Familiar passages of Scripture become “strange” when we truly seek to penetrate them prayerfully and carefully. The Parable of the Good Samaritan is an example. Is not the meaning obvious as disclosed in the exchange between Jesus and the expert in the law (Luke 10: 36-37)? Isn’t the story so simple that anyone hearing or reading it can readily become an expert in its interpretation? In principle, maybe. But the familiarity with the tale blinkers the mind to so much else that is contained in the passage. Jesus poses a searching question to the lawyer. “What is written in the law, how do you read it?”  The same query could be addressed to every reader of the Bible. “What do you actually see? Do you skim or search? Do you assume the message from a current mindset or crave renewal of mind from the Word of God? ” So often the Bible is employed to endorse our unexamined presuppositions.

The point we are seeking to establish becomes so clear that we deny ourselves the layers of meaning waiting to be discovered and we are insensitive to situation, tone, and intent. To the Pharisees, who had great facility in memorizing and quoting Scripture, Jesus said, “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’ ” (Matthew 8:13 cf Hosea 6:6). To the experts the citation was well known but its meaning eluded them. “Go and learn” is our motto whenever we open our copies of the Word of God, and the Spirit of God is sought as our Teacher. The Bible is dangerous territory without our divine guide.

Words have meaning and situational and grammatical context are keys to their significance and nuance. Words are easy to scan and recite but not so easy to comprehend without reflection and appropriation. They may become symbols unaccompanied by insight. Frequent and flippant usage reduces their force. Great truths become trifles. Jesus detects this in persons he encountered who repeat expressions of profound worth and seriousness in terms of triteness and sentimentality e.g. “‘Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and raised you.’ He replied, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it’ ” (Luke 11: 27-28). “Blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God” (Luke14:15). This statement elicited the Parable of the Great Banquet, a warning against presumption.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan, in its setting and direction, is demonstrative of the adventurous and explorative approach to Scripture that investigates and peruses the word for the gains that it can yield – and these can never be exhausted. No one ever really knows the Bible, just as a swimmer can never cover every inch of the Pacific Ocean. We are always just dipping our toes. The lawyer approaches Jesus with the cocky air of the expert and with no sense of his ignorance and grave deficiencies moral and intellectual. His arrogance is not mere second nature, it is his first and essential nature that has no grasp of the necessity of its salvation. Jesus has no regard for his assumed expertise as a scholar. Head knowledge may or may not be of value. It can be a great asset or it may be the possession of an ass who doesn’t have the sense to profit from it.

Jesus never resorts to flattery on the basis of appearance or reputation. He aims only and always at the heart. That is where the truth of and about  person actually resides. He knows our person and makes it known to us. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Luke 10:27). Everyone, in the light of this summons, knows that they do not and cannot comply. Haters of the Lord do not care. People of shallow conviction cast the matter aside and hope for the best. Lovers of the Lord mourn the littleness and inconstancy of their love. Our Godward obligation immediately casts us in the category of sinner. The lawyer knows he is caught out and becomes evasive. His proud self esteem is under threat and he must defend it with what is a blatantly revealing giveaway. He shirks the matter of his relationship to God and retorts, “Who is my neighbour?” when Jesus advises that an evidence of true godliness is love to “neighbour as yourself”. The defensive ploy discloses that he is callous at heart and complacent as to his condition. A child of God is instinctively merciful to his fellows. Ultimately the word of God gouges out of us, readily or reluctantly, our true spiritual disposition and Jesus has the lawyer hopping from foot to foot with discomfort. He is in fact a legalist without any notion of grace, grace as a gift and graciousness as a virtue. His approval with God, and the rewards he expects, are calculated on the basis of performance (sacrifices rendered).

Jesus wants to bring the lawyer to the point of felt and admitted helplessness and moral destitution, for nothing is of moral worth without pure love toward God and man, and this is now a natural impossibility to sinful, selfish, men who are turned in upon themselves and have no authentic, disinterested, concern for others. The heart of man has to be stripped of all self righteousness and evacuated of all self reliance. Humbleness is the preparation for eternal life and that attitude is a God wrought miracle within the human heart. The deeply ingrained hubris of the Jewish legalist, his sense of superiority and personal success as a human being, has to be demolished and Jesus assails it  with a parable that verges on insult.

The Lord’s example of mercy, divine mercy through human agency, is not another Jew whom the lawyer could naturally respect and even applaud, but an individual whom he would immediately despise. The lawyer boasts rectitude on his supposed conformity to the law. In his view the Samaritan stands outside the sphere of the law and therefore outside the love of God. He has no possibility of acceptance with God and is to be loathed. Jesus is showing the type of person whose heart is closer to God than that of the self congratulating Jew. His example contradicts every Jewish expectation. It is the heart that matters. This is what Jesus is teaching, and  the heart’s  fundamental inclination is a gauge of its proximity to (justified state), or distance from God.

And more than this, Jesus is asserting that the heart that is truly humbled and rendered lowly recognizes grace in, and receives grace from, human instruments that it would normally regard as beneath contempt. When we are truly aware of our poverty, and are down and out, we receive help from wherever it comes. The egotistical stuffing that fills us has been knocked out of us. This is why we welcome strangers and bother with visitors as congregations. They may be possessors and bearers of grace if given an opening. They may even be angels. It is a simple Samaritan ministry to extend a kindly greeting and proceed to greater compassion if necessary. This is the mark of saintliness, not fussy exclusiveness and selectivity as to whom we associate with, as Jesus shows in the strange bonding of Jew and Samaritan in the Jew’s dependence and the Samaritan’s lack of discrimination.

There is a wideness in God’s mercy and Christian behaviour reflects that fact. Go and do likewise is the Christian mandate (v.37). But Christian action and obedience is not meritorious in terms of winning the favour of God. It is the fruit of grace. If people understand the parable as law-keeping  that obtains a reward in the Pharisaic sense – a claim for commendation – then they stand where the lawyer stood in the doomed zone of legalism. The parable points to Jesus as an “unlikely” Saviour from our perspective, human and humble, but he is our only helper, and being utterly helpless ourselves we must submit ourselves to his hands and extend the hand of compassion to others. This parable is more than moral instruction; it treats of moral reconstruction and speaks of “outsiders” being accepted in the kingdom – not of works but by grace, not of merit but by mercy.

One has not read the novel by Charles Portis for some time and now wonders as to whether the title refers to the reckless physical courage of US Marshall Rooster Cogburn or the tenacity of will evinced by Mattie Ross who seeks vengeance upon the killer of her father. Perhaps the compliment embraces both characters. The author himself is described as a Presbyterian and fourteen year old Mattie possesses all the doctrinal certainties of Scottish Calvinism. She believes in justice for the murderer she is hunting down, proclaims that grace is the only thing that is free, and subscribes to the doctrine of predestination as the basis for believing that the will of God will ineluctably be fulfilled in her venture and in all things.

For many this is an enunciation of old fashioned Presbyterianism and a statement of its most unattractive features – deserved judgment and sovereign grace. However, predestination is not a Presbyterian invention or exclusive possession, and, of course, now largely repudiated in modern Presbyterian circles. It featured strongly in pre-Reformational Catholicism, was the pronounced conviction of the Continental and British Reformers and the traditions that emerged from their influence and labours, and continued as a dominant strain of thought in orthodox denominations for a good deal of time until the mid nineteenth century when adherence to Biblical doctrine began to wane and more liberal and sentimental views began to prevail. The Westminster Confession is largely an English production and the majority of the Assembly’s members were Anglican. The background to the Confession is located in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of the Church of England and The Irish Articles (Anglican) composed by Archbishop James Ussher, one of the pre-eminent Protestant scholars of his day, highly regarded by theologians of the British Isles, Europe, and even leaders of the Church of Rome. Predestination is affirmed in the doctrinal formularies of most of the great national and evangelical churches of the 16th and 17th centuries that were born of the age of reform. It brings Presbyterians, Independents (Congregationalists), Baptists, old style Lutherans, and Anglicans together in the bonds of the family of Reformed Churches. It is recognized as the indispensable and solid base for the doctrines of grace.

Nowadays it takes true grit to hold to and affirm the grand doctrines of Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Knox, Edwards and Spurgeon. All of these men were saturated in Holy Scripture. They were educated in their beliefs by the prophets and apostles and the doctrines to which they adhered are now styled as Augustinianism or Calvinism (George Whitefield had not read Calvin when he became a “Calvinist” and claimed that he was persuaded solely by his reading of the Bible). They are Scriptural teachings but as Scripture needs to be interpreted these titles identify the conclusions that folk of a common orthodox persuasion derive from a careful, consistent, and prayerful study of the word of God. Like the term “fundamentalist”, which has many connotations and is misused by many liberals, “Augustinianism” and “Calvinism” have become terms of ridicule or revulsion, but we cannot shy away from them, just as we cannot shy away from being called Christian, originally a term of abuse. There will always be insults, condemnation and put-downs. We must pay the price of faithful witness and endeavour to clear away misunderstandings and caricatures of the historic faith. You may attempt to present your case in the most mild and inoffensive fashion but the moment your drift is caught it will evoke keen opposition and the denigration of reputation and intent. But the sweet content of the doctrines of grace is more than enough reward for those who cherish them. The awareness is like another new birth, and they afford delightful vistas of insight into the truth and ways of the Lord.

The Anglican Articles (No.17) describe predestination as electing love and this immediately places the wonderful truth of divine sovereignty on a pastoral plain that establishes the most rapturous personal relationship with a God who loves us unconditionally, powerfully, and permanently no matter what occurs after his mighty hand places its saving grasp upon us. Election is a deliriously joyful fact of divine revelation, disclosing an affection that was set upon believers from eternity, which pursued and wooed us in time, and cleaves to us for eternity to come. It is the most romantic notion ever to capture the human heart. To reject it can only be the result of misunderstanding or rebellion through pride. The heart melts before the relentless compassion of God towards those, who left to themselves, only refuse him. God is the lover of the soul who will not give up on his beloved and will never divorce them.

Predestination is not merely a principle of theology that is faithful to Scripture it is a pastoral necessity for the helpless frail sinner who feels the strength of his temptations and the horror of his sin, and knows only too well the corruption of his affections  and the impotence of his will to resist them. Nothing is more beautiful and beguiling than the sworn commitment of divine mercy to the rescue of the enslaved and helpless. Election beams forth from Scripture with the brightness of a smiling sun upon those who cannot wrest themselves from nature’s darkness. It is a gem to be seized from the treasure trove of the Lord. Salvation is free and forever. This is the true rest of faith and assurance of heaven to those who receive the invitation of the gospel. We heed the “whosoever will” and discover our “chosen-ness”.  No one can claim unfairness here.

We need to show true grit as subscribers to this great truth. We will be blamed for doing so. Advocates of Arminianism do there testifying as an unquestioned right. We shall be “troublers of Israel” in popular opinion. Freewill is a truth indeed, but we have forfeited pure moral volition by our disobedience and plunge into depravity. Only Christ through his own personal agency can free us for choices that are holy and good, including desire for God and detestation of sin. This is what “Saviour” means as he undertakes to save us from self. He must break our fatal bias and incline us to himself by his sweet and compelling influences. The notion of freedom in any undetermined sense (reason, obligation, preference) is the basis of chaos and anarchy of affection and action. It is Satan’s master stroke as a philosophy to savage and destroy all that God has created and controls for good. Arminianism is the instinctive assumption of the self-exalted creature over-estimating rank and capacity in God’s scheme of things. The doctrine of election is full of sweet comfort (Article 17) “to godly persons who feel the working in themselves of the Spirit of Christ”. All who believe the promises are saved. All who come to Jesus are received. Those who fail to believe and come only prove the evil obduracy of the unrenewed heart. Grace makes the difference. The elect are effectually drawn. The unsaved have their own way. No impediment exists except in their own stubbornness. To oppose election is to deprive the saints of their deepest gospel consolations, but even more: to reject election is to rob the Saviour of the praise that is due to him for every facet of our salvation.

Grace is the message of the church that is meant not only to characterize its mission to the world but determine its own mode of life. The apostle Paul describes the features of life in a believing community that has been graced in an authentic way by the graciousness of God: Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity (Colossians 3:12-14). Conceptually the passage has great charm but in reality Paul’s exhortation can only find fulfilment by the exercise of amazing grace through a deeply humbled people. The demands of grace upon its recipients are colossal. The virtues delineated by Paul run counter to natural tendencies. Their motivation requires a genuine and mature self knowledge (Forgive as the Lord forgave you) that erases pride and self-righteousness, and also an adequate comprehension of the scope of divine mercy to the unworthy. These “awarenesses” begin to provide a platform for the demonstration of attitudes and actions that are truly, deeply, Christian. It is necessary for the Holy Spirit to create a concerted effort towards holiness among the people of God. It is the responsibility of the people of God to cultivate the principles of godliness imparted to them by the indwelling Spirit. The means of grace and the power of God are available to transform Paul’s ideals into the actual identification marks of the folk who belong to God and represent his character to the world.

But there is enough sin and temptation in Christian experience to counter the development of the grace-filled community. Believers are retarded by much that remains of the old self-serving nature. Paul’s encouragements are aimed at the battleground of the heart where contrary principles are in intense conflict with each other (Romans 7). He is not prescribing an easy course of action among believers but a goal that necessitates struggle, self denial, and discipline – an earnest exertion that derives its energy from grace present, promised, and sought through continual prayer. To say that Paul’s instruction is aspirational is not to deny that it is also obligatory as a spontaneous expression of the new life. Reliance and responsibility are concurrent in the lives of the regenerate. There is a “must” that must be met by supernatural enabling. Grace is a gift that generates desire, volition, and action. The impossibility of perfection here in this life does not nullify the divine imposition upon us (Colossians 1:28). Failure drives us to the all-sufficient Saviour, deprives us of the right to boast, and discloses the marvellous forbearance of God in the forgiveness and assistance he bestows. Law or commandment is never intended to suggest any capacity within us to comply. It is meant to be a compulsion that causes us to resort to the Redeemer because of the startling discovery of our absolute impotence. Grace makes law both duty and delight.  Grace affords us the perception that law (protective and life enhancing) emerges from divine love and expresses human love. Paul expounds the essence of law which, if operative as love for God and neighbour, precludes every breach of the moral law. The renewed believer eagerly complies with the behavioural norms of the Lord Jesus through likeness to him. Love is the fulfilment of the law of Christ – his disposition and deeds, his habits. We are given a care for what God cares about and a care for those who are his concern. Love of law consists of personal rectitude, generous compassion, and social justice: “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). In exercising obedience we are given the guidelines of Scripture and the guidance of the Spirit and between the two there is no variation. If our sense of “right” conflicts with Scripture it is not of the Holy Spirit.

There are several powerful influences within the life of the Church that are corrosive of the law of love and disruptive of genuine harmony, mutual acceptance, and sincere fellowship.

a) The first amounts to a disregard of morality on the basis of a perverted view of grace (antinomianism). There is a casual approach to the Decalogue and Biblical ethics on the basis of a presumption that bad behaviour can be condoned and easily forgiven because grace is indulgent towards our peccadilloes. This is a view that does not assess sin with gravity, misunderstands our calling to holiness, and cheapens grace horribly. It is a travesty of the gospel and a serious misreading of the nature of salvation as deliverance from sin, not safety in it. Paul stalwartly repudiates this brazen attitude: “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? (Romans 6:1-2). James endorses Paul’s statement with the observation that justification is proven, not attained, through holy living: “A person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone” (James 2:24). Our profession of faith is vindicated by a transformed life and a struggle against sin, not a compromise with it.

b) The teaching of James has often been characterized as moralistic and works based. Luther deemed it a “right strawy epistle”. But James’s instruction is firmly grounded in a rich appreciation of grace – i.e. enabling grace that is evident in Christian character and conduct. He starts with the full recognition of supernatural empowering through the implanting of the soul saving word and the wondrous fact of regeneration (1:18). There is a vast distance between moralism and the morality of the born again, both in kind and motivation. Moralism emerges from a self-righteous confidence in one’s own competence to abide by the law. It does not appreciate the spiritual depths and requirements of the law and is content with a decent external conformity to it. It is harshly critical towards the flaws of its fellows, grimly, relentlessly, judgmental, and forgetful of our common unworthiness and wretchedness which is healed through the extravagant generosity of God alone. God’s gracious reinstatement of the penitent sinner is hardly conceded and yet Biblical examples abound (David, Jonah, Peter, Mark, etc). Moralism holds grudges, and intends evils alien to the mercy of God.

c) James tackles another issue that must have been prevalent in the early church or he would not have addressed it. He poses a test as to the graciousness of every congregation in the reception accorded to strangers – a rich man and a shabby man (2:1-13). James deplores partiality towards the rich and seemingly significant and the discrimination against the poor and uninfluential. James Adamson describes this kind of behaviour as maintaining “pernicious distinctions”. It does not accord with the poverty and humility of the Lord Jesus whilst with us on earth. Christians are not to be esteemed according to worldly standards. Snobbery and the snubbing of others is nothing less than a gross evil, especially if we explore at depth the humbleness and compassion of God as principally exhibited in the Saviour.