(remember, these are unedited/draft show notes, not a transcript — listening is always better — and if you listen AND follow along below, you’ll see why)
Focus Question:
What’s behind Jesus saying you should keep the Law?
Intro:
Welcome to a new week, Hopeful. Today we’re going to hear the familiar story of the good Samaritan, but buried in that story is an interesting conundrum. It starts out with a lawyer asking Jesus what to do to inherit eternal life, and Jesus tells him to keep the whole law. What’s behind that? It’s not the main point of the passage, so it’s not typically what you hear in a sermon, but here we’re all about rooting out little nuggets, so we’ll get to that in our Bottom Line segment today.
NEW TESTAMENT SEGMENT:
In our NT segment today I should point out that we’re into a section of Luke where a good chunk of material is unique to Luke and not found in the other Gospels. Broadly speaking, there are a couple tensions that we should pay attention to: One is the “growing rift between Jesus and the Jewish leaders,” and the second is His preparation of His disciples for His departure.(1)
Passage: Luke 10
Translation: CSB (Christian Standard Bible)
Verses: 42
Words: ~898
ORIGINAL TESTAMENT SEGMENT:
In our OT passage today we hear about the ascension of David to Kingship, and a lot of this sounds like recordkeeping — not quite as dry as geneaologies, but similar. That said, there are some interesting nuggets buried herein, so I invite you not to tune it out.
Passage: 1 Chronicles 11
Translation: CSB (Christian Standard Bible)
Verses: 47
Words: ~924
Wisdom SEGMENT:
Passage: Proverbs 12:10-15
Translation: CSB (Christian Standard Bible)
Verses: 6
Words: ~95
THE BOTTOM LINE:
Just a little reminder — here’s this lawyer, and he asks Jesus how to inherit eternal life. Jesus says, “Keep the whole law.” The dude keeps pressing in and asks about who is neighbor is, and when Jesus responds that it includes taking care of the Samaritan, that’s not only scandalous to this Jew who thinks Samaritans are dogs, but is rightly preached as an example of what love looks like.
But what’s peculiar — to me anyway — is that eternal life question. The dude takes the conversation in another direction and misses what I think might be Jesus’ point — nobody can keep the whole law. You see, “love God and love your neighbor,” the two greatest commandments according to Jesus, aren’t just literal, they’re also representative of the whole law. Remember that the 10 commandments received by Moses is often used as an analogy for “the whole kaboodle,” and of those 10, the first four are about loving God and the rest are about loving your neighbor. So Jesus is affirming this guy’s response technically, but not fully, correct… “Yup! Do this and you’ll live.”
Technically true. But not fully true in context because, well, nobody can.
What’s behind Jesus saying you should keep the Law? Seeing the reason we need a Savior, the perfect sacrifice for sins is because we all have fallen short of the glory of God.
ForTheHope is a daily audio Bible + apologetics podcast and blog. We’ve got a passion for just keepin’ it real, having conversations like normal people, and living out the love of Jesus better every single day.
Roger Courville, CSP is a globally-recognized expert in digitally-extended communication and connection, an award-winning speaker, award-winning author, and a passionately bad guitarist. Follow him on Twitter -- @RogerCourville and @JoinForTheHope – or his blog: www.forthehope.org.
Sources and resources:
(1) Darrell L. Bock, Luke, The IVP New Testament Commentary Series (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), Lk 9:51–19:44.