The Good Samaritan

Extract

The Good Samaritan
A. W. Pink

It has long seemed to this writer that Luke 10:30-35 sets before us an exquisite picture of the sovereign grace of God unto those who have no claim upon Him. That grace is portrayed in the actings of Him who “came to seek and to save that which was lost.” First, we have depicted the state of the sinner: ruined, wretched, inert, helpless in himself. Next we are shown the worthlessness of human remedies, their unwillingness to come to the relief of the one fallen. Then we behold the Saviour succouring, fully meeting the needs of the fallen one. It is the blessedness of the Gospel which is here unfolded, the fullness of its provision, the sufficiency of its remedy. Consequently nothing is here said of its requirements—repentance and faith—nothing of man’s responsibility to meet those requirements. Instead, the sinner is viewed as one who is entirely passive, everything being done for him and to him: he is the recipient of unsought compassion, goodness and free grace. He is not even represented as crying out for help, nor does he “co- operate” at any point. His case is desperate: a fit subject for the great Physician, a suitable object for the Lord of Glory to bestow favour upon!

Strange it is that some of the best commentators dissent from such an interpretation as we have outlined above. Thomas Scott sees in the passage nothing more than “a beautiful illustration of the law of loving our neighbour as ourselves, without regard to nation, party, or any distinction.” In his sermon thereon C. H. Spurgeon said, “I do not think that our Divine Lord intended to teach anything about Himself in this parable, except as far as He is Himself the great Exemplar of all goodness. He was answering the question, ‘who is my neighbour?’ and He was not preaching about Himself at all. There has been a great deal of straining of the parable to bring the Lord Jesus and everything about Him into it, but this we dare not imitate. Yet by analogy we may illustrate our Lord’s goodness by it.” We must leave it to the judgment of our readers as to whether or not what follows is a “straining” or forcing into this portion of God’s Word what is not really there.

The context begins at Luke 10:25, where we read of a Jewish …