Luke 10:31 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Luke 10:31

Comments

In the parable, Christ chooses those who had the highest expectation of showing mercy to the wounded traveller. Perhaps the wounded man hears someone coming, and his hopes rise, and he thinks, now I will be OK. He sees it is a priest: even better. But to his amazement, the man does not stop but leaves him to die. The priest stood between the people and God; he taught Scripture to the people. He was supposed to be an example of righteous conduct. Yet, put in this position in the parable, he utterly fails, and this was not an unfair representation; it was true of the majority of the priests. They had inherited a position of which they were not worthy. He pretends to himself that he has not seen the wounded man, and crosses over to the other side of the road, averting his eyes, and ignoring the obvious need that providence has placed in his path. Next comes a Levite, also born into the service of God. These two men, the priest and the Levite represented religion in practice to the people, and their example should have been a model of kindness, else they were hypocrites (Matthew 23:4). What stopped these two from helping the wounded man? Yes, there is some risk to themselves if the bandits returned, but that consideration should have been outweighed by the urgent need of help that this man had. He is wounded and cannot walk and will certainly die if he is left unattended. God has set the preservation of life as the highest imperative. But both refuse to show mercy, the highest requirement of God’s law, and justify to themselves their callous indifference. What use are priests and Levites?The Lord Jesus Christ is making the point that all of us are morally and spiritually half dead. Spiritually we are like that wounded man lying by the side of the road. We have been attacked by sin along life’s pathway, and we will never make it to heaven. Don't think about candles and ritual and that kind of religion. That is no use to you at all. It cannot help you. In fact, no man can help you.

Application

Spiritually, you have been attacked, you have been robbed. You have lost your character; you have lost your peace, you have lost your happiness, and you are half dead. Who is there in this world who can help you? It's no good going to priests; it's no good going to ritualistic religion. It will be indifferent to the real needs of the soul, as these two members of the religious establishment were with this wounded man on the road. What can priestcraft and ritualism do for a half dead man? The whole irony of the situation is shown up. Here is a man half dead by the roadside, and here comes the priest. Unless he actually tends to him and offers some real practical help, what can he do? Can he scuttle back to the temple in Jerusalem and wave a candle about perform some ceremony? Can he rattle through a few of his set-piece prayers? No, that would be entirely irrelevant. His priestcraft is useless to him now. None of that would make any difference to this half dead man.

Some years ago, I used to know a man who was an expert and a leading geneticist. Tragic figure. He was one of these short, rotund men right at the front of his field. And somehow you would have never known that he was an eminent academic. He was such a jolly fellow, always full of fun. People used to say that he seemed much more like a successful restaurant manager than an eminent scientist, and this is how everybody knew him. Then something happened. Suddenly the bottom dropped out of his life. He grew starving for meaning and purpose, and the thing which hurt him more than anything was this: when he lost his jolly ways and suddenly his soul was sick and in need, nobody wanted to know him. None of his academic friends could say a sensible word to him. Nobody could give him any strength, any philosophy, any ideology that would help him and gird him up. He was tiresome to them. The late Professor Ian Eyre, the famous surgeon, the separator of so many Siamese twins, had the same experience towards the end of his life. He began to search, began to feel a need for something deeper in life, began to realize that life was meaningless, and his eminent colleagues didn't want to know. They didn't want to talk to him about it. He had become a bore. If you begin to realize that you are in deep spiritual need, you won't get any help from men of this world. Don't go to your friends in this world, because they scorn God. They are trying to succeed without him. They are running away from God, just as you have been doing for years. They will certainly pass by on the other side, when you begin to get a need in your soul for life and understanding.

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Luke 10:31 Commentary and Bible Study