And behold, a certain lawyer stood up tempting him, and saying, Teacher, having done what, shall I inherit life eternal?
A man trained in the law rises in the middle of a scene of joy and grace, and puts a question to Jesus — not to learn, but to test Him. His words assume that a person earns eternal life by doing. The Lord's answer will overturn that.
The word translated "lawyer" does not mean a courtroom advocate. It describes a religious profession:
A teacher of the law, one who explained the law. Nicodemus was probably one, for the Lord called him a "teacher of Israel." The Lord said of the lawyers that they put heavy burdens on others but did not touch them themselves. In their explanations they took away the key of knowledge.
One writer names the target of that test:
The "tempting" was, of course, to test the Lord's orthodoxy.
The timing of the question matters:
As a matter of fact his question spoiled the atmosphere of the chapter. The Lord had sent out the 70 disciples on a special mission of grace. He was occupied with names written in heaven, with the Father being revealed, with the wonderful fruits of grace. He "rejoiced in spirit" (v. 21) and pronounced a special blessing on the eyes that saw these wonderful things (v. 23) — things that had never been told before. But the lawyer appears completely insensitive to the greatness of the moment. His question is an entirely legalistic one: "What shall I do …?" or, "having done what …?"
Others asked about eternal life in the same way, and the mistake went deep:
All His inquirers seemed to be of one mind in supposing it to be the reward of human effort... It was natural for them to speak this way. Among people, nothing worth having comes except by money or work. But suppose they had realised man's true condition in God's sight, and their own condition in particular. Then they would have spoken differently. Has not the Spirit of God described men as "dead in the trespasses and sins"? (Eph. 2:1). What can the dead do? Did not the Saviour compare men to a debtor who "could not pay"? (Luke 7:42). What price can bankrupts pay?
Set this question beside the one asked by the jailer at Philippi, and the difference is not in wording only but in the heart behind it:
The poor broken-hearted jailer at Philippi asked a far different question, and one more fitting for a sinner — what he should do to be saved. The lawyer was not in earnest; he was a mere theorist. It was a subject for a discourse or an argument. There was no real concern about his soul, no sense of his own condition or of what God is... The Lord answers him, "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?" because, when he took this ground of doing something to inherit eternal life, he had really put himself under the law.
The Lord sends him to the law, but His answer does not stop there:
He goes far beyond it, and brings to light what the lawyer had to learn. The lawyer was concerned with principles of the law. But the law did not come in to give life to man. It came in to prove what his state was long before the law came in. The law did not produce that state, but it most definitely brought it to light.
The test ends with the whole subject reversed. The story that follows shows it:
Then the Law is morally turned into grace as far as man down here is concerned. It is not: "Who is my neighbour?" But to whom am I neighbour, as the good Samaritan was? Priests and Levites are not grace.
- Tester. A teacher of the law stood up not to learn but to test the Lord's orthodoxy. The first thing this passage exposes is the questioner, not the question.
- Wrong verb. "What shall I do" assumes eternal life is a reward for effort. But the dead cannot work, bankrupts cannot pay, and eternal life is a gift, not a wage.
- Wrong heart. The jailer at Philippi cried out of real distress and asked how to be saved. The lawyer treated eternal life as a topic for argument.
- Right use of law. The Lord sends him to the law — not to give him life, but to bring to light the state he was already in.
- Grace answers. His question about doing ends in a story about mercy. The issue is no longer who my neighbour is, but who became neighbour to me.
And he said to him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?
Just before this, a lawyer asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus gives him no doctrine, but two questions that send him to the law and to his own reading of it.
By asking what he must do, the lawyer had put himself under law. The Lord takes him at his word.
The lawyer was not in earnest; he was a mere theorist. It was a subject for a discourse or argument. There was no real concern about his soul, no sense of his own condition or of what God is. The Lord answers him, "What is written in the law? How do you read it?" because, when he took this ground of doing something to inherit eternal life, he had really gone to the law... He says this because He is going to convict him of the complete futility of all efforts on that ground.
The man was a lawyer, at home in the books of Moses. His question implied that God had left the matter unanswered.
The Lord read his heart, and, no doubt to his surprise, made him answer his own question, and that from the book with which he claimed real acquaintance. "What shall I do?" asked the man, implying that, lawyer though he was, he did not know how to get that blessing. Claiming ignorance, he effectively took the ground that God had not supplied the information needed. For why ask the Lord about something that the lawgiver had answered ages before?
"How do you read it?" assumes the answer is already there in the text. The law's terms are not hidden; a man only has to meet them.
What we have to see is this: that the great law-question, "What must I do?" is here raised and answered. If a man is to get life by keeping the commandments, he must keep them. There is no mystery about this. It is so plain that the question is, "How do you read it?" A man has only to read Exodus 20 to know his duty toward God and his duty toward his neighbour.
The lawyer gave the right answer at once. That is the problem: quoting the words is not the same as feeling their weight on the conscience.
The lawyer's response showed that, like many today, he knew the letter of the law. But he knew nothing of its killing, condemning power, which lays the conscience bare and shows him the depravity of his own evil heart. He answered without hesitation, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart... and your neighbor as yourself," to which our Lord replied, "You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live."
The lawyer's answer set the law's own standard. The question is who has ever met it.
The lawyer's answer (from Deuteronomy 6:5) was the best the law could possibly give, for it is a most striking summing up of the whole law. But how strong and uncompromising are its demands! Who has loved the Lord God with his whole heart, his whole soul, his whole strength, his whole mind? It is impossible to think of this being true of anyone except the Lord Jesus Himself.
So where does eternal life come from?
The lawyer knew the law of Moses, and hoped to inherit eternal life by law-keeping. But he had to learn that the law had no power to give life... The life which we have is life in Christ, and the power of that life is in the Holy Spirit.
The moment in which the Lord spoke matters too.
Christ's hour was not yet come; as to the ways of God, the door was not yet shut; the Christ was not yet rejected. Jesus said to him, "Do this, and you will live." The lawyer had not asked, What must I do to be saved? but what to do to inherit eternal life. Had a man fulfilled the law (though we know man was incapable of it), he would have had eternal life. But now, if there is not the knowledge of the Father and the Son, there is no eternal life.
- Read the question. The lawyer asked what to do, so the Lord answered him on that ground and sent him to the law.
- Read the book. The man claimed ignorance. Moses had answered long before, so Christ made him answer himself.
- Read the letter. He quoted the words correctly. He never felt their condemning power on his own conscience.
- Read the standard. Loving God with the whole heart and the neighbour as oneself has been true of Christ alone.
- Read the outcome. Law never had power to give life. Life is in Christ, and it comes through knowing the Father and the Son.
But he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thine understanding; and thy neighbour as thyself.
A lawyer — an expert in the law of Moses — has just asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, and Jesus sends him back to the law. The man answers by joining two commands into one sentence, but can he stand on the standard he states so well?
His answer states the law's duty perfectly. Commentators look past the answer to the man giving it:
The lawyer was not in earnest; he was a mere theorist. There was no real concern about his soul, no sense of his own condition or of what God is... This was excellent as a statement of duty: nothing could be better; but how had he done it? And what hope was there for his soul on any such footing as this?... He could not do it, and on that ground he could not live. He was dead, though he did not know it himself, morally dead while he lived.
Why does the law demand love at all — and how much of a person does it ask for?
The law demanded love. That very fact shows the demand came from God's own nature, and that nature is love — "God is love." And the law does not just ask for love from the whole heart, as people sometimes say. It asks for love from the whole being!
The command first came attached to a statement about who God is. That statement is the reason for the "all":
First, God is one and He never changes: "The LORD our God, the LORD is one." On this rests His claim to the undivided loyalty of man... If there is only one God, there is no other to share the heart with. The LORD claims the whole of it in the most absolute way. The words stand for the inner man, with all his affections, and in their full energy.
His two clauses fold the Ten Commandments in half:
In the first four commandments we have the claims of law in relation to God, and in the last six those claims in relation to man... If such a demand as that is made upon fallen man, he can no more meet it than create a world.
Writers warn against reading the second clause as a limit on how far kindness must go:
Some read the second part of the great commandment as a limit on how far love to our neighbour must go, as though we need not love him better than that. Weigh the obligation that way and we lose the very principle. Self-love becomes the judge of how far we go in kindness to our neighbour. What is meant instead is a holy urgency that joins another's interests to our own in unity of love, not setting his claims against ours... Love to our neighbour is different in nature from love to God.
The verse states what ought to be. It does not supply the power:
The law does not give life, and it does not give strength... Neither does the law give a motive to love. It tells me to love God with all my heart (and conscience admits I ought to do so), but why? Because I shall be cursed if I do not. But that will not produce love... Have you loved God with all your heart? Has there been no love of anything else?
The command shows its full worth only in one life:
All this love, this costly and needed love, we have in the Son of God, the Stranger from heaven, the True Good Samaritan. He kept the law of love to His neighbour — He alone. So we must learn the way from Him. We must do "likewise," and kindle our heart at His heart, if we hope in any way to answer that end of the law... We see nothing worthy of that word... until we trace the well-spent life of Jesus.
What threats could never produce, God's own love does:
The law says, "You shall love the Lord your God," and conscience approves this. It also says, Do this, or you shall die. But that terrible alternative can never bring my affections back to Him from whom they have wandered. "We love Him because He first loved us" (1 John 4:19). An apostle certifies this as the Christian experience of grace, and it fulfils in us the righteousness of the law.
- Love demanded. God asks for love because love is what He is. And He asks it from the whole being, not just the heart.
- Love owed. God is one, so no rival can divide the heart. The second clause ties your neighbour's interests to your own instead of capping them.
- Love exposed. The command tells you what you ought to be. It cannot change what you are. Conscience agrees with it, but fear of a curse has never produced love.
- Love embodied. One Man loved God and His neighbour like this. We learn love by tracing His life, not by measuring our own.
- Love returned. The law could only demand love. Grace produces it: we love because He first loved us. Only then is the law's righteousness fulfilled in us.