Who Are You In the Story?

The parable of the Good Samaritan.

You’ve read this story before, right? Quick quiz.

You know who the hero is? The Good Samaritan — obvious.

You know who the villains are? The priest and the Levite — they’re the ones who walked past a dying man and kept moving. I’ll award you half-credit for that answer.

Because there is another villain in this story, he doesn’t walk past anyone. He asks the right questions. He even gives the right answers. Yet he is the most dangerous character of them all.

“One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: ‘Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?’” (Luke 10:25, NLT).

Take a closer look at the man who started this conversation with Jesus. I know he is not part of the original parable. Yet pull back from the story. The one who prompted the whole exchange with Jesus emerges as the true villain. I’m talking about the lawyer.

And there’s a good chance you are him.

I know that probably feels wrong. When you read a parable of Jesus, you know which character you’re supposed to be. We have a habit of identifying with the story's hero. But that’s not always who accurately reflects us.

The lawyer came to evaluate Jesus. But he left with a command. And as it turns out, so will you.

THE LAWYER AS YOUR MIRROR

The lawyer is introduced as having a clear agenda: he “stood up to test” Jesus. He already had his theology in order. Or so he assumed. He was there to scrutinize, not to learn.

His opening question sounds sincere enough. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” But when Jesus turned the question back on him, the lawyer answered without hesitation.

“What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?”

The man answered, “ ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ” (Luke 10:26–27, NLT).

He knew. He had always known.

He looks like a model student. Right question. Right answer. Right theology.

But then Luke lets us glimpse his motivation: “wanting to justify himself, he said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’”

He wasn’t asking because he lacked an answer. He was asking because he thought he already had one. He wanted to know where the line was. Love your neighbor — fine. But how far does that extend? What’s the minimum? Who can I exclude?

That is the question of a man who has already decided which groups deserve his love — and which don’t.

And here is where you enter the story.

Most of us come to the story of the Good Samaritan the same way the lawyer came to Jesus — already knowing the right answers, already certain we’re on the correct side of the lesson. We read the parable and evaluate. We identify the hero. We shake our heads at the priest and the Levite. We know which group we are in.

But Jesus throws us a curve.

THE QUESTION JESUS REFUSES TO ANSWER

Rather than answering the lawyer’s question, He replaced it.

Jesus tells the story. You remember the highlights, right?

• A man falls among thieves. He is robbed, stripped, badly beaten, and left for dead.
• A priest comes by, sees the man, but doesn’t stop to help.
• A Levite comes by and passes on the opposite side of the road.
• Then a Samaritan comes by. He stops, treats the man’s wounds, brings him to an inn, pays for his care, and promises to cover any additional costs on his return.

And then comes Jesus’ question.

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” (Luke 10:36, NLT)

The lawyer asked who qualifies as a neighbor. Jesus asked who actually became one.

The lawyer’s question assumes that neighborliness is a category — a fixed status some people hold, and others don’t. You figure out who’s in, and love them. Everyone else is outside your obligation.

But Jesus taught that loving others shows up in what you do, not in who you approve. The Samaritan didn’t stop to figure out whether the man in the ditch qualified. He saw a person in need of help, and he acted in that moment like a true neighbor.

As long as “who is my neighbor?” is the question, we stay in evaluation mode. We keep ourselves at the center — deciding who makes the cut, drawing the circle in the sand, feeling satisfied when we’ve loved the people we already planned to love.

Jesus refuses to play that game. He flips the question entirely: stop asking who qualifies for your love. Start asking whether you are the kind of person who loves.

RECOGNITION WITHOUT TRANSFORMATION

The lawyer answers Jesus’ question correctly.

“The one who showed mercy,” he is the neighbor.

This answer leaped off the page at me. Why didn’t the lawyer reply by saying, “The Samaritan?” He referred to him by his actions, not by his category. The hostility between Jews and Samaritans ran deep — centuries of theological dispute, mutual contempt, and open conflict had driven a sharp wedge between the two groups. He recognized the hero. But he could not bring himself to honor him by his group title. He sidesteps the name and describes the actions instead.

And yet — in doing so, he accidentally says more than he intended. The word he reaches for is “mercy” — but in the Jewish tradition, this was not a casual term. It was a covenant word, the specific language used to describe the faithful, loyal love that God Himself showed toward His people. By refusing to say “Samaritan,” the lawyer ends up honoring the man with the highest attribution available in Jewish language — the very quality attributed to God.

That’s when it hit me. The lawyer identified the hero perfectly, described his actions in the most honorable terms available, and nothing inside of him changed.

He walked into that conversation as an evaluator, and he walked out the same way. The correct answer did not cost him anything, nor move him, nor require him to become anything different from what he already was.

This is the most uncomfortable part of the story. The lawyer saw clearly. He understood completely. And for him, knowing the right answer was enough.

It is not enough for Jesus.

A COMMAND, NOT A CORRECT ANSWER

Jesus doesn’t congratulate the lawyer. He doesn’t commend his theology or acknowledge the quality of his answers. He closes the conversation with a terse instruction.

“Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:37, NLT)

No commendation. No applause. Just a command. And it is aimed directly at the gap the entire conversation has exposed — the space between knowing and doing, between identifying the right answer and becoming the person who acts on it.

The command doesn’t leave room for reflection as a substitute. Jesus isn’t asking the lawyer to feel differently or update his theology. He’s sending him out to act — and the person He’s sending him to imitate is the one the lawyer couldn’t even bring himself to name.

This is what makes the command uncomfortable for us, just as it was for the lawyer. We arrived at this story already knowing who the hero is. We read it, evaluated it, and identified the right character.

But correct identification is not the finish line. It is the starting line.

The parable ends the same way for you as it did for the lawyer — not with applause for the right answer, but with a command: go and do likewise.

And the next time you read one of the parables of Jesus, don’t assume you identify with the hero of the story.