True Compassion - The Good Samaritan

A despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him.

Luke 10:33

Do you enjoy helping out a friend in need? Most of us do. Helping a good friend move or paint his house gives us a chance to enjoy each other’s company. Besides, when we help a friend in need, he’s likely to return the favor.

What about helping a stranger? Can you extend a hand to someone with whom you’ve shared conflicts and arguments? What about people who can’t help you back?

Jesus taught that acts of love and compassion toward friends don’t score a lot of points with our heavenly Father. When we reach out to a stranger—or even an enemy—we will receive a reward from heaven (see Luke 6:35-36).

Jesus told the story of a man who demonstrated true love and compassion by stopping to help a stranger in need. One day, a severely injured Jewish man lay at the side of a road, and a pair of people you might expect to help him—a priest and a Temple assistant—went out of their way to avoid him.

Only when a man we know as the Good Samaritan happened upon the scene did the man receive the care he needed to live through the night.

Here’s where the story takes on extra meaning.

Jews and Samaritans didn’t care much for one another. Jews saw Samaritans, a mixed-race people whose roots went back several centuries before Christ’s birth, as impure and not “one of us.” This particular Samaritan didn’t see the man lying in a ditch as an enemy or as someone who hated him but as a fellow human in need of a helping hand. He stopped, helped, and went the extra mile by taking him to an inn and caring for him. When he had to leave, he paid the innkeeper to continue taking care of the man.

True compassion is the kind we extend to strangers and even enemies, simply because they are in need.

You prove that your faith is real when you extend to strangers, and sometimes to your enemies, the kind of love and compassion that Jesus has extended to you.