NOTES for Luk 10:25-37

The lawyer’s question is perfectly lawful (perhaps even too much so): if loving my neighbor is required of me in order to inherit eternal life, it would be good to define the terms of the contract and determine who exactly my neighbor is. Personally, I am not sure that he understood Jesus’ answer (v. 37): it turns out that the terms of the contract are entirely undefined, and your neighbor is the one to whom YOU yourself have become a neighbor. Such an approach, of course, requires of me not a legalistic stance at all, but genuine mercy—frightening as it is to say—toward everyone I encounter. Perhaps this is what it means to enter eternal life.