Deeper Commentary

10:1 Now after these things the Lord appointed seventy others, and sent them two by two ahead of him into every city and place, where he was about to go- According to some texts, Luke records that the Lord sent out 72 preachers. The Jews understood that there were 72 nations in the world, based on the LXX of Gen. 10. Surely Luke’s point is that they went only to the Jews, thus highlighting the gap between the disciples’ understanding at the time, and the Lord’s further reaching intention of a mission to the Gentiles.

The Lord sent out the 70 “before his face into every city to where he himself would come”. They were heralds of His presence; and He goes on in this context to tell them that they were “as lambs among wolves”- i.e. they were like Him, the lamb- and that therefore “he that rejecteth you rejecteth me” (Lk. 10:1,3,16 RV). Yet significantly, having told the 70 to proclaim His face to the cities where He would come, we find the comment: “Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few [i.e. only 70]: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest. Go your ways…” (:2). Could this not mean that He would have travelled more extensively around Israel in His ministry than He did, but He was limited in the places He witnessed in by whether there were enough heralds to go there in advance and prepare the way? The dearth of workers meant that places He otherwise would have visited, He didn’t- for it seems that He had a policy of only Himself working in areas where His men had broken the ground. And is there not some worrying relevance of all this for our work in this day, in this hard land…?

10:2 And he said to them: The harvest indeed is plenteous, but the labourers are few. Therefore pray to the Lord of the harvest, that He send out labourers into His harvest- The Lord had to comment that the harvest was great, but the labourers [i.e. the disciples] were few or weak [Gk.]. And yet He delegated so much to them- authority, the power of miracles, the Gospel itself (Lk. 9:1-6), despite their weakness, and despite the fact much harvest was spoilt or not harvested by their weakness. They were His representatives to the world (:16)- and yet they still didn’t know how to pray (Lk. 11:1). We marvel at the way the Lord used them, and yet we end up realizing with a similar amazement that the same Lord has entrusted His Gospel to us, with all our weakness and dysfunction.

The Hebrew writer asked his brethren to pray for him “that I may be restored to you the sooner” (Heb. 13:19). The amount of prayer seems significant. The Lord Himself seems to have asked the disciples to add their prayers to His in asking the Father to send forth more labourers into the over-ripe, unharvested fields (Lk. 10:2), which, by implication, He alone couldn’t satisfactorily gather. Volume of prayer is significant, although this is not to say that 'just' one prayer of faith is ineffective.

10:3 Go your way. See, I send you forth as lambs in the midst of wolves- As He was the lamb of God sent forth for the salvation of men, so those in Him are sent forth with that same Gospel, as lambs. This was the language of the Jewish teachers about the role of Israel in the world; but the Lord is implying that His preachers are the new Israel, and the Jewish world is as the unbelieving Gentile world. Judah is spoken of as “One sheep attempting to survive among seventy wolves” (Esther Rabbah 10:11).

10:4 Carry no purse, no wallet, no shoes; and greet no one on the way- As we read the preaching of Jesus, one cannot but be impressed by the gravity of His message. He never spoke of His message, of His person and His Kingdom, in a take-it-or-leave-it way, as thought it didn’t matter how His hearers responded. And we ought to preach as He preached. He realized that how His hearers responded would determine the structure of their whole lives and what their eternal destiny would be. He urged His preachers to exchange no greetings on the road as they pressed on to take His Gospel to others. This would have been seen as most unusual and even offensive in first century Palestine. The people would have had their attention arrested by this- these preachers of the man from Nazareth had an urgency about them, a sense of utmost priority in the work they were about. They were to be known as men in an urgent hurry. They were to go on their preaching mission without pausing to greet others, such was their haste (cp. 2 Kings 4:29). The Greek word translated ‘greet’ also carries the idea of joining together with others. People rarely travelled alone unless they were in great haste, but rather moved in caravans. But for the Lord’s messengers, there was to be no loss of time. Every minute was to be precious. In a world full of time wasting distractions, information we don’t need to know… this is all so necessary. No wonder that when those men finally came to themselves, realized their calling, and hurled themselves in joy at this world after the Lord’s ascension… they preached repentance, immediate conversion and quick baptism, right up front.

To not carry spare shoes is an allusion to God's miraculous provision for Israel in the wilderness. The preaching of the Gospel is a fundamental part of our wilderness journey. We are on a mission, a journey; and part of that mission is sharing the message with others.

10:5 And into whatever house you shall enter, first say: Peace to this house- The Lord raised everything to an altogether higher level. It was, for example, customary for Semitic peoples to greet each other [as it is today] with the words 'shalom!' or 'salaam!' ['peace']. But there was little real meaning in those words. The Lord said that His peace, His 'shalom', He gives to us, not as the [Jewish] world gave it. Likewise He told His disciples to say "Peace be to this house" when they entered a home. Yet this was the standard greeting. What He surely meant was that they were to say it with meaning; and wish the household peace with God through His Son.  

10:6 And if a son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it, but if not, it shall return to you- "Peace" meant peace with God; it had been John the Baptist's mission to guide the feet of Israel into the way of peace (Lk. 1:79). Very many had responded to John's message, but they failed to fully accept Jesus as Christ when it actually came to it. The mission of the apostles was likely to those who had responded to John; that would have been the logical program in any case, to go visit and develop interest amongst those who were already known to have responded to John the Baptist.

10:7 And in that same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give. For the labourer is worthy of his wages. Do not go from house to house- See on Lk. 9:4.
Preaching is all about relationships. The Lord commanded to not go from house to house but rather build up a base in one home. I take this to mean that He saw the importance of relationship building in preaching, rather than a surface level contact with many people of the type achieved in more public addresses. He envisioned these houses as becoming the focus of house churches, which were to be the building blocks of the wider body of Christ.

Preaching is essentially about building relationships, not platform evangelism. The Lord taught that His preachers were not to go "from house to house" but rather to remain within an acceptive household and make that their base. In modern terms, I think we could interpret this as meaning: 'Focus on building relationships; don't build up a shallow relationship with a lot of people, but rather try to get deep with one household'.

The reference to eating and drinking what was offered, as noted on :8, would seem more likely to mean 'Accept their offer of table fellowship on whatever basis they offer it'.

The saying that "the labourer is worthy of his hire" is quoted as "Scripture" in 1 Tim. 5:18, on the same level of acceptance as the Old Testament. This indicates that the gospel records were in circulation in written form from an early stage after the events, and were accepted by the church as Divinely inspired. Higher criticism is simply wrong to claim that the gospels were written long after the events by men with dim memories.

As in all ages, it was common in the first century for religious teachers to expect payment. But here the Lord redefines that 'payment' as being no more than subsistence level.

10:8 And into whatever city you enter, if they welcome you, eat such things as are set before you- See on 1 Cor. 9:22; 10:27. I don't think the Lord simply means 'Don't be fussy about your food, be grateful for what's on your plate'. To eat together had religious dimensions. You ate together as a sign of fellowship. So I take the Lord to be meaning that they should accept whatever fellowship was offered to them, and work from within that setting to convince men of the truth of Christ.

10:9 Heal the sick that are therein, and say to them: The kingdom of God comes near to you- This again is the language of John's ministry; I suggested on :6 that the households being visited were those who had originally responded positively to John's message. The healing of the sick was to serve as an acted parable and exemplification of the gospel of the Kingdom.

10:10 But into whatever city you shall enter and they do not welcome you, go out into the streets of it and say- The language is very similar to that in 14:21, where Israelite rejection of the Gospel was to lead the preachers to go out into the streets of such cities- and drag in absolutely anyone they could find living on those streets.

10:11 Even the dust from your city, that clings to our feet, we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God comes near- Whether or not Israel accepted the Gospel, the Kingdom of God as it was in Messiah Jesus would still come. If the coming of the King and His Kingdom was not dependent upon Israel's acceptance of it, the implication had to be that the Gentiles would accept it, and therefore it would come.

The disciples were to shake off the dust of their feet against unbelieving Israel (Mt. 10:14; Mk. 6:11; Acts 8:51), in allusion to the Rabbinic teaching that the dust of Gentile lands caused defilement. Israel who rejected the Gospel were thus to be treated as Gentiles. Time and again the prophets describe the judgments to fall upon Israel in the same terms as they speak of the condemnations of the surrounding nations (e.g. Jer. 50:3,13). The message was clear: rejected Israel would be treated as Gentiles. Thus Joel describes the locust invasion of Israel in the language of locusts covering the face of Egypt (Joel 2:2,20 = Ex. 10:14,15,19). Israel’s hardness of heart is explicitly likened to that of Pharaoh (1 Sam. 6:6); as the Egyptians were drowned, so would Israel be (Am. 9:5-8). As Pharaoh’s heart was plagued (Ex. 9:14), so was Israel’s (1 Kings 8:38); as Egypt was a reed, so were Israel (1 Kings 14:15). As Pharaoh-hophra was given into the hand of his enemies, so would Israel be (Jer. 44:30). Even if we are separated from this world externally, we can still act in a worldly way, and share the world's condemnation by being finally "condemned with the world" (1 Cor. 11:32).

10:12 I say to you, it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city- Jer. 20:16 has a graphic description of the people of Sodom screaming out in anguish, both mental and physical, as the judgments of God fell upon them: "The cry in the morning (when the judgments began, Gen. 19:23,24), and the shouting at noontide". This is in reality a picture of the rejected in the last days. And yet those who heard the Christian Gospel and rejected it will be resurrected to a worse judgment than Sodom. The degrees of judgment ("more tolerable...") reflect degrees of responsibility to God according to varying levels of knowledge. The Sodomites had seen Lot's way of life and presumably been told by him that their behaviour was wrong. Their refusal to repent means that "in that day" of the Lord's coming they will be resurrected and punished; but those who hear the Christian gospel and reject it shall have a far greater punishment than Sodom had or will have.

10:13 Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which were done in you, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes- See on Lk. 19:42. The pain that arises from knowing what might have been is really the essence of grief and tragedy; and the Father and Son who know all possible futures must therefore feel so pained. The connection between grief and knowing what might have been is so poignantly brought out by the grief of Martha and Mary over their brother's death- they knew that if Jesus had have been there, Lazarus wouldn't have died (Jn. 11:21,32). Jesus as God's Son had something of this ability to see what might have been- hence He could state with absolute confidence that if Gentile Tyre and Sidon had witnessed His miracles, they would've repented in sackcloth and ashes. He lamented with pain over the fact that things would have been so much better for Jerusalem if she had only known / apprehended the things which would bring her ultimate peace (Lk. 19:42). The Lord Jesus was deeply pained at what might have been, if the things of God's Kingdom had not remained willfully hidden from Israel's perception. His pain was because of realizing what might have been. In this He was directly reflecting the mind of His Father, who had previously lamented over Jerusalem: "O that you had hearkened to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river" (Is. 48:18).

10:14 But it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the judgment, than for you- The Lord taught His preachers that if people rejected their message, in that day when they did this, “it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city”. But He repeats Himself later on: “It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the judgment than for you” (Lk. 10:12,14 RV). “In that day” clearly refers to the day on which the preacher’s message was rejected. But that day was effectively their judgment day.

10:15 And you, Capernaum, shall you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades- Some will be exalted and others brought down at the day of judgment ("come up higher... go down lower", 14:10). Capernaum was expecting commendation an exaltation at judgment day; but that was to be the very reason why she would be cast down to destruction. And in essence, that judgment process is ongoing whenever people hear the Gospel (:18).

As He sent the 70 away on their preaching mission, the Lord commented that Capernaum was exalted to heaven, and yet at the judgment would be thrust down to hell; and yet when they returned, He said that He had seen Satan falling from heaven to earth (Lk. 10:15,18), in anticipation of how it will at judgment day (Rev. 12). The connection is not co-incidental. He was countering the disciples' joy at the superficial response by saying that He has seen it another way; He had seen the Satan of the Jewish system already condemned, hurled from heaven to earth, by their rejection of the Gospel preached.

10:16 He that hears you hears me; and he that rejects you rejects me, and he that rejects me rejects Him that sent me- Here we see the Lord Jesus personally equated with His word in the Gospel, preached by His followers. Attitudes to that word are attitudes to Him. The rejection of some at the last day will be because they themselves rejected the Lord. They made the answer in their attitude to His word; in that sense those who "reject" (s.w.) the Lord are judged by His word at the last day (Jn. 12:48). Attention to His word is therefore critical. Whoever rejects us as we preach therefore rejects God (1 Thess. 4:8 s.w.).

10:17 And the seventy returned with joy, saying: Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!- As noted on :9, the miracles were to back up the preaching of the word of the Kingdom; but the disciples failed to properly perceive this. They considered that the miracles they had done were of themselves the most impressive thing; whereas the Lord always gave priority to the preaching of the word over miracles, and Himself used an economy of miracle to get His message over. He therefore urges them to rejoice more in the fact that they personally will be saved in the Kingdom (:20).

10:18 And he said to them: I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven- No sinful being can be tolerated in God’s presence in Heaven (Mt. 6:10; Ps. 5: 4,5; Hab. 1:13). The Lord is using parabolic language - “as lightning fall from heaven” (AV)- so this “Satan” or adversary fell. Lightning comes from heaven in the sense of the sky, not as in the dwelling place of God. It doesn't literally fall from heaven to earth. Any attempt to link this with the prince of this world being cast out is difficult, because that happened at Christ’s death (note “now” in Jn. 12:31), whereas this falling of Satan occurred during His ministry. According to popular thought, “Satan” is supposed to have fallen from heaven in Eden, so that he was on the earth at Job’s time, yet Jesus is described as seeing this occurring at His time. Weymouth adds a marginal note on Lk. 10:18 in his translation of the Bible: "The thought is not that of Milton's rebel angel banished for ever from the abide of bliss". If an evil being and his host of followers fell down on to earth literally, why did only Jesus see it and not the disciples? Why is there no other record of this strange event? Falling from heaven is figurative of losing authority, e.g. it is used about the demise of the king of Babylon in Isaiah 14. See also Lamentations 2:1 and Jeremiah 51:53.

The apostles had just cured many people and were blinded by their great physical power over disease (:20). The real cause of illness and disease is our sin prone nature. That sin is the ultimate reason for illness is stressed in Mt. 9:12 and 12:11, where a sheep gone astray, a clear symbol of a sinner (Mt. 18:13), is equated with a sick man. The principle is summed up in Mt. 9:5 “Which is easier, to say, Your sins be forgiven you; or to say, Arise and walk?”. Thus Jesus said, “I beheld Satan fall”, i.e. “In My view the great thing was that the power of sin was being overcome”. There must be a connection with the fall of Capernaum in :15. Is Jesus implying that “Satan”, the ways of the flesh, which were so well exemplified in Capernaum, were being overcome? Notice that Capernaum was “exalted” in Jewish eyes. “Satan” often referring to the Jewish system, maybe Jesus is equating Capernaum with “Satan” and commenting how the sin which was at the basis of this system was being toppled by the preaching of the Gospel.

10:19 See, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall in any way hurt you- See on Mk. 16:18; Jn. 8:44. This is a promise repeated in the context of preaching the Gospel in Mk. 16:18. The gift of the Spirit continues to assist Christian preachers, but only in the first century was it manifested in such miraculous forms; and even then, only in specific times and places during the course of missionary work. Paul taking up a viper in his hand and being unharmed on Malta would be an example.

10:20 Nevertheless, rejoice not that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven- This implies that their elation at being able to pull off miracles was wrong, or at best immature; rather should they have rejoiced that their names were written in Heaven; that the good news of future salvation in the Kingdom they preached was so personally true.

10:21 In that same hour he rejoiced in spirit, and said- This was the kind of rejoicing in spirit (cp. rejoicing about subject spirits in :20) which they should have had- a glorying in the Father's way of working with the simple and marginalized.

I thank You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You hid these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to babes. Yes, Father. For so it was pleasing in Your sight- See on Lk. 1:47; 9:45. This is the standard Jewish thanksgiving before food: "I thank You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth...". We expect to hear thanks for food, but instead find praise for how the Father works with people by revealing truths to babes rather than the worldly wise. As was the case with the Samaritan woman, the Lord found the Father's working with other people His food and drink which sustained Him. And it can be so with us too. This is one reason for meeting together and sharing testimony of the Lord's work in our lives.

The disciples didn't have totally correct understanding; they believed in ghosts and demons, and were too maxed out on miracles (:20). But still the Lord rejoices in what has been revealed to them, the babes; and those same truths had not been revealed to the Jewish leadership who claimed to be wise and understanding. We note that truths are "revealed" by God in a sovereign way. It's not simply that whoever reads the Bible understands. There is a higher hand at work than that; the way of God's grace, revealing truths to the "babes".

10:22 All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is, save the Son, and he to whomever the Son wills to reveal Him- Again as noted on :21 there is a distinct revelation of the Father to people through the Son. This can mean simply that in the Son, we see the Father reflected. And yet the language goes somewhat further than that, in saying that the Son chooses some to whom to reveal the Father. This is by the work of the Spirit of Christ, which refers both to the spirit of the character and personality of the Lord Jesus and also to how that spirit transforms human hearts, under His direction. "Knows" is in a continuous sense, implying that the Father and Son grow in knowing each other; the knowledge in view is the Hebraic sense of knowledge as relationship, rather than increments of factual knowledge. The "all things" delivered to the Son may be the power of salvation for all men. 

 Nobody, the disciples included, to whom the Father had ‘revealed’ repentance, fully knew the Son nor the Father. There is a parallel to be observed here between ‘knowing the Father’ and repenting; for the context in Mt. 11 speaks of how the majority had not repented despite the Lord’s miracles. The little ones, the babes, the disciples, had repented- but this had been ‘revealed’ to them by the Father (Mt. 11:25). Now, the Lord speaks of how the Son ‘reveals’ the Father. The life of repentance is the life of knowing the Father. To know God is to know our sinfulness and repent. And this is the “rest” from sin which the Lord speaks of in Mt. 11:28. 

Whether or not Joseph died or left Mary by the time Jesus hit adolescence, the fact was that Joseph wasn’t His real father. He was effectively fatherless in the earthly sense. As such, this would have set Him up in certain psychological matrices which had their effect on His personality. He could speak of His Heavenly Father in the shockingly unprecedented form of ‘abba’, daddy. He grew so close to His Heavenly Father because of the lack of an earthly one, and the inevitable stresses which there would have been between Him and Joseph. A strong, fatherly-type figure is a recurrent feature of the Lord’s parables; clearly He was very focused upon His Heavenly Father. He could say with passionate truth: “No one knows a son except a father, and no one knows a father except a son” (Mt. 11:27; Lk. 10:22 Gk.).

The idea is not that the Lord Jesus had a list of humanity and chose a few from that list. He has earlier spoken of the freedom of choice to ‘receive’ (Mt. 11:14) God’s message, and He was urging all men to do so. Although all men are potentially delivered to Him, the Father is revealing Himself to only some of them. The Father is revealed in the Son, as John’s Gospel makes clear. It’s not that some people are chosen by the Son to have this revelation; rather is it a statement of fact, or method- the knowledge of the Father is through the Son revealing Him. And this is why He goes straight on in Mt. 11:28 to urge people to come to Him. The ideas of coming to Him and ‘whomsoever’, anyone, are very much the language of John’s Gospel and the Revelation, which concludes with an appeal to ‘whosoever will’ to ‘come’ to Christ and salvation. 

The revealing is by the Spirit (1 Cor. 2:10; Eph. 3:5). It was not flesh and blood that revealed the Lord to Peter (Mt. 16:17). As noted on 1 Pet. 1:21, relationship with God is predicated upon relationship with the Son; He is the only way to the Father. Academic Bible study, consideration of the apparent evidence of apologetics, will not reveal God as Father to men. It is the Son who reveals Him. If we take the jump of faith in accepting Him, only then will He reveal the Father to us.

10:23 And turning to the disciples, he said privately: Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see- See on Lk. 7:9. As noted on :22, to have the Son reveal the Father to us is the work of the Spirit, and is of grace. The idea of predestined calling is discussed by Paul in Romans in the context of explaining how the Spirit works. The fact we have been called to know Him is grace indeed.

10:24 For I say to you, that many prophets and kings desired to see the things which you see, and did not see them, and to hear the things which you hear, and did not hear them- The blessedness of :23 also relates to where we stand in human history. There was a desire amongst the Old Testament heroes to know more about the Lord Jesus; but then was not the time for the full manifestation now given. We who have the completed New Testament, and easy access to it, are perhaps even more blessed. This insight into 'blessedness' is helpful when in moments of depression we may consider that we lack blessing, and all we have are vague, dimly revealed ideas that somehow 'God loves me'. We can indeed count our blessings and name them one by one. And where we stand in history is  one of them, according to the Lord's reasoning here. It may well be that we are blessed to be the generation which see the Lord's return- the only generation to never taste of death.

10:25 And a certain lawyer stood up, and to test him, asked: Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?- When the lawyer asked Jesus what he must “do to inherit eternal life”, the Lord could have lectured him on salvation being by grace rather than works. But He doesn’t; instead He tells the parable of the good Samaritan, running with the lawyer’s misunderstanding for a while [as His gracious manner was]. The essential basis of inheriting eternal life is of course faith, but the Lord’s answer to the question shows that we can safely conclude: ‘Faith must be shown in our care for the salvation of this world if it is real faith’.

10:26 And he said to him: What is written in the law? How do you read it?- The Lord was not searching for a right or wrong answer, ready to respond to the effect that 'Ah well, you just misunderstood a bit, now let Me correct you'. His questions are nearly always rhetorical. Whatever the answer, the Lord would work with it. We note the Lord doesn't ask 'what' he read in the law, but "how"- how did he interpret it?

10:27 And he answered saying: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself- He quotes Dt. 6:5 along with Lev. 19:18. Dt. 6:5 along with Dt. 11:13 was repeated by the Jews morning and evening, and was the text written in the phylacteries. But this zealous lawyer added Lev. 19:18 about loving neighbours. The Greek can mean "Love your neighbour as if he was yourself"; this removes the vexed question of self love. The answer is in the parable of the Samaritan and the challenge to go and do likewise. The parable explains this "as if he was yourself". The Lord Jesus is the good Samaritan. He looks at us in our suffering for sin as if He was us and we are Him. He 'comes' to us in total identity with us as our representative; and we respond by baptism and life lived in Him, likewise identified with Him. So it's not a question [as the lawyer supposed] of who is worthy of our mercy. Rather, the Lord reasons, is it a question of our realizing our desperation, our salvation by utter grace, and acting to others as we would act toward ourselves- in grace and immediate understanding, whoever they are. There are therefore no categories of worthiness, no distinctions about who is worthy. Rather we act to others as we would toward ourselves. The lawyer's intention was to lead the Lord to the question of "Who is my neighbour?", knowing that the standard interpretation of Lev. 19:18 was that your neighbour was "any of your people", and not Gentiles nor Samaritans: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself”.

10:28 And he said to him: You have answered correctly- We have eternal life insofar as the life that Jesus lived and lives, He will eternally live. If we live that life, we are living the essence of the life which we will eternally live. The lawyer asked the Lord what good thing he must do “to inherit eternal life”. The Lord replied that he must properly love his God and his neighbour: “this do, and you shall live”. By living a life based on this, he would be living the life which he would eternally live (Lk. 10:25,28). And thus the Lord responds to the query about inheriting eternal life by changing the emphasis of the question- He replies by speaking of the life we should be living now.

That God is one is not just a numerical description. If there is only one God, He therefore demands our all. Because He is the One God, He demands all our worship; and because He is One, He therefore treats all His people the same, regardless, e.g., of their nationality (Rom. 3:30). All true worshippers of the one God, whether Jew or Gentile, are united in that the one God offers salvation to them on the same basis. The fact there is only one Lord Jesus implies the same for Him (Rom. 10:12). Paul saw these implications in the doctrine of the unity of God. But that doctrine needs reflecting on before we come to grasp these conclusions. Christ taught that the command that God was one and therefore we must love God included the second command: to love our neighbour as ourselves. The first and second commands were in fact one command; they were inseparably part of the first commandment (Mk. 12:29-31). This is why the 'two' commandments, to love God and neighbour, are spoken of in the singular in Lk. 10:27,28: "this do…". If God is one, then our brother bears the one Name of God, and so to love God is to love our brother (cp. 1 Jn. 4:21). And because there is only one God, this demands all our spiritual energy. There is only one, the one God, who seeks glory for men and judges them (Jn. 8:50)- therefore the unity of God should mean we do not seek glory of men, neither do we judge our brother.

This do and you shall live- The context is that the lawyer asked the Lord Jesus what he should do "to inherit eternal life" (Lk.10:25), and in a sense we ask the same question. But we mustn't be quite like him, in thinking that if we physically do certain things, then we will at some future point be given eternal life as a kind of payment; and nor should we think that the eternity of the Kingdom life is the most important aspect of our salvation. In Lk. 18:18 "a certain ruler asked him" the very same question: What he should do to inherit eternal life. The Lord's response was that if he kept the commandments in the right spirit, he would "have treasure in heaven". When the man found this impossible, the Lord commented how hard it was for the rich to "enter into the kingdom of God" (Lk. 18:24). So there is a parallel here between inheriting eternal life, having treasure in heaven, and entering the Kingdom. We are told that now is the time, in this life, for us to lay up treasure in Heaven (Mt. 6:20). So here and now it is possible to have treasure in Heaven, to have eternal life in prospect. In a sense we now have eternal life (1 Jn. 5:11,13), in a sense we are now in the process of entering into the Kingdom. We have been translated, here and now, into the Kingdom (Col. 1:13). The very same Greek construction used in Col. 1:13 occurs in Acts 14:22, where Paul says that through much tribulation we enter into the Kingdom; in other words, entry into the Kingdom is an ongoing process, and we experience this on account of the effect of our trials. Entering the Kingdom is used to describe our response to the Gospel in Lk. 16:16: "The kingdom of God is preached, and every man presses into it". Unless we receive the Gospel of the kingdom as a child, we will not enter it; i.e. respond fully to that Gospel (Lk. 18:17).

In prospect we have been saved, we are now in Christ, and therefore the great salvation which he was given is therefore counted to all those who are in him. We shy away from the positive promises that we really can start to enter the Kingdom now, that we do now have eternal life in prospect. But this shying away is surely an indication of our lack of faith; our desperate unwillingness to believe so fully and deeply that our salvation really is so wonderfully assured. That eternal life dwells in us insofar as the eternal spirit of Christ is in us. And so as we face up to the sureness of these promises, we earnestly want to know what we must do  to inherit this eternal life, to have this great treasure of assured salvation laid up for us now in Heaven. Of course we are saved by our faith, not our works (Tit. 3:5-7); yet our faith, if it is real, will inevitably be shown in practical ways.

10:29 But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus: And who is my neighbour?- The Lord's open attitude towards Gentiles had provoked anger amongst the lawyers; hence this scribe had incorporated Lev. 19:18 into his standard quotation as to Jewish duty. He suspected the Lord considered the Gentile world as His neighbours. The man's plan for self justification was going to be demolished by the Lord turning it all around to show that justification is by grace, not works- the very ideas which Paul states more specifically and theologically in Romans. The Lord never answers a question directly in the terms of the question. He always turns it around to higher principle. His parabolic answer, on reflection, shows that we are the desperately injured man. Who exactly is my neighbour... becomes an irrelevant question. The issue is that we are the injured man dependent upon the Lord's grace. And to accept that, we must for all time ditch our presuppositions, our racism, our intuitive dislike of "Samaritans". Whoever they may be to us in our worldviews. The Lord indeed says "Go and do likewise". We can only be the Samaritan if we have first known what it is to be the desperate man.

10:30 Jesus answered and said: A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he encountered robbers who both stripped him and beat him, and departed leaving him half dead- The wounded man is all of us- "a certain man" (Lk. 10:30) is a phrase more usually translated 'any man', 'whomsoever' etc. The idea of journeying downwards from Jerusalem to Jericho has some definite OT connections, not least with wicked King Zedekiah, who ignored repeated prophetic please to repent and fled from Jerusalem to Jericho, only to be overtaken on the way by the Babylonians and sent to Babylon to condemnation (2 Kings 25:4). ‘You’re every one a Zedekiah’, is the implication- but we’ve been saved from out of that condemnation by the Samaritan’s grace. Another allusion is to the incident in 2 Chron. 28:15, where the captured enemies of Israel are marched from Jerusalem to Jericho, and yet by grace they are given clothes, food and water. In all these allusions, Jesus is radically reversing all the roles. The true people of God are the repentant enemies of the people of God, the “thieves” who spoil the people of God are the Jewish elders (Hos. 6:1,29), the Divine Saviour is not a Jew but a Samaritan etc.

One of the many Old Testament quarries for this good Samaritan parable is found in 2 Chron. 28:15 (Another will be found in Hos. 6:1,2,9, which seems to equate the Jewish priesthood with the thieves which attacked the man. This was also Christ's estimation of them (Mt. 21:13; Jn. 10:1). This allusion would have been especially relevant in the first century context. Another connection will be found in 2 Kings 25:4). Here we read how Israel attacked Judah whilst Judah were apostate, and took them captives. But then they realized their own shortcomings, and the fact that Judah really were their brethren; then they "clothed all that were naked among (he captives taken from Judah), and arrayed them, and shod them, and gave them to eat and to drink, and anointed them, and carried all the feeble of them upon asses, and brought them to Jericho...to their brethren". Now there is allusion after allusion to this scene in the Samaritan parable. Surely our Lord had his eye on this incident as he devised that parable. The point he was making as surely this: 'In trying to follow my example of total love for your brethren, your spiritual neighbours, remember your own shortcomings, and what the Lord has done for you by His grace; and then go and reflect this to your brethren'.

The helplessness of the injured man is a fine picture of our weakness. We can only accept salvation; there is nothing we can do to earn it. Hence the Lord warned those who seek to save their own lives (Lk. 17:33)- He uses the same two words to explain how He is the one who seeks and saves (Lk. 19:10). Acceptance of salvation is perhaps what faith is all about in its barest essence.

As the man was stripped and wounded, so identical language is used about the sufferings of the Lord on the cross (Mt. 27:28,29; Lk. 20:12; Zech. 13:6). As his would-be neighbours passed him by on the other side, so the neighbours of the Lord stood aloof from his stricken body on the cross (Ps. 38:11 AVmg.). Through this he can fully enter into our broken hearts, into our intense spiritual loneliness without him (if only we would realize it) and therefore he will come alongside us with a heart of true compassion. So because of his sufferings which we now behold, he can so truly, so truly and exactly, empathize with our spiritual state.

The description of the stricken man being "stripped" of his clothing uses the very same word, rarely used in the NT, to describe the 'stripping' of the Lord Jesus at the time of His death (Mt. 27:28,21; Mk. 15:20). Likewise the robbers 'left him' (Lk. 10:30), in the same as the Lord was 'left' alone by the disciples to face the end alone (Mk. 14:50 s.w.). The robbers "wounded him" (Lk. 10:30), a phrase which translates two Greek words, 'to lay upon' and 'stripes'. The cross was 'laid upon' Jesus (Lk. 23:26 s.w.); and we are familiar with the idea of the Lord being 'wounded' and receiving 'stripes' in His final sufferings (Is. 53:5). The connection is surely that in the process of His death, the Lord came to know the feelings of the stripped and stricken people whom He came to save. No wonder He can powerfully "have compassion" upon us. And it’s been pointed out elsewhere that the ‘two pennies’ paid by the Samaritan are the equivalent of the half shekel atonement money under the Mosaic Law, whereby a man could be redeemed. 

It's easy to think that the focus of the parable is upon being like the good Samaritan; but the focus equally is upon seeing ourselves in the wounded man. The Lord's answers to questions nearly always seem to provide a simple answer to them, and yet more subtly turn them upon their head, and redefine the terms. The parable was told in response to the question "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?". One answer appears to be: 'Recognize you're the injured man. Accept the Good Samaritan's salvation; for the Law which you so love can't save you'. Indeed if read the other way around, the Lord's answer would appear to be 'If you want eternal life, you must do lots of good works, after the pattern of the good Samaritan'. But this would contradict the whole message of salvation by pure grace which was central to the Lord's teaching. It seems to me that the parable is often interpreted that way- and it’s actually the very opposite of how the Lord wished us to read it. No matter how much good we do to people along the way, this cannot give us the life eternal.