Luke 10:26 Commentary and Bible Study

The Lord Jesus Christ says in effect, ‘You can read for yourself; what is written in the law?’, and the man summarizes the law perfectly. He doesn't go through all the commandments, and all the ordinances and the ritual requirements; that would take too long. But he simply gives this perfectly acceptable and right summary. ‘He answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.’ Now as he says this, he thinks firstly that he can do this, and secondly that, if he does, he will be bound for heaven, accepted by God; he is convinced about it. So the Lord Jesus Christ is going to sift him, and show him that he has got it all wrong. What he hasn't understood is this: the purpose of the Ten Commandments was not only to show the standard by which we ought to live, the standard of conduct we owe to God, but to show us how miserably we fail. That is why God gave the Ten Commandments: not so that, like this lawyer, people can fondly imagine they successfully keep them, but so that men, women, and young people can readily see that they have failed, because sin resides within them. It is a standard to show us how miserably we fail and what moral bankrupts we are. But among many of these proud Jewish leaders, it had the reverse effect. They imagined that because God had given them the law, there must be something special about them. So they prided themselves on being the nation with the law. ‘Obviously, God has given us this law, because we are the only righteous ones, the only people worthy of it.’ They responded therefore in the exact opposite way to which they should have responded. Instead of allowing the commandments to sift them and cut them down to size, they became proud. So here is this lawyer. Now, the Lord Jesus Christ is going to sift him. How does he do it? One way he might have done so was to prove to the lawyer in various ways, that he has failed to keep these commandments, but instead he does something else and it is an utterance of genius. Christ picked out this part about the neighbour, because he knows this is going to be the issue that this lawyer picks on and tries to avoid.