Dear reader,
The good samaritan. In my book a good man loving from the heart. That is Jesus and what he wants us to do.
For some here an evil man because he did not do it in Christ. That is not the gospel. If you cannot see that you do not know Jesus.
I am not here to win people over, it is obvious many would regard followers of Jesus legalists doomed to hell who are trying to earn our way to heaven.
It is based on assumptions about original sin, the fallen nature of humans and a gnostic view of the born again spirit.
I am glad we can progress to agree to disagree. Following the Lord is not about fitting together verses to invent a new solution, it is about walking with Jesus and listening to what He is teaching you.
Well. It IS the gospel, Peter.
He did a good thing. He followed the law, he showed mercy when no one else would.
We don't say he did an evil deed as you suppose.
But he is a parable, not a live person as the woman at the well was.
And we know if he were a live person, he would fall short of the mark in other ways, and so he would not keep all of the law. And to not keep all of it condemns us because the payment for sin is death.
If he were a live person, he may have later gone home and beat his wife and children, because we know ourselves Peter, we know ourselves, and we are often kinder to strangers and animals than we are to our family and those we know and claim to love. We know we cannot keep the whole law and if we give up our fear of admitting what is in us and what we are capable of doing, our Lord comes RUNNING to us, Peter. All He wants is the truth from us. We can't be truthful with Him if we are putting on fig leaves to hide our sin from ourselves and others, making justifications for our behaviors and demanding strict adherence for everyone else, and running and hiding.
Admitting the truth, which we fear so greatly, sets us free, Peter.
And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. It will set you free from the charade, from always defending yourself, your honor, your reputation, your opinion.
So it is the gospel that this good Samaritans good deed did not save him unless he was completely sinless in all else, because there will be no more rebellion against God in heaven this next time around. Not even a little rebellion.
It is not as you keep insisting, that we say he did an evil deed by showing mercy, but what happens to him when he then does an evil deed, which he will, because he is human. Will his good deed erase his bad deeds?
You are missing the point of the parable though. It is that the man the two religious men would not come near for fear of defiling themselves, is the one who helped their own brother when he was in need.
And worse than that, they didn't know if the jewish man, their own brother, was dead or not. And they didn't care. In fact, maybe they could see his chest rising and falling but he looked near death and they feared he would die while they were helping him thereby defiling themselves. Their imagined spotlessness was more important to them than a beat up man laying in the road, possibly alive or dead.
The parable is meant to show us ourselves, Peter. We are those religious men who didn't show mercy, care and love. It isn't a statement on who is saved and who isn't. It is a parable meant to show the man he was talking to that a convoluted thesis on who was his neighbor and who wasn't was not going to be the justification to hide his lack of mercy behind that he wished it to be. Good grief, its so us that it seems impossible we fail to see it and be convicted by it!