When the expert in the Law asks Jesus who his neighbor is, what is he really asking Jesus?
Several people noted that the expert in the Law wanted to “justify” himself (10:29). The sense seems to be that he wants Jesus to reach the conclusion that he is in fact keeping the commandment to love his neighbor. The lawyer is thus asking Jesus who he must love or, as one student put it perhaps more accurately, who he did not need to love. Several pointed out that the opening tone of the expert in the Law was adversarial. He is “testing” Jesus (10:25). Interestingly, the parallel passages in Matthew 22 and Mark 12 have Jesus giving the answer. But we must bracket our knowledge of those other passages to hear Luke in its own literary context. Interestingly, the earlier part of the chapter is about the sending of the 72, a number quite possibly symbolic of the nations. So the literary context is perhaps already suggesting that Gentiles are neighbors to this expert. It is indeed possible that the very placement of this story causes the mention of an expert in the Law to have a tone of
