NOTES for Luk 10:25-37
From a practical point of view, the most important thing in today's parable of the Good Samaritan is the difference between how the scribe who questions Christ about eternal life understands the word “neighbor” and how the Lord Himself understands it. In keeping with ordinary human thought, the scribe regards as a neighbor the person who stands in a certain relationship to us. He expects an answer belonging to the same category as “relative, friend, neighbor, compatriot, fellow believer.”
Holy Scripture, both the New and especially the Old Testament, repeatedly speaks of the need to help those around us. It must be said that the position of the Old Testament law on this question is very elevated: it requires doing good to everyone, from relatives to refugees, whom it calls sojourners in our land. Yet even here the Old Testament consciousness does not differ from the way all people think. It assumes the existence of ever wider concentric circles of people situated closer to or farther from oneself. Compared with pagan beliefs and customs, the Old Testament only expands this circle considerably, bringing the answer to the question “Who is my neighbor?” to its ultimate point: “Any person who happens to be nearby.”
The Lord concludes the parable of the Good Samaritan with a question in reply to the scribe: “Which of the three became a neighbor to the man who fell among robbers?” The Synodal translation is somewhat approximate in this verse. The Greek text does not use the verb “to be,” but the verb “to become, to be born, to be made.” The Lord says that you became a neighbor to a person because that person needs your help. The issue is not closeness or kinship, but the need for another person. Moreover, He emphatically reverses the concept: it is not the man who fell among robbers who became the neighbor of one of the three travelers, but one of them who became a neighbor to him.
Thus, at the center of the circles that define the concept of “neighbor,” the Lord places not you but the other person, the one who needs you. Here it is important to remember what the apostle Paul calls those who have come to faith: “fellow citizens with the saints and members of God's household.” We become neighbors to God because we need Him. He invites us to define a neighbor as He Himself does, that is, to follow His path and become like Him.