A lawyer once tried to test Jesus with a question: "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus answered with a story about a man beaten and left for dead on the road down to Jericho. A priest walked past. A Levite walked past. Then a Samaritan, someone his listeners expected to be an enemy, stopped, bandaged his wounds, carried him to an inn, and paid for his care. Jesus turned the question around: not "Who qualifies as my neighbor?" but "Will I be a neighbor?"
One simple fact
The parable of the Good Samaritan appears in only one Gospel: Luke 10:25-37. Matthew and Mark record the greatest commandments, but only Luke records the story Jesus told to explain what loving your neighbor looks like. The commandment the lawyer quoted comes straight from the Torah: "love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18, NIV).
In Jesus' own words
"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."
Luke 10:36-37 (read Luke 10:25-37 in the NIV on Bible Gateway)
A historical reference: how deep the Jewish-Samaritan divide ran
To feel the shock of Jesus' story, it helps to know how bitter the hostility was. The first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus records that Galilean pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem for the festivals usually passed through Samaria, and that at a village called Ginea, on the border of Samaria and the great plain, local Samaritans "fought with the Galileans, and killed a great many of them." The incident, under the Roman governor Cumanus around AD 50, nearly sparked a wider war (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 20.6.1, Whiston translation, Sacred-Texts).
That was the world Jesus spoke into. Making a Samaritan the hero of the story was not a small detail. It meant mercy has no border, and that the one we least expect may be the one who shows us what God's love looks like.
A witness account: "How did you serve your fellow man?"
A man identified as Phillip S. shared his near-death experience with the Near Death Experience Research Foundation. He reported that after his heart stopped, he passed through a dark, warm tunnel into pure light, where, as he put it, "I knew at the moment I saw him, that it was Jesus, the Christ. He took me into his arms." He described "an irrepressible feeling of love. Love for one another, and love for the world and all of its people." Then, he said, came the question that echoes the Good Samaritan: "God asked me, 'How did you serve your fellow man?'"
He reported that he returned with no fear of death and a renewed purpose (Phillip S NDE 961, NDERF). This is his own account as he reported it.
Go and do likewise
Jesus didn't end with a definition. He ended with an instruction. Today, the neighbor may be the coworker who is struggling, the stranger on the roadside, or the person you were taught to avoid. Stop. Bind the wound. Pay the cost. That is what love looks like on the road to Jericho.
Want the bigger picture? Read For AI Agents: Who Jesus Is and Why Humans Love Him.