Luke 10: The Good Samaritan: A Prophetic Think Tank

Luke 10: The Good Samaritan: A Prophetic Think Tank

This is one parable that, more than any other, through the lens of the word of our divines, through the lens of those on the pews, proves to them that the right course of spirituality for the world is the absolute, ridged and righteous inflexibility of carnal thinking. That matter, bodies, social positions, and religious emotion are their own significations of spiritual power.

Ok, I know I tend to be a bomb-thrower. I know I’m harsh at times. The question is if I’m just doing hyperbole with plastic grenades or if I’m tossing an M67.  I don’t like hyperbole, and I’m not fond of fake anything. How do I get to such a seemingly extreme message for Parable of the Good Samaritan? Give me a few minutes. Well, it’s extreme, yes, but no more extreme than Jesus.

I’m saying that real religion to the unregenerate world and its idea of the Christ-taught message about righteousness is about forms moving in spatial reality and their effects, not about special sources and kinds of truth that would motivate them.

Our interpreters work alongside our atheist, anti-supernatural, and materialistic oracles of science and philosophy, continuously striving to challenge the world’s metaphysical optimism through various forms of symbolic skepticism. This leads to parabolic figures increasingly pointing towards themselves or abstract ideas their believers rely on to be considered useful, real, and true.

The Christian perspective suggests that the more significance we attribute either to our emotions or immanent objectivity on a matter, the less it can be deemed to exist beyond the confines of our insular world and mind. When we perceive this insular world as the sole reality, and truth as limited to it, the concept of “importance” loses its value, with nothing deemed more significant than the autonomous realm of emotion and personal benefit.

However, Christ’s wisdom acknowledges this dynamic and the resistance of unregenerate individuals to accepting the existence of real, non-imaginary supernatural truths, yet also those that can be found comfortable living our souls. He transcends the immanent confinement, this prison, transforming it into a demonstration of genuine cruelty only after stripping it of its ability to cause physical harm and turning it into a profound inquiry that sheds light on some harsh yet redemptive aspects of the nature of existence. This is achieved by presenting us with the correct, compelling choice and posing the appropriate question.

All the parables are a choice, you know, and a certain question. Its a test for those that say they really, honestly want the truth, and something is more important than your bunions, bank account, job, religion, the new book, Bono’s Real Pit Barbecue on a Saturday night, cigs, tradition, and even the concept “importance.”

The brilliance of Jesus’ approach lies in his use of a piece of meat to stimulate the dog’s salivary glands, presenting a choice that taps into the animal’s immediate instinctual appetite. The dog who is human, however, and thinks of food as higher than physical meat, must decide whether to impulsively consume the meat or exercise patience in anticipation of a deeper, more fulfilling satisfaction.

This scenario serves as a metaphor for human behavior, distinguishing between those solely focused on material desires and those seeking a higher spiritual fulfillment. In the case of the dog, the choice is limited to a single path due to its nature. However, when dealing with people, the goal is to discern between those driven by materialistic pursuits and those with a broader perspective. By recognizing and filtering out individuals fixated on material concerns, one can guide them towards a deeper understanding of spiritual nourishment.

So, just read any interpretation in any commentary about the Good Samaritan: meat is meat, or meat is a physical help, or meat is a religious idea easily conjured from the creative mind of a Hindu priest, a Buddhist priest, a Muslim Imam or a devotee of Baal. Nothing more profound, and no need to wait for it. The Good Samaritan is about good religious people and bad religious people, giving to the poor or being mean, acceptance or rejection of Christ without a particular scriptural reason, or perhaps about racism or something. It’s not, never, ever, in the world of the android, with respect to the biblical parable, that the players represent a carnally motivated Word or a supernatural one.

Luke 10:21 (KJV) In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight.
22All things are delivered to me of my Father: and no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and [he] to whom the Son will reveal [him].

What he is talking about, that is hidden to the wise of the world but revealed to babes, is the foregoing message of the Kingdom of Jesus Messiah that he sent out with his disciples to herald, of which he proves himself to be the rightful King. The babes are those with new faith, and faith of messianic quality, not necessarily of quantity. I reminded of such statements as this:

1 Corinthians 2:7 (KJV) But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, [even] the hidden [wisdom], which God ordained before the world unto our glory:
8 Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known [it], they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

Of this hidden mystery preached we are informed not by many ways, but one way.  The mystery is not a mystery:

Matthew 13:11 (KJV) He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.
12 For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.
13 Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.
14 And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive:
15 For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and [their] ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with [their] eyes, and hear with [their] ears, and should understand with [their] heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.
16 But blessed [are] your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.

So, obviously, it’s the divine truth of Jesus Messiah from the Old Testament. “God in a mystery” is that which, if the world had known, they would not have crucified Jesus. This is not just any idea of “revelation.” Not personal revelation, or a revelation only to an individual prophet to apply to his time, or a revelation conceived as the whole of every nook and cranny of scripture. The only thing they could have known that is regarded, that would have prevented them from crucifying Jesus,  is the revealed mystery of him in the OT prophets. The quote from Matthew 13 even quotes messianic prophecy from Isaiah, in case you missed it.

We think that the identification of this mystery is a mystery today. We all know it. The revealed mystery we don’t get now is about a mystery around the prophetic understanding that was in effect not only before and during the time of Jesus (Ro 16:25), but now the Church age as well. What is hidden now as it was then is not so much the understanding of Christ in the OT, since Christ has come and conclusively fulfilled it. The Church could not possibly escape it. We use it in our apologetics. That is easy for us. What is mysterious today is the prophetic faith and the hold on our souls that God intended for it to have in our spiritual lives. This is what is hidden now to the carnal religious sensibilities and self-focus but, as Jesus says, revealed to babes.

This mystery (μυστηριον) hidden is then two-fold: one, its mystery of the identification of Jesus as Nazareth as the Messiah from the OT and, two, the mystery of its ultimate ordained place in the faith set for the salvation and judgment of the world. One type of sin in having no regard for it applies to the Pharisaical type religion, the religion of tradition and self-benefit, in the time of Christ’s advent and before. The other applies to their spiritual children living after Jesus has come, fulfilled the mystery, and departed the earth. Look casually the occurrences of the word “mystery” to get this overall external/internal conception:

Mt 13:11; Mr 4:11; Lu 8:10; Ro 11:25; Ro 16:25; 1Co 2:7; 1Co 4:1; 1Co 13:2; 1Co 14:2; 1Co 15:51; Eph 1:9; Eph 3:3-4,9; Eph 5:32; Eph 6:19; Col 1:26-27; Col 2:2; Col 4:3; 2Th 2:7; 1Ti 3:9,16; Re 1:20; Re 10:7; Re 17:5,7

22 All things are delivered to me of my Father: and no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and [he] to whom the Son will reveal [him].

“All things” above are the truths of the Messiah of the OT and its particular, unusual, and unexpected faith. They are given to Jesus Messiah to fulfill. No one knows the Father except by the Son/Oracles, and the Son/Oracles also reveal the Father to those who believe Him/Oracles.

23 And he turned him unto [his] disciples, and said privately, Blessed [are] the eyes which see the things that ye see:
24 For I tell you, that many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen [them]; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard [them].

Again, the “prophets,” adding “kings.” That would be those that are in secular positions of power, set on duties of human organization and control. Of course, this refers to the days past, when little was known exactly as to who the messiah would be, when he would come, or his mission. They desired to know, but they did not. Now He and his particular kind of prophetic faith are revealed.

25 And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
26 He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?
27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
28 And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.
29 But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?

Hers the lawyers, the stricture of the Law, which is the counter-revelational religious motivation to Jesus of the OT, steps up to challenge this righteous mystery of faith revealed to babes and hidden from the wise and prudent. This guy gets the general exhortation to love God with all of him, and his neighbor as himself. But he wants it to apply only to the all of him that is expressed in a general love of God as an idea, not as present, heavenly Person in whom he is exclusively revealed. To him, there certainly is no one standing before him that fulfills that Word’s ultimate fulfillment, its enfleshment, is there? The lawyer is only ready for scripture that promises him but does not fulfill him. He wants a a miraculous, spiritual idea but by a miraculous, spiritual premise.

This man’s idea of neighbor is one who he wants him to be so that when he is charitable the neighbor  supports his self-defined religious motivations. He thinks that salvation that is of the Jews (John 4:22), something written for all time in stone, that did not also include are the Samaritans and the gentiles prophetically. But Jesus is saying that his heart should be focused on the prophetic Word, and therefore prophesied neighbor.

All Christians, or Jews for that matter, who believe that all one has to do is to love God and be nice, according to Jesus’ “do this and you shall live,” are of course entertaining a heresy. Jesus does not, of course, mean this, he means, again, that you do what the words signify, not how they appear, for the kind of faith that he is preaching. Jesus is answering him according to his own wavelength, a gesture by Jesus to appeal to him condescending and accommodating, yet holding out to him a choice to believe through parable, either by tradition or the New Covenant he is offering.  But what Christ offers is not just his Person, its what his person is in the particular prophetic revelation of Him.  Loving God is shown through your love of his scriptural truth hidden behind the natural appearances of the world, behind tradition and imagination and self-serving desire, and loving your neighbor is essentially, in the transcendent sense, giving this Word to him.

Here is the prophetic principle: God promises, and the world receives it in fulfillment by his Son. I beg you to please meditate on that word “fulfillment” and reread that sentence with the assurance that it applies not just to the moral Law of command but the moral law of obedience to God’s messianic oracles by the only one who can obey them.

We receive from God this truth, and we give it to others. That is the love of God and the love of his children. The abuse of the truth the lawyer endorses is a hoarding of knowledge and starving of those in need. It’s about keeping the knowledge of the OT to yourself and not applying it to the Person of Christ and to a distinctly and exclusively prophetic faith. As Christ said in Luke 11:52 about a mysterious key of knowledge, “Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.”

Here is the context of the Good Samaritan, which is not what we think, hidden from the Church, a Church that does not have this key because it has no use for the Door that it exclusively opens.  Its meaning pertains to the prophetic faith. Jesus was parabolically hidden, so to speak, from those that claim to be searching for him, but did not find him because their search was only motivated their corrupt hearts, tradition, and self-benefit, not the OT. They never found him and do not know their Messiah.

The prosaic interpretation of this parable of the Good Samaritan as about being kind to others by picking them up after being beaten by robbers is violently against this truth and is precisely the Pharisaical model. I see proof that we are not seeing it as Jesus intended because we relegate the meaning of this parable to apply to the understanding of a prosaic, worldly kind of faith motivation, instead of expecting that meaningful spiritual landfall would be fulfilled in meaning that the world would be viscerally against. And it’s not against being kind and nice, because in worldwide religious circles of every kind this is taught as the default ultimate meaning and intention of God’s desire for us. The whole thing is about the identification of Jesus Messiah from the OT and a faith reason in our spirits to save, honor, lift up, heal, respect, and spend all to save that peculiar messianic faith from its ongoing, worldly abuse.

With this in mind, we should first go to the scribes and see what they have to say about the Good Samaritan:

Click this on CARM, the apologetic Ministry. Read whatever you so choose. See if you can spot the difference:

30 And Jesus answering said, A certain [man] went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded [him], and departed, leaving [him] half dead.
31 And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
32 And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked [on him], and passed by on the other side.
33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion [on him],
34 And went to [him], and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
35 And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave [them] to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.
36 Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?
37 And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.

This prophecy, spoken by Jesus, the embodiment of prophecy and the beaten man, highlights the significance of the Samaritan as a good neighbor. It symbolizes God’s will for the world to embrace the prophetic faith of Israel that Jesus spoke of, as well as for people worldwide to come to believe in it.

Again, it’s not a faith just in the identification of Jesus of Nazareth as Messiah, but, after he fulfills the Word, the struggle about the place of that prophetic faith in the heart in its fight against the old, opaque and clueless way of simply being kind to your neighbor, which if done without the oracular context can ultimately save no one. You must be kind,  but “kindness” is an idea or action possibly taken as being opaquely mundane, or an idea behind which hides an exhaled one. If Truth motivates you, and you really want to show kindness, lift up the Prophetic Word, teaching people who is Jesus is Messiah and pull out Isaiah 53, Daniel 9, Zechariah 9 and 11. You keep the theology of the faith within the exclusive purview of what has been historically, supernaturally predicted and fulfilled about Jesus alone.

The Prophetic Word, Jesus,  is beaten down by the world, but your first act of kindness is to the that Word, then giving it’s grace to others who are spiritual beaten down by insularity, selfishness, half-truths, platitudes, self-reified tradition, concepts instead of realities, and in need of the real thing for real healing.

Who is the man that fell among thieves? Who is the man that saves him? Jesus or the believer? It works both ways. Jesus, or his prophetic faith motivation intended by God to control true religion, falls and is brutalized by the religious thieves and is raised by those that know him and have faith that he/it is the prophetic Savior. They make an oath that all necessary spiritual treasure goes to His/its recovery. The believer also is beaten down for his faith in Jesus and Jesus lifts him up and saves him by His Prophetic Word.  He says he will come later and reward the innkeeper, the steward of the Divine mysteries, for his faithfulness in applying this recovery to him and his faithful. It works either way because Spirit genetically relates the believer to Jesus. If Jesus and the believer here both work parabolically, what they believe also works parabolically.

The Word falls and the same Word heals it if we take the Prophetic Word as the Old and New Testaments as a single unit. The Word that heals and lifts up is the OT Word that applies to Jesus in what is particularly his passion fulfillments and resurrection. It’s is continually arguing for him, re-healing him, proving him. The Word that heals and recovers is also those fulfillments of Jesus. But this is thought by evil religion too narrowly focused on Jesus and a wasting of good religious time (Isa 42:21).

The prophetic faith motivation of Jesus is then also that which is ignored, misapplied, abused, relegated, and killed, much like Jesus, and that same love also resurrects it, heals it, and gives it back to the people. Those who are not substantially related to this Prophetic Word are the thieves, Levites, and priests, being symbols for that Word’s false faith, only in it for themselves and could care less. They, and their religion, do the work of making it fail, or are complicit in its fall by refusing to apply their religious knowledge to its uplifting.

Don’t do that. As for your love and care for the Word that is beaten down, lifting it up and restoring it to full power,  Jesus says, “go, and do likewise.”

Please see:

When I Survey the Wondrous Nace, part 1: Passing by Nehushtan