Three Views of Life
Text: Luke 10:30-37
Series: Restoration Sermons
Date:
Speaker: Ed Rangel
Location: Waupaca Church of Christ
Bible Version: NASB 1995
Sermon Type: Expository
Learning Objectives
By the close of this lesson the hearer should be able to:
- Identify the three philosophies of life embedded in the Parable of the Good Samaritan: the robbers' view, the priest and Levite's view, and the Samaritan's view.
- Articulate each philosophy in its precise form: "What is yours is mine if I can get it"; "What is mine is mine and I will keep it"; "What is mine is yours if you need it."
- Explain why the Samaritan's philosophy is identified as the philosophy of Jesus, and what it means for that philosophy to "establish God's order" in the world.
- Apply the three-fold framework to personal conduct: identify which philosophy governs specific areas of life and whether any of those areas needs to change.
- Understand why the lawyer's question ("Who is my neighbor?") was deflected by Jesus into a different question: "Which of the three proved to be a neighbor?"
Thesis
The parable Jesus told to a lawyer who did not want the truth has embedded in it the three fundamental orientations toward other people — and only one of them is the philosophy of Jesus.
Burden
Most people consider themselves to be in the third category — the Samaritan's category — without having examined the actual content of their daily decisions closely enough to verify it. The convenient self-assessment is always "I'm not like the robbers; I mind my own business and take care of my family." That is the second category, not the third. The priest and the Levite also minded their own business. They were not villains by the standards of their culture; they were simply occupied with their own concerns. Jesus does not call that good enough.
Introduction
Our conception of life determines our conduct. How a person answers the question "What is life for?" will determine, in the long run, how he treats the people around him — particularly the ones who are inconvenient, broken, or in need of something he could provide.
The parable of the Good Samaritan arises from a specific context. Luke 10:25-29 records a lawyer standing up to test Jesus with the question: "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus returned the question — "What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?" The lawyer answered correctly: love God and love your neighbor. Jesus affirmed the answer and said: "Do this and you will live."
The lawyer, Luke tells us, "wishing to justify himself," pressed further: "And who is my neighbor?" Luke's description of his motive is damning. He was not asking because he genuinely wanted to know. He was looking for a definition narrow enough to cover what he was already doing — a boundary that would put some people outside the category of "neighbor" and therefore outside the category of his responsibility. He wanted the truth trimmed to his convenience.
Jesus told a parable instead of giving a definition, and the parable was designed to make trimming impossible.
I. The Parable of the Good Samaritan
The road from Jerusalem to Jericho descends nearly 3,400 feet over seventeen miles through wilderness terrain. It was called in ancient times the "Red" or "Bloody Way" because of the regularity of robbery there. Jesus describes a man making that trip alone — already a dangerous choice — who "fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead" (Luke 10:30).
The outline notes that the occasion of the parable was a lawyer who did not want the truth — and then, as if demonstrating the point, Jesus used this roadside victim to present three philosophies of life. The man in the ditch is the lens through which each philosophy is revealed. What you believe about life becomes visible when someone is lying in a ditch in front of you.
The three men who passed by or stopped represent three fundamental orientations toward other people — not three personalities, not three cultural backgrounds, not three random responses. Three philosophies. Three different answers to the unspoken question: "Whose is this man?"
II. The Robbers' View or Philosophy
The robbers' philosophy is: "What is yours is mine if I can get it."
This is acquisition by force, by deception, or by exploitation. The robber does not ask whether you are willing to give — he takes. The robber's frame of reference is purely what he can obtain from you. You exist as a resource; your needs, your rights, your personhood, are irrelevant to the calculation.
Jesus did not say this only about men who hide behind rocks on the Jericho road. the extends the application: this principle governs "a large class of people today — such as kidnappers, some businesses." The extension is accurate. Any arrangement in which one party's gain is achieved by another party's exploitation without consent is operating on the robber's philosophy. The form changes; the principle stays the same. A business that defrauds its customers or exploits its employees is applying the same logic as the men who stripped and beat the traveler.
The robbers in the parable disappear after the first verse. Their philosophy produces victims and then moves on. It creates the problem the rest of the parable must address.
III. The Priest and Levite's Philosophy
The second philosophy is subtler, which is part of why it is more dangerous: "What is mine is mine and I will keep it."
Both the priest and the Levite are religious professionals — men whose entire vocation was defined by service to God and to the people of God. When they saw the man, they did not attack him. They did not steal from him. They simply kept going. "He passed by on the other side" — the phrase appears for both men (Luke 10:31-32), and the repetition is deliberate. They saw the man. They crossed to the other side of the road. They continued their journey.
The characterization of this philosophy is exact: "This class is selfish; they have no interest in others." Selfishness is often presented as active harm, but its most common form is exactly this — indifference dressed in neutrality. The priest and Levite did not harm the man. They just chose not to help him. They kept what was theirs — their time, their energy, their resources, their comfort — and passed on.
The condemnation is that they "violated the law." They were religious leaders who presumably knew Leviticus 19:18 — "you shall love your neighbor as yourself." They knew the answer the lawyer gave. But they separated their religious knowledge from their road-side conduct. the generalizes the principle: "selfish people disregard the spirit and teachings of Christ." Knowing the right answer and living the right answer are different things. The priest and Levite knew; they did not do.
This is the philosophy that most people inhabit most of the time, and the reason it is so dangerous is that it can coexist perfectly well with religious activity, church attendance, correct doctrine, and a comfortable conscience. The priest was coming from or going to the temple. He was a professional servant of God. He passed by on the other side.
IV. The Good Samaritan
The Samaritan's philosophy is the inversion of the robbers': "What is mine is yours if you need it."
There are several layers of provocation in Jesus's choice of a Samaritan as the hero. The Jews and Samaritans had a centuries-long history of mutual contempt (John 4:9). A Samaritan was the last person the lawyer would have chosen as the model of behavior, and the last person the wounded man would have expected to stop. The hero of the story crosses every social boundary the first-century Jewish listener would have expected to be insuperable.
What the Samaritan did is described in detail (Luke 10:33-35): he saw the man and "felt compassion." He went to him. He bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine. He put him on his own animal. He brought him to an inn. He took care of him. The next day, he gave the innkeeper two denarii — two days' wages — and told him to care for the man, promising to pay whatever additional cost there was on his return.
The cost to the Samaritan: oil, wine, two days' wages, his own ride (he walked or shared), the detour, the time, the obligation to return. Not a small price. The giving was not convenience giving — it was generosity that cost something.
The outline identifies this as "the highest and best philosophy" and as "the philosophy of Jesus." This identification is not incidental. The Samaritan who crossed ethnic and social boundaries to serve a man at personal cost is the image of what Jesus himself did. "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45). The philosophy of "what is mine is yours if you need it" is the logic of the incarnation, the logic of the cross, and the logic of the life God calls us to live.
The result, the outline says, "will bless the world" and "will establish God's order in this sinning, suffering and sorrowing world." A world of Samaritans — a world of people whose default response to a man in a ditch is to stop — is a different world than the one the robbers and the passers-by produce.
Application
The three-fold framework is a mirror. The question is not "which of the three people in the parable do I most resemble in general?" — people are almost never consistent enough for that. The question is: in what specific areas of life do I operate on the robbers' philosophy, or the priest's?
The robbers' philosophy shows up wherever we take what is not ours — time that belongs to a relationship, credit that belongs to a colleague, a reputation damaged by a story told for our benefit. It shows up in systems and arrangements in which we benefit at another's expense without acknowledging the cost they bear.
The priest's philosophy shows up in the places we do not go. The person we do not call because it would be complicated. The need we do not address because addressing it would cost something. The man in the ditch we step around because we have somewhere to be. The priest was not a bad man. He was a busy man with his own concerns. That was enough to disqualify him.
The Samaritan's philosophy requires specificity. It is not a general disposition toward generosity — it is specific action taken in a specific situation at specific cost. Jesus's closing instruction is not "feel the Samaritan's way" — it is "go and do the same" (Luke 10:37).
Conclusion
The lawyer wanted a definition of "neighbor" narrow enough to justify what he was already doing. Jesus gave him a story that made the question unanswerable in that form. The right question, as Jesus revealed by asking it at the end, is not "Who is my neighbor?" but "Which of these three proved to be a neighbor?" (Luke 10:36).
A neighbor is not a category of person who qualifies for your care. A neighbor is what you become when you cross the road and stop.
The three philosophies will persist as long as human beings are on this earth: takers, keepers, givers. What the gospel produces — what Christ himself modeled — is the third. "What is mine is yours if you need it." It is the most countercultural philosophy in the world, and it is the only one that will establish God's order in a sinning, suffering, and sorrowing world.
Invitation
Jesus told this story in response to the question "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" The answer was not doctrinal precision — it was loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself. The lawyer knew the theory; Jesus pressed him on the practice.
The gospel calls for both. For those not yet in Christ: come to the one who crossed every boundary to reach you when you were in the ditch — wounded, stripped, left for dead. He did not pass by on the other side. Believe in him. Repent of the self-serving philosophies that have organized your life. Confess him. Be baptized for the remission of your sins (Acts 2:38). And go and live his philosophy.
Word Study
| English Term | Greek Term | Basic Meaning | Usage in This Sermon | Sermon Significance | Key Texts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Felt compassion | esplanchnisthē | was moved in his bowels, had compassion from the gut | the word describes visceral, deep emotional response | the word describes visceral, deep emotional response; the same word used of Jesus when he saw the crowds (Matt. 9:36) and when he healed the sick; the Samaritan's response mirrored Christ's characteristic response | Luke 10:33 |
| Neighbor | plēsion | the one near, the one close by | not a fixed category of person but a relationship created by proximity and need | not a fixed category of person but a relationship created by proximity and need; Jesus reframes "who is my neighbor?" into "who acted as neighbor?" — the noun becomes a verb | Luke 10:36 |
| Go and do the same | poreuou kai su poiei homoiōs | travel and you yourself do likewise | the present imperative is ongoing | the present imperative is ongoing; this is not a one-time decision but a continuing pattern; the Samaritan's action is the model for ongoing life conduct | Luke 10:37 |
| Justify himself | dikaiōsai heauton | to make himself righteous, to declare himself in the right | the lawyer's motive | the lawyer's motive; he was not seeking truth but confirmation; Jesus told a parable that made self-justification impossible by changing the question | Luke 10:29 |
Scripture Interlock Table
| Theme | Boles' Outline | Supporting Scripture |
|---|---|---|
| The parable setting: "Who is my neighbor?" — a question posed to justify, not to learn | Intro | Luke 10:25-29 |
| The Parable of the Good Samaritan — the three philosophies embedded | I–IV | Luke 10:30-37 |
| Love God and love your neighbor — the summary of the law | Intro | Luke 10:27 |
| The Samaritan's compassion — gut-level response mirroring Christ's | IV | Luke 10:33 |
| "Go and do the same" — the ongoing imperative | IV | Luke 10:37 |
| The philosophy of Jesus: came to serve, not to be served | IV | Mark 10:45 |
| The rich man ignored Lazarus — the priest/Levite philosophy in another context | III | Luke 16:19-31 |
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Converted from H. Leo Boles, Outline 88. Primary text: Luke 10:30-37 (stated by Boles). OCR corrections: "luke" (lowercase l) corrected to Luke; "110'.\" in source corrected to "now" (OCR artifact). Doctrinal audit: three philosophies developed from the parable in full; the Samaritan identified as the image of Christ's own conduct — "what is mine is yours if you need it" is the logic of incarnation and cross; the lawyer's self-justifying motive (Luke 10:29) named and maintained; invitation retains full obedient response (Acts 2:38). No other OCR errors.
