does something profoundly dangerous: it determines who counts as a neighbour.
A person who can enrich us becomes important. A person who cannot benefit us becomes invisible.
But biblical faith begins with another conviction: people possess value because they bear the image of God (Genesis 1:26–27). The neighbour is therefore never merely an economic unit, political constituency or social category. The neighbour is a human being whose dignity comes before his usefulness.
The robbers ask, “What is yours that I can take?” Christian love asks, “What is mine that I can give?”
The clergy: When ritual purity trumps rescue
Then Jesus introduces two religious figures: a priest and a Levite.
“Now by chance a certain priest came down that road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite…”
This is the tragic centre of the story.
The priest and Levite were not presented as criminals. They were religious professionals – men associated with worship, sacrifice and the Law. Yet they crossed the road.
Numbers 19 provides an important part of the cultural background. Contact with a corpse resulted in ritual impurity, and Numbers 19:11–13 describes purification requirements for someone who touched a dead body. However, Luke says the victim was “half dead”, not necessarily dead.
The important point is that both men saw the wounded traveller.
The problem was not that they failed to notice suffering. They saw him. They simply did not stop.
The story therefore exposes a frightening possibility: we can be deeply religious and still become terrible neighbours. Religious identity does not automatically produce mercy.
The lawyer: Mercy fulfils the law
Notice something remarkable about the conclusion. Jesus does not ask the lawyer, “Who was the neighbour?”
He asks, “Which of these three proved to be a neighbour?”
The question has moved from identity to action, from classification to compassion, and from “Who deserves my love?” to “Will I become a loving person?”
The lawyer answers, “The one who showed him mercy.”
Jesus responds: “Go, and do likewise.”
Mercy is therefore not an optional addition to biblical obedience. It belongs to the heart of the command to love one’s neighbour.
The Samaritan: Neighbourliness has a price
Then the Samaritan arrives.
Jesus deliberately chooses the culturally unlikely person to demonstrate compassion.
The Samaritan sees the wounded man and responds with compassion. His response begins internally but does not remain there. His compassion becomes action.
He approaches.
He binds the man’s wounds.
He pours oil and wine on them.
He places the injured man on his own animal.
He takes him to an inn.
He pays for his care.
He promises to return.
This is not sentimental compassion. It is costly compassion.
The Samaritan spends time. He interrupts his journey.
He spends money. He pays the innkeeper.
He uses his resources – his oil, wine and animal.
He accepts risk. The same robbers who attacked the first man could potentially threaten him.
He accepts inconvenience. Someone else’s crisis becomes his responsibility.
This is what neighbourliness looks like in the real world.
Love is expensive.
It costs time when we are busy. It costs money when we have our own needs. It costs emotional energy when another person’s pain is exhausting. It can cost our reputation when loving the wrong person makes us unpopular. It can require courage when compassion means crossing social boundaries.
Sometimes, it even costs security.
The Samaritan does not ask, “Is this man one of us?”
He asks, “What does this man’s suffering require of me?”
That is the revolution in Jesus’ teaching.
Neighbourliness is not determined by proximity, ethnicity, religion, nationality, tribe, political affiliation or social class.
Neighbourliness is demonstrated through mercy.
The Samaritan becomes a neighbour because he acts like one.
Who, then, is my neighbour?
The world continues to ask the lawyer’s question.
Who belongs to us?
Who deserves our attention?
Who is one of us?
Who deserves protection?
Who deserves mercy?
Jesus’ answer remains revolutionary.
Your neighbour is not merely the person who lives beside your house.
Your neighbour is the person whose humanity confronts your capacity to love.
The story challenges the person who values property above people. It challenges the religious person whose worship never becomes compassion. It challenges the prejudiced person who cannot imagine goodness in the “other”. And it challenges the comfortable believer who wants to know the minimum requirement of obedience.
The Gospel calls us beyond the question, “Who is my neighbour?”
It calls us to become neighbours.
Perhaps this is where the deepest challenge of Jesus’ story lies.
The world does not merely need Christians who can identify the correct doctrine of neighbourliness. It needs Christians who will stop beside the wounded.
It needs people who will cross tribal, racial, political, denominational and economic boundaries.
It needs believers whose faith becomes visible through mercy.
The Samaritan’s greatness was not that he had the correct religious identity. It was that, when he saw suffering, he allowed compassion to interrupt his journey.
That is the question Jesus leaves with the Church today:
When suffering crosses our path, will we walk past it – or will we become neighbours?
“Go, and do likewise.”
