In Luke 10, there's a brief exchange between Jesus and a lawyer that sets the stage for Jesus to tell the famous parable of the Good Samaritan.

The lawyer asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus seems to realize that the lawyer really knows the answer already, and - indeed he does. It's one of the pithiest, most direct instructions in the whole of the Word. Here's how the lawyer states it:

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself."

Jesus simply says to him, "Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live."

So, we know what to do: Love God. Love our neighbors. We can talk a lot about how best to do that, but the "what" is plainly stated here - and it's plainly linked to the idea of eternal life.

(参考: Deuteronomy 6:5; Mark 12:33)

1. Religion Is All about How We Live, and the Religious Way to Live Is to Do Good.

EVERYONE who has any religion knows and acknowledges that people who lead a good life are saved and people who lead an evil life are damned. That is, they know and acknowledge that if we lead a good life we think good things not only about God but also about our neighbor, which is not the case if we lead an evil life.

What we love constitutes our life, and whatever we love we not only do freely but also think freely. So we say that life is doing good things because doing good things is inseparable from thinking good things. If this doing and this thinking are not working together in us, then they are not part of our life. This, though, needs to be explained in what follows.