A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on August 24, 2025.
And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise” (Luke 10:25–37).[1]
When Jesus’ seventy-two disciples returned from their short-term mission, rejoicing in spiritual victory the Lord accomplished through them, Jesus acknowledged the victory but added this caution: “Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20). The spiritual authority over evil that Christ has given every disciple is indeed remarkable, but our joy comes not from what we do for God but what God has done for us. We who are prone to make much of what we have done, can do, and will do, must remember that but for the grace of God we would still be dead in our trespasses and sins, still following the ways of this world and her prince, still defined by disobedience to God rather than obedience in Christ, still living in the passions of our flesh, by the desires of our flesh and mind, and still by nature children of wrath, like the rest of humanity.[2] But before the foundation of the world, God the Father chose us in Christ, to be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his own,[3] to be saved by his grace, not according to our merit but through the gift of faith. That your name is written in heaven reveals nothing about you but God’s love for you and “the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward you in Christ Jesus.”[4]
It is this grace that must inform the entirety of the Christian life: How we think, what we say, what we do, how we live. Witnessing it in his disciples, Jesus rejoiced and prayed, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will” (Luke 10:21). Consider what Jesus is praying: God hides sovereign grace from “the wise and understanding” and reveals it to “little children,” like you and me. Why would Jesus thank his Father for this? Because, when our salvation is not of our doing or deserving but according to God’s mercy and by grace, we cannot claim credit for any contribution, and God gets all the glory. This truth, however, does not sit well with “the wise and understanding,” as we see in the lawyer and his questions in our passage today.
Loving God
He was an expert in the moral, ceremonial, and civil law of the Old Testament Scriptures, a scholar intent on testing Jesus, beginning with this question: “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 10:25). It is a question rooted in the Hebrew understanding of eternal life and its association with the kingdom of God. The lawyer’s use of the verb “to inherit” may imply the bestowing of a heavenly inheritance upon God’s covenant people, but the emphasis of his question is on what must be done: What shall I do? Was his interest sincere? Did he really want to know? We don’t know. But he likely presumed to know more than an uneducated, wandering nomad from Nazareth.
Regardless, Jesus’ response is priceless, returning the question to the lawyer’s expertise: “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” (Luke 10:26). As expected, the lawyer reads it well, replying “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). It is a brilliant answer, pulling together two verses, one from Deuteronomy, the other from Leviticus. And Jesus concurs. In these two verses, all the law and the prophets are succinctly summarized.[5]
But what do these verses mean? What does it mean to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind”? What is “all your heart”? What is “all your soul”? What is “all your strength”? What is “all your mind”? The answer is not found in defining each aspect of our being. The key word is not heart, or soul, or strength, or mind; it’s all, every molecule of our being. This is an absolute, all-encompassing love for God.
If loving God is all-encompassing, what then does it mean to love “your neighbor as yourself”? What kind of love involves both me and my neighbor? In Leviticus, from where the verse is drawn, we read of the civil laws given for both self-care and caring for those less fortunate than we are. The passage includes showing compassion, honesty, justice, impartiality, and generally seeking the welfare of others. Just as we naturally care for ourselves so should our concern be for our neighbor. Such breadth of generosity might lead one to want to limit how “our neighbor” is defined, but for now Jesus responds with complementary confirmation, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live” (Luke 10:28).
But Jesus’ response is more than a confirmation, isn’t it? There is a difference between knowing and living. The lawyer could answer correctly, but could he live it? James tells us, “whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” (Jas. 2:10). Could the lawyer keep the law and so live? Can you? Scripture answers this for us: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Rom. 3:10-12). The tragic fact is “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), and “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23a). “Do this, and you will live” then isn’t a goal to achieve but a death sentence.
What the lawyer heard that day, whether he realized or not, is not the good news but bad, for him, yes, but for me and my neighbor too. If you and I cannot love the Lord your God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength and with all our mind, and our neighbor as ourself, how can anyone inherit eternal life? The answer is found not in what we do or how much we love or who we love, but in God’s love for us: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).[6]
Loved by God
In his first epistle, the apostle John tells us that “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16). And this love, in which we abide, was made manifest in the incarnation of God’s Son. In his love for us, he came and lived the life we could not live. He neither committed nor knew sin,[7] but obeyed his Father, fulfilling the law perfectly.[8] And in his love, he died for us. “By this we know love,” John explains, “that he laid down his life for us,” to which he adds, “and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers” (1 John 3:16).
Love is then a defining characteristic of the Christian, the one loved by God so much so that he sent his only Son into the world, to be the propitiation for our sins so that we might live through him.[9] He did this not in response to our love, or even his foreknowledge of it, but because he loved us before time began. Therefore, we love because he first loved us,[10] which is witnessed in our love for others. John says, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:20-21). But what about those we do not or would not call “brother” or “sister”? Are we commanded to love them too?
Loving like God
When Jesus said, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live” (Luke 10:28), how did the lawyer respond? He responded not with a confession but a justification, asking “And who is my neighbor?” Luke does not tell us in what sense the lawyer sought to justify himself, but the following parable does. The story begins with a man traveling from Jerusalem, a man perhaps like the lawyer. Along the way, the man is attacked, robbed, stripped, beaten, and left for dead. His condition is critical, his needs immediate, but help is on the way, from a priest, who turns out to be no help at all. Likewise, a Levite, a servant of the Lord, comes along and goes along, leaving the man to die alone. But eventually help comes, not in a child of Israel but a despised Samaritan, who shows compassion, provides care, and covers the cost, all of it.
We refer to the familiar story as “The Parable of the Good Samaritan,” but Jesus used it as a mirror that the lawyer might see the reflection of his depravity. When Jesus asked, “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?”, the answer was beyond obvious: “The one who showed him mercy” (Luke 10:36-37a). But then, as he had done before, Jesus gave the ultimatum, “You go, and do likewise” (10:37b), a directive confronting not only what the lawyer would not do but what he could not do. Howard Marshall notes, “Jesus does not supply information as to whom one should help; failure to keep the commandment springs not from lack of information but from lack of love. It was not fresh knowledge that the lawyer needed, but a new heart . . .”[11] For all the sacrifices and ceremonies, for all the fasting and prayer, the lawyer’s religion was lifeless, because it was loveless. He could quote the beautiful summation of God’s law by memory, but he did not know the love of God, embodied before him.[12]
But, for all who are in Christ, who trust him alone for our salvation, we know him, and love him, and are called his “Beloved.” And John tells us, “if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11), not as those who have earned it but as those who don’t deserve it. “We are beggars,” Martin Luther said on his death bed,[13] undeserving of God’s love, sinners saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone. And from this love of God, bestowed upon the least deserving, we love, even the unlovable. Because, our love is motivated not by who someone else is, or who we are, but who God is, and “God is love” (1 John 4:8).
To love those who love you is reciprocity. To love those who don’t is grace. And just as God has bestowed the immeasurable riches of his grace upon us, loving us while we were yet sinners, so we must gratefully respond to this grace by bestowing it upon others, loving our neighbor as ourself, and may all that we do then be done in love.[14]
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] Eph. 2:1-3
[3] Eph. 1:4-5
[4] Eph. 2:5-8
[5] Matt. 22:40
[6] Holy Bible: New American Standard Bible (LaHabra: The Lockman Foundation, 1995).
[7] 2 Cor. 5:21; 1 Pet. 2:22
[8] Matt. 5:17-20
[9] 1 John 4:9-10
[10] 1 John 4:19
[11] I. Howard Marshall, “Luke,” New Bible Commentary, 4th Ed., quoted in Dale Ralph Davis, Luke: The Year of the Lord’s Favor (Fearn: Christian Focus Publications, 2021), 186.
[12] 1 John 4:9
[13] https://www.1517.org/articles/we-are-beggars-martin-luthers-final-words-and-the-heart-of-the-gospel
[14] 1 Cor. 16:14
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