The Parable of the Beaten Jew: Part 5 -The Impossible Task

Imagine yourself as the lawyer at this point. Christ, the man you engaged in conversation with in order to condemn, has just condemned you by answering your questions; He has told you that you are helpless. And then, He gives you what is seemingly impossible instruction. Consider Christ's closing directive: He receives the answer from the lawyer that the Samaritan was his neighbor, the one who showed mercy, and then He tells him to "Go and do likewise." But if the lawyer, if we, are beaten, naked, and dying in a heap on the side of the road, how are we supposed to "go and do likewise", how can we imitate the Samaritan? How can we love our neighbor, how can we care for him in his need when we ourselves are helpless? Quite simply, WE CAN'T!

Now, then, let's go back and reconsider the question posed to us, the question that started me on this whole topic, the question that has been so horribly and incorrectly answered for so long. How do we answer the question, "How do we love our neighbor?"

In order for us to love our neighbor, before we can go and do likewise, our condition must change. We need to not be a lifeless wreck on the road, we need to get up. Can we do this ourselves? NO! WE ARE BEATEN, NAKED, AND DYING! HOW CAN WE PULL OURSELVES UP? HOW CAN WE TEND TO OUR OWN WOUNDS? WE CANNOT HELP OURSELVES! So, now we see this notion of loving ourselves as a pre-requisite for loving others for what it really is: a viscous, worldly lie!

Our first need is not, it cannot be, self love. Our first need is to be rescued from our lifeless condition, it is to be saved from death. We need our wounds mended, we need our bodies clothed, we need shelter, we need to be nursed to health, we need our debts paid. WE NEED!

So the world says that you can't love until you learn to love yourself, but the Scriptures say, Christ says, that you can't even know what love is until you realize you are unlovely and yet desperately need to be loved.

But, if the lawyer is the Beaten Jew, and you are the Beaten Jew, and if I am the Beaten Jew, and we are all needy and unlovely, where does love flow from? Who can supply this essential, life giving love?

Romans 5:6-8 For while we were weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one would scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God shows His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

Christ is the Samaritan. He has lifted us up off the side of the road. He has saved us from death. He has done for us what we could not do for ourselves. He has provided all that He has required. Unlovely, yet loved. Naked, beaten, dying, yet clothed, mended, and saved from death, and made able to "go and do likewise."

Looking again at the notion that loving others depends upon us first loving ourselves, it is important to point out that it is not simply a misdirected instruction or a product of misunderstanding. It is far more than that. Look back to one of our previously mentioned scriptures, and remember that in Matt 22:40 Christ said that upon these two commandments (Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself) depended, or "hung" in some translations, the whole Law. This is rather significant. The Law of Moses abounds in legislature regarding how to act toward and how to treat vulnerable and needy people within the society of Israel (Exodus 22:21, 23:9; Leviticus 19:33-36, 25:38 + 42; Deuteronomy 15:7-16, etc.) By establishing these and similar laws, God is telling His people that because He has been merciful to them, they in turn are to be merciful. In fact, the Law, when looked at as a whole, seems to be able to be summed up in God saying, "You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy." (Leviticus 19:2).

Consider now the fact that Christ said that the Law, being holy because our God is holy, hangs from Loving God, heart, soul and mind, and loving our neighbor. We, as the Beaten Jew, need to be given grace. Once that grace is received, it must then be displayed, it must be evidenced to those around us. The Law not only identified Israel as God's people, but it caused them to be a blessing to the nations. In this same way, if we love God, it is only because He first loved us. And if He has loved us, we are then able to love others, we are able to love our neighbor. And as we do that, out of obligation because we were first loved, we bear the image of the one that first loved us. When we love our neighbor, not as we love ourselves but rather how we have been loved, we bear the image of our redeemer. Loving our neighbor is about demonstrating the redeeming love that Christ has shown us; it is about pointing them to the one that can pull them off the side of the road.

Now, if we go with what the world says, that we love ourselves first, then others, what does that show them? If we say for a minute that we are at all lovely in and of ourselves, what we are truly telling the world around us, what we are proclaiming to our neighbor is that their help lies within themselves, that they do not need a savior, that they do not need the redeeming love of God in Christ. This is the exact opposite of love. Just as always, the world points us to death.

We can only love because we have first been loved. Indeed, we must love because we have first been loved. And in doing so we bear the image of the only hope for a world that is dead on the side of the road; we bear the image of our Savior, Jesus Christ, Son of God. We go to be a blessing to the nations, to point the world to the one that can save it, and to participate in God's work of redemption because we have been redeemed. This is what has been demonstrated to us, the Beaten Jew, by our Neighbor. Go and do likewise.


Fin