He could have answered the question.
He could have recited the Shema.
He could have quoted the commandments.
He could have laid the Law before the lawyer like a well-worn path and simply said,
Walk this way.
Instead, He asks a question.
“What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”
I have often lingered over that second question.
Not because Jesus asks what is written.
But because He asks how it is read.
The lawyer already knew the Scriptures. He knew the right passages. In fact, when Jesus turned the question back to him, he answered beautifully:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus replied,
“You have answered correctly.”
The answer was not the problem.
The heart reading the answer was.
The same words may be read in very different ways.
One person reads to prove themselves right.
Another reads because they are desperate for hope.
One reads to draw lines.
Another reads until love begins crossing them.
One reads looking for exceptions.
Another reads looking for Christ.
The phrase Jesus uses is Pōs anaginōskeis.
How do you read?
The word for reading shares an old kinship with knowing.
Not merely seeing the words,
but recognizing what they reveal.
The lawyer knew the commandments.
But had he recognized the life of love to which they were calling him?
Jesus was not asking whether the man could sound out the words on the scroll.
He was asking what kind of heart was holding them.
What are you looking for when you open the Scriptures?
What are you hoping to find?
What are you hoping to avoid?
Luke tells us why the question mattered.
The lawyer, “wanting to justify himself,” asked,
“And who is my neighbor?”
It sounds sincere at first.
But beneath it lies something older than the question itself:
the desire to define the boundaries of love.
To know where mercy may safely end.
Jesus does not answer with a definition.
He tells a story.
A man is beaten and left half dead beside the road.
A priest passes by.
A Levite passes by.
Then comes a Samaritan.
The outsider.
The one many listening would never have expected to become the hero.
He sees.
He is moved with compassion.
He kneels.
He binds wounds.
He pours out oil and wine.
He lifts the broken man onto his own animal.
He pays for his care.
He promises to return.
When the story ends, Jesus asks one final question.
Not,
Who was the wounded man’s neighbor?
But,
“Which of these three seems to you to have become a neighbor?”
The question has quietly changed.
The lawyer wanted to know who qualified for his love.
Jesus asks what kind of person love is making him become.
Then comes one of the quietest details in the story.
Jesus asks which man proved to be the neighbor.
The lawyer answers,
“The one who showed him mercy.”
He does not say,
The Samaritan.
He names the mercy.
But not the man.
I do not think Luke records that by accident.
Old habits of the heart rarely disappear in a single conversation.
Even after seeing the truth, we sometimes still speak around the people we have struggled to love.
How patient Christ is with us there.
He does not stop and demand,
“Say the word.”
He simply says,
“Go and do likewise.”
Mercy can finish the work that arguments cannot.
The lawyer began the conversation wanting to justify himself.
He ended it speaking the language of mercy.
He was not finished.
But something had begun.
Perhaps the way we read Scripture is revealed most clearly in the way we read the people standing in front of us.
I wonder if Jesus is still asking us the same question.
Not,
How much Scripture have you memorized?
Not,
How much Greek do you know?
Not even,
Can you explain the passage?
Simply,
How do you read?
Do we read looking for certainty alone?
For arguments we can win?
For people we can correct?
Or do we read looking for Christ?
Because if the Scriptures do what they were given to do…
they will not simply tell us who our neighbor is.
They will slowly make us into one.
—
© Gilda Wray. All rights reserved.
Beautifully written and very thought and heart provoking. Challenges each day in how we approach one another from simple things to difficult things. Scripture can point us back to how we should converse and respond but it truly is the heart of Jesus. Transformation needs to take place, less of us and more of Him....falling short each day but continually calling upon the Lord to change my heart.
Beautifully put. Why and how do we read scripture? It reads us. It reveals our hearts. In so glad it is the living word of God, unlike any other book. I want him to change my heart. I don't just want to check boxes in my Christian life.