Luke 10:29-37 But he, willing to justify himself, said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor?… No words, perhaps, ever spoken on earth have had more effect than those of this parable. What was the power and the spirit of this parable? What gave it its strength in the hearts of men? This — that it told them that they were to help their fellowmen simply because they were their fellow-men. .Not because they were of the same race, the same religion, the same sect or party, but simply because they were men. In a word, it commanded men to be humane, to exercise humanity, which signifies kindness to human beings simply because they are human beings. One can understand our Lord preaching that; it was part and parcel of His doctrine. He called Himself the Son of Man. He showed what He meant by calling Himself so by the widest and most tender humanity. But His was quite a new doctrine, and a new practice likewise. The Jews had no notion of humanity. All but themselves were common and unclean. The Greek, again, despised all nations but his own as barbarians. The Romans, again, were a thoroughly inhuman people. Their calling, they held, was to conquer all the nations of the earth, to plunder them, to enslave them. They were the great slave-holding, man-stealing people. Mercy was a virtue which they had utterly forgotten. Their public shows and games were mere butcheries of blood and torture. To see them fight to death in their theatres, pairs after pairs, sometimes thousands in one day, was the usual and regular amusement. And in that great city of Rome, which held something more than a million human beings, there was not, as far as I am aware, one single hospital or other charitable institution of any kind. There was, in a word, no humanity in them. But the gospel changed all that miraculously and suddenly, both in Jew, in Greek, and in Roman. While men had been heathens, their pattern had been that of the priest, who saw the wounded man lying, and looked on him, and passed by. Their pattern now was that of the good Samaritan, who helped and saved the wounded stranger simply because he was a man. In one word, the new thing which the gospel brought into the world was humanity. The thing which the gospel keeps in the world still is humanity. (Charles Kingsley.) Parallel Verses KJV: But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?WEB: But he, desiring to justify himself, asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" |
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