"Reason for a Ministry of Mercy"

“We see, then, that Jesus’ true goal [in parable of Good Samaritan] was to show the law expert he was poor, and to prepare him to seek spiritual riches in the mercy of God. Our most righteous deeds, says Isaiah, are like ‘filthy rags.’ More accurately, they are likened to a menstrual cloth, and they make us like ‘one who is unclean,’ a street leper, in God’s sight (Isa. 64:6). Imagine the most unsightly, smelly, decrepit homeless person, wandering the city streets in rags. He does not have much of a mind left. He has no resources at all. He has nothing to recommend him. That is what all of us are before God, says Isaiah. And perhaps Jesus himself was trying to show the law expert his own helpless condition by depicting him as the half-dead man lying in the road.

What, then, is the gospel that Jesus is preparing the lawyer for? It is this: Though we are all lying in our own blood, spiritually bankrupt and lost, yet God has provided spiritual wealth for us. He impoverished his Son so that his spiritual riches, his righteousness, could be given to those who believe.

Paul talks about this gospel transaction in 2 Corinthians 5:21, when he says, ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’ But later he puts this concept into economic terms. ‘For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich’ (2 Cor. 8:9). We were sitting on the dung heap, and by his grace God has clothed us in kingly robes and made us to sit down at his banqueting table. What then is the gospel of grace? It means that, though poor, we have been made rich through the mercy of God.”

Timothy J. Keller, Ministries of Mercy, p. 59,60.