Daily Bible Reading 24th August 2026 // Luke 10:25-37
25 And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” 27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.” 28 And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
29 But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?” 30 Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. 34 He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ 36 Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbour to the man who fell among the robbers?” 37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”
We must not misunderstand either the lawyer's answer to Jesus (27) or Jesus' parable (30ff) to mean salvation by works. For (a) the parable of the Good Samaritan, which does lay such a stress on works, is an answer to the question 'Who is my neighbour?', not to the question: 'What shall I do to inherit eternal life?'; and (b) the answer: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God....' is an answer spoken within the context of the covenant of grace, to the redeemed people of God, and we need to understand these words as spoken to believers, to those who are disciples. As such, they express what true faith really does, and how it expresses itself. It is the same emphasis as we see in 2 Peter 1:5-7 - 'Give diligence to make your calling and election sure by supplying in your faith.... brotherly love', as the Good Samaritan did. We could put it another way, in terms of the proper interpretation of the passages in Romans 2:6ff, and Matthew 25:31ff: salvation is by faith, but judgment is by works. In this connection, we may well see a link between this and what we saw earlier in the chapter, in the account of the sending forth of the disciples - they were to be, as we saw, instruments and vehicles of Christ's compassion; while, here, we see that the mark of true discipleship is to be compassion. As Jesus said, at the end of the parable, 'Go, and do thou likewise'.