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I was reading the parable of the Good Samaritan this morning and a two letter word jumped out at me – DO. “And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test saying, “Teacher, what shall I DO to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 10:25). If you grow up in the protestant tradition, like I did, that question might immediately raise red flags. The Protestants or “Protesters” objected to the idea that our doing some act would earn eternal life. So we might expect Jesus to respond to this man’s inquiry with a correction like – “You can’t do anything. You must simply put the full trust of your life onto God.”


Instead, Jesus asks the man about the law. The man responds by quoting the greatest commandment (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 “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Then Jesus answers. “You have answered correctly; Do this and you will live.” (Luke 10:28). WHAT? Jesus, what are you doing here? Don’t you know that this is works based salvation?

It gets worse. The man desires to justify himself. Then Jesus tells the Good Samaritan parable. At the end he asks” “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” (Luke 10:36-37a). Then Jesus says, “Go and DO likewise.” So did Jesus just affirm another way to salvation?

No. I believe He pointed to evidence of salvation. The lawyer wanted to “justify himself.” He wanted to ensure that he was doing the right stuff for God to give him eternal life. It was, in a way, looking for justification based on his own actions. Yet Jesus showed him what the life of a saved person looked like. Such a person loves God with all their heart, soul, strength and mind AND loves their neighbor as themselves.”

Yet none of us does this faithfully or consistently. If the lawyer actually tried to live like this and honestly examined himself, he would soon discover his inability to carry out these commands in his own strength. Then he might come back to Jesus and admit this. Then Jesus might have said something like, “You have learned the reality about yourself. Now, you must come to me, believe in me and put the trust of your life onto me. Then I will empower you to live like this.” But we don’t’ get that from this account. It’s almost like a pre-evangelism conversation. Jesus set the lawyer up to discover the way to eternal life – Him. The lawyer would actually have to try to DO this and then discover great need.

I think we can experience encouragement from this by examining our motivation for following Christ. If we say we live FOR God, that can sound noble and demonstrate sincere motivation. Yet it sets us up for a performance like relationship with God. This is especially dangerous for people with perfectionistic tendencies. “I will live for you. Then if I do enough good, I expect/hope you will reward me with eternal life.” But you never know if you’ve lived well enough FOR God. There can still be deep uncertainty about God’s acceptance.

Instead we need to live FROM God. We receive Christ and salvation completely by grace. But then we don’t just sit around expecting God to do everything. We live from His power, grace, strength and mercy to love Him with all our being and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

“Lord, help us to keep learning about living FROM you. Free us from the shackles of perfectionism and performance based religion. Instead, empower us to love you and others like Jesus.”

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