So what do I need to do, to inherit eternal life? And he said to him: “what is written in the law?” How do you read it; which is another very common thing. Jesus is trying to figure out whose yoke he's under – who is your Rabbi?
So he says: "what have you heard? How do you read that? Of course, this was an expert Pharisee - he probably was his own Rabbi. How do you read it? What does your yoke say?
In answering, he said that: “you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and then to love your neighbour as yourself”. Jesus said to him: “you've answered right, do this and you'll live”. In other words - we agree, our yokes are the same.
And it says: “but he, willing to justify himself, said to Jesus: well who's my neighbor”, which is an awesome question, isn't it? He says: okay, we've got to do two things to inherit eternal life: #1, we need to love the Lord you God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and #2, we have to love our neighbours as ourself.
Since we have to love our neighbour as ourself, then in order to inherit eternal life, there is a group of people on this planet that we actually need to learn to love, like we love ourself. So we need to define who those people are.
So the Pharisee, the expert in law says: okay Jesus, here's our box. Tell me, who's in there - that we have to love, like we love ourself? Obviously I'm in there, because I can love me like I love myself; but who else is in there? My wife; my children; some church people - who's in this box - who's my neighbor? If I have to love my neighbour, like I love myself, then who is my neighbour?
So Jesus tells him a parable. He's going to tell him a parable to answer the question: who is my neighbour? The answer to the question is going to be found in whoever the Pharisee identifies with in the story. You see how their culture works? So Jesus is going to tell a story, and whoever the Pharisee identifies with in the story - that's who his neighbour is.
Answering him, Jesus said: “a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among some robbers, who stripped him of his clothes, and wounded him, and left him half-dead”.
Let's remind ourselves: who is asking the question? The Pharisee. Who is answering the question? Jesus, with a parable. So the Pharisee is looking for who he identifies with in the story.
So there's this guy, he gets beaten and left for dead - would the Pharisee have identified with that guy? No, alright, so we can go on.
“…and by coincidence a certain priest” - now there's going to be three characters. There's always three characters in a Hebrew parable like this - three characters are going to come by.
“By coincidence, a certain priest came down that way, and seeing him, he passed by on the opposite side”. So there's a priest, and he comes by this guy that has been beaten and left half-dead, and He passes by on the other side of the road.
Would the Pharisee have identified with the priest? No. Why? Because the priest were Sadducees. All priests were Sadducees - they were Torah-only. The Pharisees were Torah and the prophets; so as soon as Jesus said: “there's a priest”, the Pharisee would have tuned-out.
Our tendency is, when we read the story, is to think: bad priest, you're supposed to help the person - bad priest! That's not necessarily the case. The Torah said that it is against the law to touch someone who's bleeding out. It also says: it's against the law to leave somebody for dead - so no matter what this man did; he's going to be breaking the law; so he's not necessarily a bad priest.