In the parable of the Good Samaritan, someone finally feels compassion and helps the man who is half-dead on the road (Luke 10.33). The surprising turning point in the story is not simply the compassion itself, but the one who feels it—a despised foreigner.

The Greek term for feeling compassion, splanchnizomai, is also used by Luke when the father runs toward the prodigal son (15.20) and when Jesus sees the widow at Nain who has lost her only son (7.13). This verb for feeling compassion includes a physical aspect in the tone of its feeling because the related noun splanchna means “bowels, viscera.” Both the Greek verb and noun match our English expression “gut feeling.”

The closely related term “mercy”is used by the expert in the Law of Moses to characterize the help given to the half-dead man (Luke 10.37). The Greek term for mercy, eleos, is often used to characterize the action of God’s faithful covenantal love. The term becomes a theme of God’s mercy in the hymns of Luke’s infancy narrative (1.50, 54, 78; compare 1.58). In Luke 1.78 both compassion and mercy are used together, dia splanchna eleous theou, “through God’s compassionate mercy,” to characterize God’s act of salvation. God’s mercy reverberates in the mercy given to the half-dead man on the road.

Jesus’ response to the expert in the Law indicates that Jesus believes mercy is to be a continuing way of life, but the legal expert evidently considers mercy to be a specific, completed action. This is emphasized by a repetition in Jesus’ response to the lawyer. Both before and after the parable the lawyer refers to an action that is to be done, and he uses the aorist tense, the tense that indicates a punctiliar action. But when Jesus corrects the lawyer, also before and after the parable, he refers to a whole way of life by using the present tense, the tense that indicates continuing action. For Jesus this mercy is not to stop; it is to characterize the entire life of God’s people.