What must I do to inherit eternal life? What a question! Wouldn’t this make evangelism easy, if everyone asked this question? In fact, we might think that if we heard it that this is to be good to be true.
I was once asked a similar question at work. A workmate came up to me and asked ‘What must I do to be saved?’ I thought he was having a dig at me, because I started a lunch time Bible study at work and I was known to be a Christian. I said ‘Do you really want to know!’ He said yes, so I told him, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved’. That was what Paul said when he was asked that question, so I figured if I answered that way, I was in good company. I didn’t say the bit, ‘You and your household’.
The lawyer, also called an expert in the law, asks ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ The rich young ruler asked exactly the same question (Matthew 19:16; Mark 10:17; Luke 18:18). The suicidal Philippian gaoler asked a similar but not identical question ‘what must I do to be saved’ (Acts 16:30).
Now there are many reasons why someone asks a question. It could be because they want to know the truth, they want the true answer. It could be because they want to show off, or catch the answerer out. That’s why barristers ask questions in cross examination. It could be to diagnose something. And that is often why I will ask the question ‘If you were to die tonight, and Jesus were to say to you, why should I let you into my heaven, what would you say?’. In asking that question, I’m actually asking, ‘What must I do to be saved?’. And I often ask that question: of people in the street, of Jehovah’s witnesses at my door, of Roman Catholic friends, of wedding couples. And it is not because I don’t know the answer. In fact, I can say that for a sinful and dying human who believes that God is there and knows that they are soon going to meet him, this is THE question, the fundamental and most basic and important question that such a person can ask. And you will be glad to know that I have come to have an answer to this question.
But when I am asking this question of others, I am testing them. I want to see what they will say. I want to see what they are depending on for their salvation.
Luke tells us this expert in the Jewish law also asks this question. And he came not to seek the answer from Jesus. He came to test and check out Jesus. What is this man’s teaching about this most important topic.
The questioner was an expert in the law. That means he wasn’t a lawyer the way we understand it, but he was an Old Testament expert, like a Moore College lecturer in the Old Testament.
We are not told why he came to ‘test’ Jesus. He might have thought, ‘If he teaches the same as me, then what do I need him for? If he teaches something new, then does he think he knows better than me?’
Maybe he wanted to catch Jesus in his words. To look for an excuse to have him executed. Maybe he just wanted to see what he would say. What ever the reason, he put Jesus to the test.
As Jesus often does, he answers a question with a question. Essential Jesus, Page 37, fifth paragraph down:
What is written in the law? How do you read it.
What does the Old Testament say? What does the Old Testament say is the chief obligation of man? And as we will see, the teacher of the law knows the right answer.
The lawyer replied, “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 love your neighbour as yourself. Jesus said to him, “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live”.
Jesus points the expert in the law back to the law. Why does he do this? Isn’t this against grace? Isn’t this legalism or salvation by works? We will get to this a little later, but let’s first feel the weight of the law of love. What does it mean to love God and neighbour?
This lawyer has gone into the Old Testament storehouse (Deut 6:5; Lev 19:18). And he has found these foundational principles of the law. These commands were not new with Jesus. They tells us those we are to love, and how much we are to love them.
We are to firstly love God, who created us, redeemed us, and sustains us. And secondly, we are to love our neighbour, created in God’s image, just as we are.
The extent of the love obligation is stipulated. Toward God, our obligation to love extends to all of our abilities and strength. Toward neighbour, it is to be guided by what we ourselves would wish for.
Notice that we are not told to love our neighbour with everything. That would be the idolatory of every modern love song that makes a romantic relationship the god to bow down and worship. For humans are not God, no matter how much we have ‘fallen in love’ with them. We are not told to love our neighbour with everything, but only as it would be appropriate for we ourselves to be loved.
Nor that we are to love God as ourselves. That would be the presumption. For we must not assume that God wants to be loved the way I want to be loved. For God is not bound by human limitations, as we are.
These two commands show us that at the heart of the law is love. The law tells us to love. The motivation behind the law is love. In fact, if we just had love, and loved other people properly, love would run ahead and do what the law requires, without having been told to do it by the law. So love fulfils the law, even while the law is still thinking about what the good thing is to do. So from one point of view, the Beatles were right, ‘Love is all you need!’ Love keeps the law. But our problem is that we don’t love. And when we do love, our love is tainted with sin.
Well, if love is to be the motivation of the law, the law gives direction to love. In our community, love is often the justification for many things. Should they be having sex together? Well, they love each other. So it can’t be wrong. Even if they are married to someone else already, or they are not married, or they are the same gender, then love is love. After all, ‘Love is all you need!’ So it might be argued that it is loving to euthanae a loved one. If it’s loving to euthanase my pet, it must be OK to euthanase my mum or dad, or my husband or wife. After all, we don’t even let a dog suffer that way, so the argument goes. Or, someone might say, it is loving to abort the unborn child. After all, the mother didn’t choose to have it. And, so the argument goes, who wants to be brought up unloved? So it is loving to abort the child. Modern sexual promiscuity, euthanasia, and abortion could all make the claim to be acting on love.
So love often needs to be pointed in the right direction. And that is what God’s law does. The law gives love sight, and helps us make godly decisions when many claims are made about which way is the loving one.
So much for the law and its two great commandments. Why does Jesus go to the law in answering the question by the lawyer? Is Jesus saying that you get right with God is by being good? No, he is not. What Jesus is doing is convicting the lawyer of his sin, and with some success, we might add
Jesus understands the principle of righteousness under the law. Righteousness by the law does not come by hearing and believing, but by doing and obeying. Look at Jesus’ assessment of the lawyer’s answer again: “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.” The expert in the law is right in his understanding of the law. But unfortunately, the law is not about understanding but doing. It is one thing to hear the law; it is another thing to have kept the law. “Do this and you will live.”
This principle underlies every exposition of the law. So Paul says in Romans 2:13:
For it is not those who hear (or understand) the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law will be declared righteous. (Rom 2:13 NIV).
When Jesus says, ‘Do this’ he means, ‘Do this always to everyone you meet at all times and never stop.’ The righteousness that is by law tolerates no omissions, no slips, no sins. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it (James 2:10 NIV). Paul elsewhere puts it this way:
Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law. (Gal 3:10b)
The breadth of our obligation under law must make us cry for mercy! It makes us say with the disciples ‘who then can be saved?’ (Luke 18:26). It makes us say with the tax collector ‘have mercy on me a sinner’! (Luke 18:13).
So what is the way to be right with God? Jesus has already spoken about this in this chapter. The way to know God is not through law keeping because no one has kept it. Rather, it is through knowing the Son. Look at page 37, second paragraph, last sentence:
All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no-one knows who the Son is, except the Father; or who the Father is except the Son, and all those to whom the Son decides to reveal him
God’s way of knowing him is through the Son. No-one know the Father except through his Son Jesus. There is no-one who is good. Therefore, no one will be justified in his sight through works of the law, for through the law comes knowledge of sin (Rom 3:19-20). So no-one comes to the Father except through Jesus, no matter how many laws they think they’ve kept.
But this Jewish lawyer, this expert in the Old Testament law, hasn’t come to Jesus for the Father, but to test him. This man hasn’t said ‘show us the Father’, but what must I do? So he gets what he asks for. He gets, ‘Do this and you will live’.
Now the heat is on the lawyer. The lawyer has given Jesus the right answer. But it’s not knowing the right answer that will save him, but doing it, when it comes to the law. And it looks to me like he is beginning to feel the weight of the law. He now begins to strain under the weight tied to his own back. And he begins to realise that it is too big.
So like a good lawyer, he looks for the loophole that will free him. That’s why people pay lawyers. He looks for the exception to the general rule. He goes through the definition section of the law of God to see if there is a limitation that provides him an out.
But the lawyer wanted to justify himself; so he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?”
Here is the answer: "I’ll build a fence around a select group of people; they are my neighbours. That way I have a hope of keeping the command. I will draw the line around this exclusive group."
Perhaps he thought only his own race where his neighbours. Perhaps only godly Jews were his neighbours. Perhaps he wanted to whittle the group down so that only his current circle of friends are his ‘neighbours’. That would be a ‘doable’ command. [1]
And then he could be justified. Then he might be justified by law, if only he could limit the class of people whom he might label, ‘neighbour’.
And so Jesus gives the famous parable of the Good Samaritan. Notice that the parable of the Good Samaritan is not given in reply to the question, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ It is given in reply to the question, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ Whether someone can receive eternal life by keeping the law is another question. And it is one for which we receive a direct and unequivocal ‘no’, from both Peter and Paul (See Acts 15:10-11; Rom 3:19-20; Gal 2:21). Jesus himself says that no-one is good, only God, and that he came not for the righteous, but sinners. So about the good and righteous command, ‘Do this and live’, this lawyer will no doubt fall short.
No matter what this man thought, or hoped, about who his neighbour was, Jesus is about to straighten him out. For it is not race that dictates neighbourliness. Nor is it religion. Nor is it where you live. In fact, it is the unexpected person. It is a Samaritan: a hated outsider, who lives far away. He is the neighbour.
Put yourself in the shoes of the man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. You’ve just been to church. You have no car. You have 18 miles to walk home. You set out; its hot and tiring. And you meet a gang. They don’t just want your wallet, they want your Nike shoes, your clothes, everything. You are overpowered. They throw you to the ground. They rip your clothes. They break your arm. They kick you in the head, unconscious. And they leave you to die.
Only God knows how long you have been there. Through your own blood and sweat, you see a person coming. You recognise him; he is a minister. You remember him from church. Thank God, you think, as you collapse again into semi-consciousness. He is coming. You would cry for help, but you can’t. Surely he can see me. But he hasn’t seen me. Here I am! Stop! Please! Help! Please stop! Remember me! His shadowy form pass by And you again collapse into unconsciousness.
You awake again. You try to move, but you cannot, your arm is broken; your ribs are broken, you gasp for breath, and see another person. You recognise him from a bible study that you went to once. Surely he will see me; surely he will help! Wait. Stop. No! Have mercy!
It is getting dark. You lie stripped bare in your own blood. It is getting cold. You notice for the first time the wound in your side. You pass out. Then as you open your eyes for what you think is the last time, you see a strange form. You don’t recognise him. As he approaches you, you see from his clothes that he is a Muslim. He comes to you. He stops. He has mercy. He cleans and bandages your wounds. He gives you his jacket. He calls a taxi and takes you to Castle Hill private hospital. You are not privately insured, but he pays for your two month convalescence in advance. And then he goes home. And you don’t know his name.
Jesus asks, page 38, 3rd paragraph down:
Now which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbour to the man who was ambushed by robbers? The lawyer said, “The one who showed him mercy”. Jesus said to him, “you go and do the same”.
You see, for the lawyer, the key word in the command; Love your neighbour is ‘NEIGHBOUR’, so he can limit his obligation. But for Jesus the key word is ‘LOVE’, so that the obligation is never exhausted. Which one was the neighbour: the one who had mercy!
What right has Jesus got to place this obligation on us? Is he not doing what the Pharisees do, weighing us down with an impossible load, and not lifting a finger to help? Let us test Jesus’ life by his own words. Let’s see whether Jesus is ‘a neighbour’. Let’s run the test of this parable over his life. Think back. Did Jesus pass us by on the other side of the road while we lay dead in our transgressions? Did Jesus leave us in our misery? Did he pass us by, content in the knowledge that we were his enemies, not his people, and that he would be defiled touching us? Or rather did he look down from heaven and have mercy? Though he was equal with God, did he not stoop down to us in our misery?
The Samaritan could only bandage wounds. But Jesus took our wounds and made them his own. The Samaritan gave up his time and two days wages. Jesus gave up his Father’s glory and his very life, for a death that he didn’t deserve.
The lawyer wanted to work out who is neighbour was to see if he had to love him. Jesus knew no-one was his neighbour, yet he loved us all anyway. Jesus was our neighbour. Jesus knows what it is to be a neighbour to the unlovely.
Well you might say, that’s well and good for Jesus. He was the Son of God, second person of the Trinity and all that. But how come he expects so much from me? ‘Go and do likewise’. Does he expect that I can love like the Samaritan? Or more to the point, like him?
Well, if you mean, does he think I can do it to get to heaven, the answer is clearly NO. Jesus doesn’t think you can do that. It is impossible. That’s why he came to reveal the Father. If you’re a Christian, you don’t think you can do that either. (Or at least I hope that you don’t). That’s the mistake of the lawyer. No one will be justified by observing the law. So my answer to that question, ‘If you were to die tonight, and Jesus would ask you, why should I let you into my heaven, what will you say?’ is ‘Jesus, I know I don’t deserve to enter heaven. I have sinned in thought word and deed. But you by your death and resurrection have paid for my sins and won eternal life for me. Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to your cross I cling. And I am taking you at your word, that whoever believes shall not perish but have eternal life. So on your word and promise I trust that you will let me live with you forever and not cast me away, which is what I deserve.
But if you mean, does Jesus think I can love my neighbour as a Christian, with the Holy Spirit the helper, as the way of saying thank you for saving me, and wanting to live by Jesus’ words, then the answer is YES. Not perfectly, not without mixed motives, but his expectation is that we will be like this. His tells us to be a neighbour to the one who is our enemy (Luke 6:27). His expects that we will be merciful, just like our heavenly father is merciful (Luke 6:36). Go and do likewise.
I think of a Christian man I saw one day. I was walking down the street and I saw a young woman lying on the footpath. She was under the influence of narcotics. She was barely 20 but her face made her look twice that. I went over to her, and as I did the man came up to us; he was already aware of the situation. An ambulance had been called to her. He stopped the ambulance. The paramedics were angry; they had been chasing her for about half an hour. She was angry; she realised they were going to undo the affects of the heroine. They yelled at her, roughly grabbed her and injected her with shot of narcaine, then they got in the Ambulance and left. She wasn’t happy. She blamed the Christian man and ran down the street yelling abuse. She landed at the side of the road and started vomiting fluorescent green vomit. She started shivering. She was in great pain in her abdomen. The man picked her up. He held her and rubbed her back to get her warm. He left her with me and then called a taxi. He came back and put her jumper on her. He found out her address; he waited with her. The taxi came and told him where to take her. He put her in the taxi and paid the driver. And then he went back to work, late from lunch. He loved the unlovely. He was a neighbour. You don’t know who he is, but his reward will be great in heaven.
I think of another Christian man. I was dead in my transgressions and sins. He stopped and shared the gospel with me. He befriended me, and studied the bible with me for two years. Even when I didn’t want to. He was a neighbour. You don’t know who he is, but his reward will be great in heaven.
There are many similar stories to these. There are many such neighbours here. Remember the words of Paul in Romans 13, after he has talked about God’s grace through the death of Jesus on the cross:
Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. The commandments…. are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Love does no harm to its neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. (Romans 13: 8-10 NIV)
May we go and do likewise.
[1] Matthew Henry p 1858, exposition of verses 25-37, middle column, II (1)