Focal Passage: Luke 10:25-37
John Lennon and Paul McCartney famously told us, “All You Need is Love.” That sounds really nice. There’s only one problem with that, in all the refrains they never really tell us what exactly they mean by love. And we live in a day where people want to question and define love on their own terms. Which leads to another song, this one made in the 90s in which the band routinely asks the question, “What is Love?” A question they never really answer.
In Luke 10, Jesus encounters a man who is an “expert in the law” who has a question of his own, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Now, sometimes when we read the Bible, we can be too familiar with it. We rush the story along and skip over important details.
One detail in this particular case is that this is an excellent question! In fact, it is the most important question a person can ever ask. There is only one problem here as well, unlike a sincere seeker, this expert in the law is not really interested in the answer. He is only interested in justifying himself, not the heart. But the heart is always where Jesus goes.
Jesus, perceiving that this man was not really asking the question because he was truly interested in an answer, turns the question back on the expert, “What does the law require?”
Our expert answers correctly, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength and your neighbor as yourself.” But he asks another question of Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”
Luke tells us that he did this so that he might “justify himself.” The problem was not that he lacked information. He was an expert in the law, after all! The problem was that he wanted to draw the circle of obedience small enough that he could comfortably fit inside it. What a scary place to be.
Our Lord then tells the parable of the Good Samaritan (vs. 30-37), a story many of us are familiar with. When a man was beaten and left for dead no one would take care of him, no one except a man of despised lineage, a Samaritan. That is an example of loving your neighbor. That is what love is.
To be sure, Jesus is not saying that we must demonstrate this kind of sacrificial love in order to earn God’s favor, in order to earn eternal life. That would fly in the face of what Scripture teaches us about grace, about the gospel! Rather, what Jesus is teaching here is that showing love in the context of loving your neighbor is evidence of the love you have already received from the Lord. Showing love to your neighbor — and everybody is your neighbor — is an external picture of an inward reality.
It turns out that in one sense Lennon was right all along, love really is what we need. But Jesus shows us something different: True love begins with God. We love because He first loved us. And when His love transforms our hearts, it spills over into the lives of those around us — even those we would never naturally choose to love.
Have you experienced God’s love? And are you showing it to others? B&R