What is the spiritual meaning of the good samaritan story?

Answer 1

Point of the Parable is no matter what is going on in your life you should always help people. No matter who it is you should always help people.

Answer:

Helping your neighbor is a fine objective. And that's the accepted moral most of modern professing Christianity takes away from it.

But that was not the objective of Jesus in telling the "Good Samaritan" parable to the "self-righteous" lawyer. Jesus told it to the lawyer to "shock him out of his self-righteous complacency."

One needs to understand a little bit of Bible history and the culture and society of the Jews regarding the "Samaritans."

To the Jews, Gentiles are "unclean"... and not to be associated with, according to the laws of God. Their pagan beliefs, customs and traditions were to be avoided like the plague, and any contact with a non-Jew was forbidden.

Samaritans were Gentiles. But even more than that... Samaria used to be the capital city of the kingdom of Israel, the brother tribes of the Jews, before they went into captivity and were scattered among the nations centuries before Jesus was born. And when the Israelite tribes were removed from Samaria, the Assyrian king who defeated them replaced them with Gentile peoples of vile pagan gods, beliefs and practices.

"...the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

"For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God... and had feared other gods, and walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel, and the kings of Israel, which they had made... and wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger: for they served idols, whereof the Lord had said unto them, Ye shall not do this thing...

"...they rejected His statutes, and His covenant... and they left all the Commandments of the Lord their God... therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of His sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah (the JEWS) only..." (II Kings 17:5-18).

With the removal of their brother tribes from the land... the Jews cultivated a special hatred for the pagan Samaritans beyond the normal lawful shunning of Gentiles over the ensuing years.

"...the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria insread of the children of Israel: and they possessed Samaria..." (II Kings 17:24).

The "Samaritan" of whom Jesus speaks in His parable that the modern Christian churches view in such a favorable, friendly, "neighborly" light... was NOT LOOKED UPON KINDLY BY THE JEWS!

Samaritans were HATED... DETESTED... vile beastly creatures to be spat upon by any self-righteous Jew - like the self-righteous lawyer to whom Jesus spoke.

So, when the lawyer took in Jesus' parable in which his own Jewish brethren, the priest and Levite, like himself, passed by the injured dying man in the road only to be rescued and tended to by the hated Samaritan... we may be certain that the intitial lesson the lawyer took away from the parable was not smarmy, sentimental, gooey, warm feelings for Samaritans - but was left with a shock to his ego from the sudden glowing illumination of his own hypocrisy.

And Jesus' command for him to be like the merciful Samaritan. Mercy - a spiritual trait that suddenly transcended the racial boundaries of the Jewish lawyer.

Answer 2

Certain Jewish scholars were fond of discussing the scriptures and Hebrew laws, and sat about discussing the relative importance of each of them. One day the subject came up, 'which is the most important law' to which Jesus had an immediate and direct quote from Moses as to what that was. "Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and love thy neighbour as yourself". Unsatisfied with the abrupt conclusion of the topic they sought to refine and continue the topic by getting 'picky' with the definition of 'neighbour'. To this Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan, illustrating that the person (despite ethnic divisions) that acts most like a neighbour is a neighbour.

Answer 3

The spiritual meaning is that even if you do not get along wit someone or not meant to like them it is the duty of gods children to help there neighbours and it is just humanly.

Answer 4

God recognizes 'good' regardless of human qualities - age, sex, color, nationality. He is not a respecter of men and looks upon the humble and those who in awe, follow His Commands.

Answer 5

Love your neighbour as yourself