Luke 10:25-26 (ESV) And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”
The term lawyer here means a Jewish expert in the Law, the Old Testament. He asked a very important question, what must I do to have eternal life? Jesus answered him with a question of his own. He asked the lawyer how the Bible answered his question. The answer to all our questions of importance are found in God’s Word.
Luke 10:27 (ESV) And he answered, “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 neighbor as yourself.”
The lawyer answers combined two Old Testament scriptures. Deuteronomy 6:5 commands us to love God with everything we have, our heart, soul, strength and mind. To love God is to put your faith in Him. Faith is not just believing that God or Jesus exists. Faith is to love God with everything you have.
It is critically important that loving God comes first in our lives. Everything else stems from loving God first and foremost. The second part to the lawyer’s answer is found in Leviticus 19:18. It says that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. You must love yourself as someone created and loved by God. Then you are to consider your neighbor as someone to love, just as you love yourself.
Luke 10:28-29 (ESV) And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
Jesus acknowledged that the lawyer had given the proper answer to having eternal life. The answer is to love God and show your love for God by loving your neighbor. The lawyer then had a second question for Jesus, “who is my neighbor?” In this verse, we have a clue that this was not a good question. It says that the lawyer was seeking to justify himself.
He was trying to limit the options for his neighbor so that he could fulfill the command without going out of his way. As we go through the account today, we’ll see that Jesus never directly answers the lawyer’s second question. Jesus wanted to help him and us answer another more important question. To have eternal life, one must love God and his neighbor.
We might have the same qualms about loving our neighbor as ourselves that the lawyer had. If we’re honest, most of us love ourselves a lot. To love our neighbors as ourselves is really a tall order. Especially if we have a lot of neighbors. So, if we could eliminate some people as our neighbors, that would make life easier, right?
We’re going to learn that judging who is and isn’t our neighbor is the wrong question. When we truly love God, He is going to help us love our neighbors as ourselves. We’ll learn more about how to do that as Jesus illustrates the principle with a story.