"Meaning of Good Samaritan Parable"

“The Good Samaritan parable is so familiar that we may easily lose sight of Jesus’ point. He was seeking to confound the law expert with a vision of selfless love so lofty as to be impossible!

As well visualize the Ethiopian changing his skin or the leopard his spots, as imagine a Samaritan helping a Jew. But nothing else will do. ‘An Irish Republican fell among thieves, and an Ulster Orangeman came and helped him; a white colonist fell among thieves, and a black freedom fighter came to his aid; that is what God’s law requires of you.’

Jesus’ goal was to show the law expert, who believed he was spiritually rich, that he was spiritually bankrupt. To be bankrupt is to declare yourself unable to make good your debts. It means you are out of resources. That sounds desperate! Yet Jesus pronounces as ‘blessed’ anyone who has come to that condition. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs [no one else’s] is the kingdom of heaven’ (Matt. 5:3). D. M. Lloyd-Jones explains this beatitude clearly.

It means a complete absence of pride, a complete absence of self-assurance and self-reliance. It means a consciousness that we are nothing in the presence of God. It is nothing, then, that we can produce; it is nothing that we can do in ourselves. It is just this tremendous awareness of our utter nothingness as we come to face to face with God. That is to be poor in spirit.”

Timothy J. Keller, Ministries of Mercy, p. 59.