Eternal life on our own merits is impossible for a people who by nature hate God and neighbor. Salvation is brought to us by a Good Samaritan who showed us mercy and promises to return for us to take us into eternal life. We demonstrate that we are right with God not in trying to justify ourselves but when we love God and neighbor with this kind of humility, recognizing with great awe that we were the ones beaten up and left for dead because of sin, and that it was Jesus himself who crossed the road from heaven to save us.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is generally understood to be an ethical teaching of Jesus that challenges us to love our neighbor better. Most teachings on the parable are moralistic, leaving the impression that the imperative to “go and do likewise” is the sole aim of what Jesus is attempting to accomplish in telling the story.
But have we missed the greater lesson of what Jesus is impressing upon the hearer in this well-known story? Is the parable simply intended to press upon us the responsibility to love better? To answer this question, there is required a careful reflection of the context into which this parable comes. The parable is a surprising response to someone who understood well the demand of the law to love, but had failed to see how far he missed the mark of love in his own life.
The lawyer, seeking to justify himself, bypassed the question of his own need for deliverance.
Luke 10:25-37 records for us that a certain lawyer approaches Jesus to test him about how one can obtain eternal life. The lawyer specifically asks Jesus what he must “do to inherit eternal life.” When Jesus answers specific questions posed to him in the synoptic gospels, it is important to reflect carefully on the question that is being asked of Jesus. If the question being posed is not understood, the exegesis that follows will be faulty.
In this case, the lawyer asks the very same question of the rich young ruler, “what must I do to inherit eternal life”—two verbs. This is an entirely different question than those who asked Jesus for mercy, as with blind Bartimaeus or others who, as in the book of Acts, asked what they must do to be saved. Humble approaches to Jesus by those who asked for mercy and deliverance from sin received compassionate responses. This lawyer, however, is asking Jesus how, through his own efforts, he could achieve eternal life, not salvation.
Any attempt to justify ourselves is immediately met with the full weight of the laws demands.
The lawyer bypasses the question of his own need for deliverance, a detail that is obviously so important to Luke that he adds, for proper interpretive purposes, that the lawyer was “attempting to justify (δικαιῶσαι) himself” (Luke 10:29). As he stands before the only one who supplies the righteousness that comes from God, the lawyer’s attempt to justify himself is immediately met with the full weight of the laws demands.
Upon asking for eternal life, Jesus poses as question of his own: “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” The lawyer responds by citing Deuteronomy 6:5, the great Shema, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart will all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus responds from Leviticus 18:5 with a perennial blow that should have made any Israelite tremble: “Do this and you will live.”
Jesus’ use of Leviticus 18:5 in this context is a direct response to the lawyer attempting to justify himself in asking Jesus for eternal life based his own merits. This demonstrates that any attempt to self-justify oneself before God to achieve eternal life is always met with the divine standard of perfect and complete obedience. Jesus does not mince words. He answers the lawyer by saying “if you do this, you will have the eternal life that you are seeking.”
Jesus tells a story to explain what it means to fulfill the intent of the law.
The glaring omission in the dialogue, unlike that of the rich young ruler who openly said he obeyed the law, is the silence of the lawyer with regard to his own performance of love. The problem, as much of the rabbinic tradition evidences, is that a neighbor was only understood to be a fellow Jew. The question is whether Leviticus 19:8, in its command to love one’s neighbor, only intended love to be exercised for a fellow Israelite, as the Rabbinic writings indicate, or did it demand love for all peoples.
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It may just be that, by the grace of God, we will yet see revival in our nation once again. It is also important for us to remember that, generally speaking, it is not the preachers whom God uses to kick-start times of revival but it is the pray-ers whom God first uses.

Back still in the relatively early days of when the Covid Pandemic hit our nation, the church I attend, like many churches, had a time of prayer and fasting. We prayed for the healing of our nation from the pandemic, of course, but we also prayed that God would use this pandemic as a means of turning the minds and hearts of a now largely godless nation towards Him. We prayed that people would see this pandemic as a divinely inspired punishment and warning, hearing the voice of God within it, crying out, “Repent of your sins, and seek for the Lord while He may be found!”
My church, like the majority of churches, came out of the Covid pandemic numerically smaller than it had been before Covid came and caused such disruption to our lives. This fruit of the pandemic left a question that rattled around the back of my mind, albeit quietly, that voiced itself in the following prayer:
“Lord, surely that was the opportunity that we needed to penetrate through the hardened hearts of the godless people of our day. If people are to come to our churches seeking for the salvation that is only found in Jesus Christ, surely that was the chance!”
A few years ago, the late George Verwer, the world-renowned founder of the world-wide mission society Operation Mobilisation, came to my sleepy little hometown of Wrexham, North Wales, to speak at a mission meeting. A large church building was hired out to host the meeting and all of the many churches throughout the locality were invited, across the many denominations. When the time for the first meeting to start came, the church was barely half-full. My church’s own evangelical reformed alliance community was the worst represented of all the denominations. I, like my pastor who had organised the event, was left feeling incredibly disheartened and downcast by the turnout:
“Lord, surely that greatly used, and still ever so passionate man of God was the opportunity we needed to breathe life into our flagging churches. If our churches are to be revived in our day, surely that was the chance!”
Perhaps some of you have experienced such feelings on similar widespread scales. Perhaps some of you have experienced similar feelings within a much more personal and intimate capacity.
Maybe you can imagine being a Christian who has a close and much-loved family member who is not a Christian and who’s opposition to Christianity is so strong they will not let you say a word about it to them. One day, a dear friend of theirs is killed in a sudden and unexpected way. In their struggle to come to terms with what has happened, this close family member begins to open up to you about their feelings relating to death, which then leads on to an hour-long conversation about God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. You are ever so thankful for this opportunity, but then a week passes by, and this family member has returned to their opposition to the Lord and refuses to hear of Him from you again:
“Lord, surely that was the opportunity I had been praying for them for so long. If they are to find salvation in Jesus Christ, surely that was the chance!”
Elijah
The great Old Testament prophet, Elijah, experienced these very same feelings in 1 Kings 18, 19.
In 1 Kings 18, Elijah has experienced that incredible victory over the prophets of Baal: 450 prophets of Baal verses Elijah, the one prophet of Yahweh. Both sides had built an altar to their god, and a bull was placed on top of each of the altars. The challenge was that both sides would call upon their god, praying for fire to be sent to consume their respective altars.
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Some of the Reformers quote Aquinas approvingly, but their doing so is not abundant or unqualified, and much less does it suggest a praise of his person or a general commendation of his doctrine. The contemporary advocates of studying Thomas sometimes make it sound like the Reformers (and Puritans, et al) were Thomistic to the core and that their writings are brimming with use of his own. Granting that these are learned men worthy of a healthy respect and that I am a commoner, I must confess that I simply don’t see it.

From January 28, 2023 to January 28, 2025 the Roman communion is celebrating a jubilee of Thomas Aquinas to commemorate his birth, death, and canonization. As part of the celebrations the Vatican’s “Apostolic Penitentiary” has granted an indulgence which can be attained “under the usual conditions (sacramental confession, Eucharistic communion and prayer for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff).” The homebound may attain the benefits “if, despising all their sins and with the intention of fulfilling the three usual conditions as soon as possible, they spiritually join in the Jubilee celebrations in front of an image of St Thomas Aquinas, offering to the merciful God their prayers.” Nor is this limited to the living. It can be attained for “the souls of the faithful departed still in purgatory” by those who take “a pilgrimage to a holy place connected with the Order of Friars Preachers, and there devoutly take part in the jubilee ceremonies, or at least devote a suitable time to pious recollection, concluding with the Lord’s Prayer, the symbol of faith and invocations of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of Saint Thomas Aquinas.” (Aquinas was a member of the Order of Preachers, or Dominican Order.)
Pilgrimages, purgatory, sacramental confession, indulgences, invoking saints and Mary, and praying before images of men . . . this episode demonstrates that after half a millennium Rome persists in the errors which sparked the Reformation. “Rome does not change and has not conceded any of her claims” (Herman Bavinck). And one of those things to which Rome appeals to justify her practices is the thought of Thomas Aquinas, hence Bavinck continues:
The Middle Ages remain the ideal to which all Roman Catholics aspire. The restoration of Thomistic philosophy by the encyclical of August 4,1879, seals this aspiration.
Bavinck is speaking here of Pope Leo XIII’s declaration Aeterni Patris, which commended Aquinas’ thought in glowing terms, calling him “the chief and master of all towers” and “the special bulwark and glory of the Catholic faith,” whose teaching is “the true and Catholic doctrine” (quoting Pope Urban V), “golden wisdom,” “angelic wisdom,” “immortal works,” on whose wings reason “can scarcely rise higher,” and such that “those who hold to it are never found swerving from the path of truth.” Leo says that the “ecumenical councils” held Aquinas in such “singular honor” that “one might almost say that Thomas took part and presided” over them, of which his “chief and special glory” was having his Summa laid upon the altar at the Council of Trent, along with scripture and papal declarations, from whence the council could “seek counsel, reason, and inspiration.”
That same spirit has found contemporary expression with “Thomas Joseph White and many others in the Thomistic Ressourcement movement (such as Gilles Emery, Matthew Levering, and Dominic Legge).”[1] This movement uses Aquinas’s thought to direct contemporary doctrinal instruction and ecumenical dialogue. Arguably such an approach is not fully Thomistic itself: Aquinas said that schismatics and heretics ought to be excommunicated and punished by the civil power (“secular arm”) – with death in the case of heretics. That’s a far cry from ecumenical dialogue; and, of course, Rome has historically considered Protestants as falling into both of those categories, albeit somewhat moderating its position in recent decades.
Of greater concern is that this movement has found welcome with some Protestant academics. Notable examples are seen in Credo Magazine’s recent Aquinas issue, and in the controversy which occurred when some Protestants (James White, Owen Strachan) criticized the popularization of Aquinas. A distinction must be made here between using Aquinas’s thought approvingly and celebrating it (or him). A distinction might also be made between using his thought in a careful way that emphasizes it is useful only for some topics and is erroneous at other points, and an approach which in its eagerness fails to sufficiently warn where Aquinas went wrong. Some Protestants have become so enamored with Aquinas that they have attempted to lay claim to him. John Gerstner published an article titled “Aquinas was a Protestant” in Tabletalk in 1994.[2]
I’m not sure that more recent advocates of studying Thomas have gone so far as that, but their writings often savor of celebration and not merely of that discerning use which I mentioned above. Samuel Parkison said Aquinas is “enjoying the blessed hope of the beatific vision,” which is hopefully correct, but hard to maintain with confidence given that Aquinas taught idolatry and what the New Testament says about idolaters (1 Cor. 5:11; 6:9-10; Gal. 5:19-21; Rev. 21:8). I’m confident that the Credo crowd would dispute much of what Thomas thought, but it is hard to escape the feeling that they have so much emphasized what they consider beneficent in Aquinas, and what they consider to be common belief between him and the Reformation, that they have unhelpfully exaggerated his usefulness, praised his person, and neglected or minimized his faults.
This marks a contrast with the Reformers, as near as I can tell. Some of the Reformers quote Aquinas approvingly, but their doing so is not abundant or unqualified, and much less does it suggest a praise of his person or a general commendation of his doctrine. The contemporary advocates of studying Thomas sometimes make it sound like the Reformers (and Puritans, et al) were Thomistic to the core and that their writings are brimming with use of his own. Granting that these are learned men worthy of a healthy respect and that I am a commoner, I must confess that I simply don’t see it.
Stefan Lindholm is more careful in his treatment and readily admits the limits of Zanchi’s agreement with Aquinas, but he still says that Zanchi “was well known for his scholastic style and his frequent use of Thomas.” He neglects to quote him doing so, however, and when I turn to Zanchi’s Absolute Doctrine of Predestination I find him citing Aquinas but twice and saying he was “a man of some genius, and much application: who, though in very many things a laborious trifler, was yet, on some subjects, a clear reasoner and judicious writer” (modernized slightly). That is hardly high praise. Elsewhere I have expressed similar findings regarding John Owen’s use and opinion of Aquinas, and I find similar things in Calvin, whose Institutes don’t brim with Aquinas references. David Sytsma – who is also reasonably balanced and responsible on the larger question of Reformers using Aquinas – admits as much in that same issue of Credo (“John Calvin did not often mention Aquinas”). Even granting that one could adhere to Thomas’ methods or concepts without quoting him abundantly, it is hard to reconcile Credo’s frequent enthusiasm on this point with much of what I find in the actual writings of our forerunners.
Of similar concern is that enthusiasm for Aquinas has led some such Protestants to keep company with members of Rome and to commend their works and offer them a platform. Members of the Dominican Order’s Thomistic Institute have appeared at Credo in a teaching capacity (here and here). Again, Rome’s practices have not changed, and we regard them as tyrannical and as leading people rather away from God than to him in truth. They are “idolatry and a gross subversion of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” as Parkison put it elsewhere at Credo. That being so, the question might be asked: then why cooperate with such people whom one believes are so disastrously wrong?
And to that we may ask more particularly several other questions. Has bad company ceased to ruin good morals (1 Cor. 15:33)? Are Rome’s corruptions no longer teachings of demons (1 Tim. 4:1-3) that make void the word of God (Matt. 15:6), and do our confessions no longer regard participation in oath-bound orders such as the Dominicans to be a snare (Westminster Confession 22.7; London Baptist Confession 23.5)? Is praying before an image of a man no longer superstition, and are such things as pilgrimages and celebrations and invocations of men no longer works of human wisdom (Col. 2:16-23) that too much exalt men (comp. Acts 10:26), “are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh” (Col. 2:23), and deny the scriptural example of praying directly to God (Matt. 6:9; Jn. 15:16; 16:23)? Is it through Aquinas that we have access to the Father, or is it through Christ that we have access to him in the Spirit (Eph. 2:18)? Is it before his image that we are to pray at all times, or are we to do so in the Spirit (Eph. 6:18)? When we celebrate or follow any man are we no longer “being merely human” (1 Cor. 3:4; comp. v. 7)? And when we celebrate an idolater like Aquinas are we obeying the command “not to associate with such people” (1 Cor. 5:11)? Scripture is very plain on these points, but some otherwise learned and useful men have stumbled into witness-tarnishing inconsistency in this matter; and well might we fear for some of them, lest their zeal for learning might lead them away from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ alone (2 Cor. 11:3; comp. Eph. 4:14; Col. 2:8; 2 Tim. 3:7). “Pray for all people,” dear reader, not least for our academics, that they abide in the truth viz. all people and ideas (1 Tim. 2:1; Jas. 5:16).
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks (Simpsonville), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation. 

[1]   https://credomag.com/article/who-is-afraid-of-scholasticism/
[2]   Cited in footnote 14 here
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