<p>10:36 <i>Which of these three, do you think, proved a neighbour to him that encountered the robbers?</i>- The Samaritan parable appears to be an example of the way the Lord left His parables open to multiple interpretations and reflections, all of which express aspects of the many truths He was expressing to us. We need to reflect who the &lsquo;neighbour&rsquo; actually is. The parable is told in extension of the Lord&rsquo;s approval of the statement that to love God is to love our neighbour, and vice versa (:27). The Lord was explaining that what we have to &lsquo;do&rsquo; to get eternal life is to perceive that <i>God</i> is our neighbour. This is and was a challenging idea. As challenging and provocative as when a black sister in southern USA said to me once &lsquo;Ya know, God&rsquo;s ma nigger&rsquo;. She meant, &lsquo;God&rsquo;s my buddy, my close one&rsquo;. The turning point of the parable is in its end stress as so often in these stories of the Lord: &ldquo;Which of these three&hellip; was neighbour unto him that fell among thieves?&rdquo; (Lk. 10:36). Obviously, the neighbour was the Samaritan, whom we have shown to be symbolic of God and His Son. <i>This</i> is the answer to the question of the lawyer: &lsquo;And who is my neighbour?&rsquo;. Answer: God / Jesus. The lawyer was wondering to whom he should do his good deeds. So he asks &lsquo;Who is my neighbour?&rsquo;. He misunderstood the whole thing, as people do today. The Lord was turning the question around. Who is your neighbour? God / Jesus is your neighbour. You are lying there stricken. Your fellow lawyers and legalists / Priests / Levites can&rsquo;t help you. To receive eternal life, you must let God be your neighbour. <i>This</i> is the work of God, to believe on the one whom He sent (Jn. 6:29). This was the Lord&rsquo;s response to a similar question about what good works ought to be done. And the Samaritans were despised and rejected&hellip; yet the Lord chose them as a symbol of Himself. It's easy to under-estimate just how much the Jews despised Samaritans- &quot;The Samaritans were publicly cursed in the synagogues; and a petition was daily offered up praying God that the Samaritans might not be partakers of eternal life&quot; (W.O.E. Oesterley, <i>The Gospel Parables In The Light Of Their Jewish Background</i> (London: SPCK, 1936) p. 102). We see the sheer bravery of the Lord in framing the parable as He did. He doesn't chose to speak of a good Jew helping a stricken Samaritan; it's the other way around. The watchful student will find up to 12 allusions in the Good Samaritan parable back to Hosea 6:1-10- which portray the Jews as the robbers, and God as the Samaritan saviour. It is none less than Yahweh Himself who &quot;will bind us up... revive us... raise us up... come to us&quot;- all the very things which the Samaritan did. In all this was a huge challenge to the Lord's audience- as to whether they would accept His grace. &quot;Oil and wine are forbidden objects if they emanate from a Samaritan&quot; (J.D.M. Derrett, <i>Law In The New Testament</i> (London: Darton, Longman &amp; Todd, 1970) p. 220)- hence the challenge to the Jews in accepting the Lord's teaching. We in our turn struggle with the extent and purity of His grace.</p><p>But of course, we are intended to be the Good Samaritan too- in that we are to manifest and replicate the saving work of Jesus in our lives and in our interactions with people. There are details in the parables that need to be thought about, the story reconstructed. The Samaritan &lsquo;happened&rsquo; to have &ldquo;oil and wine&rdquo; with him, i.e. medicaments for a wounded man (the wine would have been an antiseptic). And he was travelling alone, when people usually travelled in convoys. And the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans, they wouldn&rsquo;t even talk with them on the street (Jn. 4:9). So perhaps the Lord intended us to figure that the Samaritan was actually going to help one of his fellow Samaritans who needed attention, but on the way, he met one of another race in even greater need, and changed his plans in order to save him. In all this we have an exquisite example of the self-revelation of Jesus in His own parables- for He saw Himself as the Samaritan. And for us too, the call to save often comes when we are on our way to do something else, at the most inconvenient moment, to people we would never have considered would need nor accept our help towards salvation.</p><p>The parable of the good Samaritan needs careful reflection before we see in it a command to concentrate on giving to the world.&nbsp; It is used as Biblical evidence for a social gospel. The Samaritan was &quot;neighbour unto him that fell among thieves&quot; (Lk. 10:36)- i.e. the story shows how he fulfilled the command to love our neighbour. We have shown above that this command refers to love for those related to the Covenant. The Samaritan represented Christ. The mugged man was those He came to save; not the world generally, for they have not all accepted His healing. We must go and do likewise; in showing the love of Christ to the world. But we have earlier defined that love as being paramountly <i>spiritual</i>, and relating to the work of the cross. The parable was teaching the inability of the Law to save man <i>spiritually</i>, not materially.&nbsp;</p>