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• Illustration: Robinson asks us to consider 4 questions
  - What does God require of us in relationship to him?
  - What does God require of us in relationship with our neighbors?
  - Do you love God?
  - Do you love your neighbor?
  
• These questions lead us to wonder who our neighbor is.

• Scripture: Luke 10
• Jesus didn't respond to the lawyer in the expected theological manner.
• Seeking to justify himself, the lawyer asked for a definition of terms.
• When Jesus answers the question, he doesn't give a long, theological discourse; he just tells the story of the Good Samaritan.
• In answering the question, Jesus took this man out of his world of theory and theology and took him into another world.

• Illustration: Helmut Thielicke tells of the first time his son recognized his own reflection in the mirror. Every so often that happens with the Bible: on the page of Scripture, you see a reflection of yourself.
• The interpretive question of "Who is my neighbor?" is "Whose viewpoint will we take?"
  - For most of us in trouble, anyone who's willing to stop and lend a hand qualifies as a neighbor.
  - Illustration: Robinson's son learned the story of the Good Samaritan at a young age, and he understood the lesson of the story to be: "Whenever I'm in trouble, you've got to help me."
• It's hard to understand how one human being could see another human being in desperate need and do absolutely nothing to help him; but it's all in their point of view.

• The priest may have thought it would hurt his testimony; and today, there is a doctrine of separation within the church.
• The Levite may have thought he could use the story to rally a larger group of people in order to prevent this from happening again; and today, Christians often use a kind of arithmetic that is always interested in reaching the masses but somehow never gets down to a man or a woman.
• The Samaritan was least likely to help; but he was filled with pity and helped.

• Your neighbor is anyone whose need you see and you're in a position to meet.
• The story gives some indication of what it might take to be a neighbor: willingness to be involved, to lend a hand, and to give time.
• The deeper truth of the story is: What I am determines what I see.
• Christian love is not objective, but subjective. Christian love does not reside in the personality being loved, but in the person doing the loving.
• It is not such a simple thing to love God; the only way we're able to love God is that the love of God himself is shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

• What you are determines what you see, and what you see will determine what you do.
  - Illustration: In the poem "Pussycat, Pussycat, where have you been?" we see that, when you've got the heart of a pussycat, mice are infinitely more important than queens.