THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER
‘Who is my neighbour?’
The turning-point in the development of a character has an interest of its own. Whether these words represented the actual turning-point in the character of the man who questioned our Lord, we cannot be certain. He may have been led to accept more of our Lord’s teaching after he heard the parable, but, as far as we see, the words represented a moment when he had to make the choice between two standards, between that in which he had been brought up and that which our Lord was striving to put before him.
I. A low spiritual standard.—But possibly the very interest of the parable and its universal application to ourselves may have dwarfed or hidden from us what I call the psychological interest of the incident in the development of the questioner himself. He addressed an inquiry to our Lord, probably in perfect honesty and good faith, an inquiry which represents very fairly the spiritual standard of his day. It was ‘What shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ And from the way in which our Lord treats it, it is evident, I think, that He detected in the question two total inadequacies in the man’s conception of life and its possibilities:
(a) That he regarded the eternal life hereafter as a possession to be entered into rather than a character to be acquired, as something to be bestowed from without, not something to be lived into from within; and
(b) As the inevitable consequence of that, that to him the highest conduct was simply a means to an end and not an end, a supreme end, in itself. This will come out further, I think, as we go on.
II. Conduct and life.—‘Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? What conduct here and now is required of me as a means to an end?’ Not, ‘What conduct is supreme and perfect in itself, and worthy to be regarded as an end without anything coming beyond?’ ‘That I may inherit eternal life,’ that is the reward purchased by conduct paid down; ‘I may enter into’ a possession to be bestowed upon him hereafter by God. Mark the conceptions. You see one of conduct and the other of life. Conduct as a means to an end, and life as a possession to be entered into. Our Lord appeals to a standard with which the man was well acquainted, into which he shows himself to have entered rather deeply, to bring out the inadequacy of his conceptions. ‘What is written in the Law? How readest thou?’ And the man replied with that glorious summary which reduced the whole Law to love. And when he has made this answer, our Lord rejoins to him, ‘This do, and thou shalt enter into life’? No; for that would have been coming down to his own conception: ‘This do, and thou shalt live.’ This do, and eternal life, which you look for hereafter as a possession, shall be realised by you as a character now. Then comes that which I have spoken of as apparently the turning-point; the two conceptions are before the man, and for that moment, at any rate, he chooses the lower. ‘He, willing to justify himself,’ wishing to establish the justifiability of the position with which he started, answered, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ That is to say, who is not my neighbour? To ask ‘who is my neighbour?’ acknowledges that there are those who are not your neighbours, limits your duty to those who are; in fact, brings the whole question of life and its possibilities, its character and its reward, back to the old level with which he started. From that we see the whole meaning and scope of the parable. What does it come to?
III. The parable.—Our Lord tells him that there were once three men, two of whom took that conception of conduct as a means to an end, not as the supreme end in itself, two of whom regarded life as a possession to be purchased and entered into and not as a character to be lived; but a third to whom life meant opportunity, to whom conduct was supreme, to whom eternal life, something to be begun here and now in the perfect development of one’s self by God’s help, and so, and so only, to be realised as a possession, assured, eternal hereafter. Shall we not say this of the good Samaritan, that if he never realised before what eternal life was, he began to live it there and then on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho!
Bishop Mylne.
(SECOND OUTLINE)
A MORAL REVELATION
Our Lord answered this question, not by a definition, but by a narrative. A definition addresses itself to the understanding, but a narrative, generally, at least, speaks to the heart. That story of the good Samaritan was, to such a man as this lawyer, nothing less than a moral revelation. It showed him that he stood face to face with a master of the human heart.
On what does the teaching of the parable rest?
I. It depends on a natural fact—the fact that we all derive our life from a common parent. ‘God has made of one blood all the nations of the earth.’
II. It depends on the high honour put upon our race by our Lord Jesus Christ. He took our nature upon Him. Our common nature has been ennobled by this companionship with our exalted Lord.
III. A lesson for all time.—In the darkest time the good Samaritan has lived on in the Church of the Divine Saviour; and he is just as difficult, and by God’s grace he is just as easy of imitation in our own day as ever. ‘Go and do thou likewise.’
Rev. Canon Liddon.
Illustration
‘The parable shows how easy it is for men of the sanctuary to be far less tender-hearted than laymen, who pass their lives in matters which have nothing to do, for the most part, with the things of God. It gives us a rich and instructive lesson in the practical character of genuine philanthropy, and it shadows out the Divine charity, taking compassion in the fullness of the centuries, upon the wounds of suffering humanity, and placing redeemed man in the holy home of souls till the end of time. But we turn from these points to consider the one point, “Who is my neighbour?” Our Lord answers the lawyer by a counter question. “Which of the three, priest, Levite, Samaritan, was neighbour to the wounded man?” This word neighbour He implies involves reciprocal relationship. “As thyself.” Human self-love is to be the measure of Christian charity. The neighbour of the parable is the Samaritan, who feels that had he been the wounded man the Jew ought to have helped him. A Samaritan! What a neighbour to a Jewish imagination! He was a living outrage on all that a Jew revered and loved. Our Lord had chosen an instance which would prove in the clearest terms that this law of neighbourly duty has no frontier whatever within the human family.’