Pastor Tchividjian emphasizes the parable as a condemning, first use of the Law kind of story. I think this is a legitimate understanding of the story, and he’s right to point to the kind of righteousness that would be required to be justified: perfect righteousness. Only Jesus has that, and in that sense it is true that “Jesus and Jesus alone is the Good Samaritan.” And yet to stop there and take this to be the exclusive and sole import of the parable seems wrong.

Tullian Tchividjian, senior pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida,provided a notable explication of the parable of the Good Samaritan this week. Tchividjian argues for a corrective to the popular understanding of the parable: “Jesus wants us to identify with every person in the parable except the good Samaritan. He reserves that role for himself.”

As Tchividjian puts it, the priest and the Levite pass by the stricken man, “preferring not to get their hands dirty.” As the title of my latest book might suggest, I take the positive lesson from this parable that we are called to not be like the priest and the Levite, and are to be a church, as Pope Francis recently put it, that is “bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.” I have, in fact, previously lauded the Good Samaritan as an exemplar of effective compassion.

But this common interpretation is precisely what Tchividjian wants to correct. For Tchividjian, this story is about the vertical aspect of justification, not the horizontally, other-focused reality of sanctification. This understanding, says Tchividjian, “puts Jesus’ final exhortation to ‘go and do likewise’ in perspective.” This imperative, “Go and do likewise,” is then “not a word of invitation to be nice. It’s a word of condemnation” in answer to the lawyer’s self-justifying question.

Pastor Tchividjian emphasizes the parable as a condemning, first use of the Law kind of story. I think this is a legitimate understanding of the story, and he’s right to point to the kind of righteousness that would be required to be justified: perfect righteousness. Only Jesus has that, and in that sense it is true that “Jesus and Jesus alone is the Good Samaritan.”

And yet to stop there and take this to be the exclusive and sole import of the parable seems wrong. Tchividjian is right to make us stop for a moment to consider our own propensity for self-justification and works righteousness.

But the church doesn’t stop at proclamation of the first use of the Law.

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