Today's Reading: Luke 10:21-37

Daily Lectionary: 1 Kings 12:20-13:5, 33-34; 2 Corinthians 8:1-24

Jesus said to him, "You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live." (Luke 10:28)

In the Name + of Jesus. Amen. Context is pretty important. What are the facts surrounding the situation?

"Mom, can I use the car this weekend?"

"What needs to happen before I let you drive?"

"My room needs to be clean."

"You got it--do this and you get the keys."

If this conversation happened when I was a teen, the condition of my room meant I would not get the car until long after the weekend was over! I probably would have tried asking, "Exactly how clean does it need to be?"

Jesus sounds like He is saying that a person can do good works to get themselves into eternal life. "Do this and you will live." Context helps us to understand why Jesus says this. The lawyer asked Him a Law question, so Jesus gave the man a Law answer. And the Law starts to do its work on the man like a mirror, showing him that he had not lived a life that is clean enough to inherit eternity. He tried to justify himself by limiting the neighbors he needed to love, and that was when Jesus described a perfect standard of love in the good Samaritan--a standard the lawyer knew he could not live up to.

Neither can you. Nor can I. However, the Gospel message is that Someone completely different and foreign from us has. While keeping His life perfectly clean, Christ found us after sin and death had beaten the life out of us. He showed us mercy by taking up our burdens and paying for our healing not with silver or gold, but with His precious blood and innocent suffering and death. By His death, you inherit His eternal life for free.

Now you and I go and do likewise in having compassion on those around us, not because we can save ourselves, but because this is the way we start over and live again in the life of Christ after He has saved us by His mercy. In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.

The Law reveals the guilt of sin And makes us conscience-stricken; But then the Gospel enters in The sinful soul to quicken. Come to the cross, trust Christ, and live; The Law no peace can ever give, No comfort and no blessing. ("Salvation unto Us has Come" LSB 555, st.8)

Audio Reflections Speaker: Pastor Duane Bamsch