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LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2019, Page 284

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284

II. THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS

He Is Our Righteousness
Le a de r’s

The quotations from Luther’s Works in this publication are from the American Edition:
vol. 79 © 2016 by Concordia Publishing House, all rights reserved.

Gui de

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Session 1:
Introduction/The Parable of the Good Samaritan in Context

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Kingdom ahead of Him. Among the disciples are those who
have seen Him transfigured (Luke 9:28–36) and those who
have confessed Him to be “the Christ of God” (Luke 9:20). By
the time the reader reaches Luke 10, he has already heard
Jesus twice announce His coming death. Indeed, Jesus has
now “set His face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51), and our
parable falls within Luke’s extensive account of the things
Jesus says and does on the way.

Setting the Context: A Parable

He Is Our Righteousness

It may seem strange or even ill-advised to turn to the parables of Jesus to find His teaching on justification, but the
parables form an extremely important part of Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels. Fully one third of His recorded words
come to us in the form of parables. It’s also true that several
of the parables explicitly raise the question of justification.
One example that comes readily to mind is the parable
of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Jesus concludes the
parable by telling us that the tax collector “went down to his
house justified” (Luke 18:14, emphasis added).

Leader’s Guide

Session 1:
Introduction/The Parable of the Good Samaritan in Context
Luke 10:25–29

1. Read together Luke 18:9–14. What does “justified” mean
in verse 14? How might verse 9 provide help in understanding verse 14?

Introduction to the Bible Study Series

Does our Lord teach justification by grace through faith?
We all immediately answer, “Yes, of course.” But, where does
He teach it? And how? We may find ourselves uncomfortably ill-prepared to answer those two questions. We know
Jesus must teach justification by grace, but we are more
accustomed to turning to Paul for help with this doctrine
than we are to turning to our Lord. And it’s not only that,
there are many — even people who claim to be Biblical
scholars — who try to make us doubt our answer to the first
question. In this study we will look together at a passage
that some have used to argue that Jesus did not teach justification by grace alone and through faith alone. And it’s a
passage that many of us may find confusing when set side
by side with Rom. 3:28 or Gal. 2:15–16. We will discover to
our great comfort and joy that Luke 10:25–37 (the parable
of the Good Samaritan) does, in fact, teach justification by
grace, and it does so in a beautiful and memorable way.

Setting the Context: In Luke

Luke is the only evangelist to include the parable of the
Good Samaritan in his Gospel, so we will focus on Luke
as we set the parable in its historical and literary context.
The instructor will be the best judge of how much review
is needed of the early chapters of Luke, but many students
will be familiar with Luke’s birth narratives, his account of
John the Baptist’s early ministry and his telling of our Lord’s
temptation. Chapters 4–9 provide numerous episodes from
Jesus’ ministry in and around Galilee both in terms of His
teaching and in terms of healings and other miracles. Jesus
has already told several parables, and He has explained His
reasons for using parables by quoting the prophet Isaiah
(Luke 8:10, quoting Isaiah 6). He has gathered around Himself
a large, popular following, often speaking to crowds numbering in the thousands (see Luke 9:14 and, later, 12:1). He has
also called closer circles of disciples to learn from Him,
and He has sent out both the 12 and the 72 to proclaim the

Leader’s Guide |

2019 Convention Workbook

Most parables are not this explicit concerning justification.1 It’s certainly true that not every parable needs
to teach justification by grace; on the other hand, what
would it mean to claim that a particular parable teaches
something contrary to justification by grace? How could
we then defend our position that justification is the central and unifying teaching of all Scripture? This study will
focus on the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37)
to show that such a claim is groundless.
2. Why does Jesus teach with parables?
Setting our parable in its context involves understanding
it as part of Luke’s Gospel, but it also involves understanding how it works as a parable. It will prove helpful in the course of the study to pause very briefly here
to consider Jesus’ explanation of why He teaches with
parables.
Turn to Luke 8:8b–10. (A fuller discussion of these questions would include also looking at Matt. 13:10–17 and Mark
4:10–12.) Why does Jesus teach with parables? The passage
The matter of (self-)justification is raised immediately after the telling of the
parable of the dishonest manager (Luke 16:1–13), although the word “justify” does
not occur in the parable itself.

4 | He Is Our Righteousness | Session 1

quoted by Jesus from Isaiah 6 may make it sound like His
purpose was to prevent most of the people from understanding Him! One helpful approach to this difficult
passage is to remind ourselves that, for learning to begin
to take place, we need to admit that we don’t already
know everything about the matter in question. There is
significant un-learning that often has to take place before
the learning can happen. There is a parallel between what
Jesus says here about true learning and what He says
about true healing in Luke 5:31. [Another study in the
CTCR series is called “Unjustifiable Faiths.” The parables
force the hearer to begin to question whether his faith,
what he has been trusting in, is, in fact, trustworthy. The
parables expose many of these man-made “faiths” as
“unjustifiable.”]

Setting the Context: Defining the Limits of
“the Passage”
The relationship of Luke 10:25–37 to the passage immediately preceding it is a matter of disagreement. While some
claim that the “and behold” of Luke 10:25 signals the beginning of a completely new episode, others see this phrase
making a close connection between the lawyer’s questions
and what Jesus said about Himself in Luke 10:21–24. Luke’s
own usage favors the latter view.2
3. Read together Luke 10:21–24. What difference does it
make for our reading of Luke 10:25–29 if we assume the
lawyer was present to hear Jesus’ words in verses 21–22, or
even 21–24?
Although the interpretation of the parable given in this
study does not depend on proving that the lawyer did
hear Jesus’ words, it is interesting to note that, when
Luther preached on this parable, the lectionary reading
for that Sunday began two verses earlier at Luke 10:23.

The expression καὶ ἰδού (kai idou; “and behold”) occurs 26 times in Luke and
eight times in Acts. Luke’s general pattern is to set the scene by means of an
opening description and then use καὶ ἰδού (kai idou) to focus on a particular event
or development; a good example is Luke 19:1–2. Apart from our passage, the two
places where καὶ ἰδού (kai idou) may seem to signal a clear break from what has
gone before are Luke 23:50 and 24:13. And yet, even for these two passages, it
would be very difficult to argue that the καὶ ἰδού (kai idou) signals a break from
the context. Does Luke intend for us to imagine a large gap in space and time
between the women witnessing the death of our Lord and Joseph going to request
His body (Luke 23) and between Peter viewing the empty tomb and the risen Christ
appearing to the disciples on the road to �mmaus (Luke 24)�