The Good Samaritan’s Love
By Shirley Mitchell
“In reply Jesus said: A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead…But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him.”
Luke 10:30,33-34
The Samaritan traveled by and reacted completely different than the two religious leaders that previously passed the injured man. God’s Word tells us that “when he saw him, he took pity on him.” This Greek word is splanchinizomai which means, “It is being moved to the point of one’s intestines or bowels”. The Samaritan felt compassion for the man so much that he physically ached for the man. He saw the man in agony and was stirred from deep within himself.
He came to the wounded man. Instead of moving to the other side of the road, the Samaritan tended to the man’s wounds and bandaged them. Then he lifted the heavy, limp body of the man and placed him on his donkey. Then he walked beside him until he found an inn where the man could recover. The Samaritan continued his journey, but provided care for the injured man by making arrangements with the innkeeper. The Samaritan demonstrated Luke 10:27, “love your neighbor as thyself.”
One of my favorite movies is Four Feathers. In the movie, a former slave saves the leading character from a cruel death of dying of thirst in a desert. The rescuer had become a Christian because of his former owner. Although the movie did not say it, I’m sure the owner taught him the story of the Good Samaritan. When the leading character recovered, he asked the man why he had risked his life to save another’s life. Why had he consumed his time and money nursing the man back to health? Why? The former slave’s answer was, “because God put you in my path.”
You and I do not have to have a schedule filled with acts of kindness. The point is not to promote and recruit for the local church’s outreach team. Acts of kindness are not limited to outreach night at your church. Like the Good Samaritan, Jesus reached people as He traveled from place to place because He was sensitive to the needs of the people and committed to doing the will of His Father. Jesus made His path, God’s path. We should do the same. The key is to be a servant of mercy and kindness as you and I move about in our community. We should pray that God will lead us down paths that bring opportunities to reach people. Pray that we have spiritual eyes to recognize the need and that God gives us discernment to understand His will for our involvement and for how we involve others.
When we focus on our scarcity, we become stingy. When we focus on God’s abundant resources, we give generously. When we focus on our needs or desires for position, recognition, control, security, or power, then we do not have spiritual eyes to see the evident needs of others around us. When we have not received God’s love, we can not give what we do not possess or know about.
Love is a sacrificial action. Love is not mushy feeling. When you and I demonstrate love for our neighbor, we are showing proof of our relationship with God. Loving the unlovely, the unkind, or the undeserving, the difficult, or the one who just plain gets on our nerves! Love for our neighbor is an outflow of love for God. We can not live the second commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself” in Luke 10:27, without living the first commandment which says, “Love the Lord you God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.”
Love cancels our agenda for God’s agenda. Love lets our lives be interrupted. Love initiates reaching out. Love bears rejection and disappointment. Love builds a bridge and does not ignore the gulf in a relationship. Love sacrifices self for other’s needs. The degree that we give not only from our excess of resources, but our basic resources is an indicator of how much we agape love. The lost are watching us. They want to know how we treat people. We can not be preoccupied with ourselves while the hungry do not have food, the homeless do not have shelter, the sick do not have care, the lonely do not have relationships, and the spiritually bound do not have freedom! Let’s be the one who gives this great love to all who God’s places us on their path.
Pray with me: Oh, Lord, let me leave a trail of love everywhere that I tread. Give me that kind of heart and splanchinizomai reaction to those who are hurting, homeless, damaged, weak, lost, stray, struggling, loopy, dirty, and stained. I want to care for the discarded people, the people left to die, the people no one else is willing to touch, and the people who others say their lives are ruined. I know with You, Lord, that no one is so far gone that You can’t reach them. All living beings are still within Your reach and You can even raise them back from the dead to deliver them from the bondage of sin. Give me Your spiritual vision to see Your path and to see the ones lying on the path who need my physical hands and feet so the Holy Spirit can minister to them. It’s in the Name above all names, in Jesus’ Name, Yeshua’s Name, I pray. Amen.
Excerpt from the Jesus Lives Bible study