<p>10:37 <i>And he said: The one who showed him mercy. And Jesus said to him: Go and do likewise</i>- There's ample evidence that the despised Samaritan of this parable refers to the Lord Jesus. He was 'neighbour' to stricken humanity, he came near to us, binding up our broken hearts, and carried us to the haven of the ecclesia. &quot;Go and do likewise&quot; is therefore a real challenge to us: to have the same dedication for others' salvation as Christ had. His zeal to achieve God's plan of redemption should be ours. Remember how the good Samaritan parable is an exposition of how to love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind (:27). Every fibre of the Lord's mind and body was bent <i>for us,</i> for bringing about God's plan of redemption. He loved us, his neighbour, as himself. Because of this it is impossible to separate Christ from the work He came to do, i.e. our redemption. The point of the good Samaritan parable is to teach us that his same devotion to the work of conquering sin should be seen in us; our concern for the salvation of others should be as great as that for our own. We need to be totally filled with the idea of bringing about God's glory, of seeing the conquest of sin achieved through Christ. So all our strength, our mind, will be given over to the conquest of sin in ourselves, to the spreading of the Gospel to others, and to the binding up of the broken hearts of our brethren.</p><p>The preface to the good Samaritan parable is there in :27,28, about loving God with all our strength and our neighbour as ourself; and &quot;this do, and you shall live&quot; (eternally). To define this statement more closely, the Lord told the good Samaritan parable. &quot;Go and do likewise&quot; is referring back to :28, where the Lord commands the man &quot;<i>this do</i>&quot;, i.e. loving God with all the heart, soul etc. So the example of the good Samaritan is a practical epitome of loving God with all the heart, soul etc. To love our neighbour as ourself is to love God with all the heart and soul and strength and mind. Therefore the good Samaritan needs to represent us, although we are also the wounded man.</p><p>&quot;Be going on, and do likewise&quot;, the Lord concluded (:37 YLT). Verse 38 appropriately continues: &quot;Now it came to pass, <i>as they went</i>&rdquo;, in the same way as the Samaritan Saviour &quot;as he journeyed&quot; (:33) showed such energetic compassion, with all his heart and strength, to the stricken man. We must be able to use our own realization of our own desperate need for Christ's grace to motivate us to zealously devote ourselves to ministering to others. Our lack of zeal in this is largely due to our own failure to appreciate our own need, and the degree to which this has been satisfied by the Lord. He knew (and knows) the feelings of the stricken man.</p><p>Like most Jews, the Lord would have prayed the <i>shema </i>(&quot;The Lord our God is one&quot;) upon rising and going to bed- just as He had a garment like that of the Pharisees, with the traditional tassels hanging from its edge (Mt. 9:20; 23:5). Yet He thought about what He prayed. When asked which was the greatest of the commandments, He replied that it was the fact that God is one. He saw the unity of God as a commandment that elicited action; and He says note His grammar that this plus the command to love our neighbour is the singular great commandment (Mk. 12:31). And He again combines these two commandments in Lk. 10:27,37, saying that to love God with all our heart is parallel with loving our neighbour and showing mercy to him. He quoted two commandments as one, so deeply had He perceived that we can't claim to love God without loving our brother. How had He worked that out? Perhaps by daily reflecting upon what to many was merely a ritual saying of words. And we too read and have pass our lips, ideas which can work radical transformation in us <i>if only we will put meaning into the words</i> and reflect upon them. He speaks of giving His <i>shalom</i> peace to us, not as the Jewish world gives it; each time He called out <i>shalom </i>across the street or to the guys at work each morning, He meant it. And He perceived that it would take His death on the cross to really achieve what He was giving to them in His words. &nbsp;</p><p>A feature we need to bear in mind with all the parables is the almost constant stress on the end of the story as the part which makes the main point which the Lord is seeking to get over. Likewise the emphasis is often upon the last person mentioned in the story, the last action, the last words. Think of the parable of the prodigal; or how the Samaritan, the last man on the scene, is the example for us. &ldquo;Go and do likewise&rdquo; (Lk. 10:37) invites us to go forth and be like the Lord Jesus in bringing salvation to others. Or the man who buried his talent and did nothing with it; the crux of the story is that indifference to our potential is <i>so</i> awful. The parable of the sower focuses in the end on the good seed which brings a great harvest. The fact so much of the seed is lost is in itself an element of unreality- but the focus is on the fact that some seed brings forth wonderfully. And isn&rsquo;t this just the encouragement every preacher needs? That despite all the hard hearts, the initial responses that come to nothing, all is worth it because <i>someone</i> responds truly.</p>