Luke 10:28

‘And he said to him, “You have answered right, this do, and you shall live.” '

Jesus replies that his answer is correct and (in context) that if he does this he will find eternal life. At first this might seem as though Jesus is saying that ‘all he has to do is to do this and he will merit going to Heaven', but that is not what He is saying at all. For two reasons. Firstly because both He and His questioner are aware of the impossibility of fulfilling these requirements (for all but Jesus). This was indeed what the more genuine Pharisees did strive after and had failed to achieve (compare Romans 9:31; Romans 10:3), and that is why in their striving for its achievement they had turned them into a nightmare of regulations and a continual quest for ritual purity. By doing so they had lost sight of the emphasis on love and compassion, as Jesus had to point out to them again and again (Luke 11:42; Matthew 9:13). If anyone did, they needed deliverance.

And secondly the Scribe's answer is correct because it is a true summary of the Christian life. One who loves God and his neighbour like this will only be able to do so because he knows God (see Luke 10:22), and because he has responded to Him in loving faith. It is this knowledge of God in his heart (resulting from coming to Jesus) that will result in such a love for God. This is in fact Paul's point in Romans 9:30. True faith which responds to God and finds forgiveness and eternal life will produce love (compare here Luke 7:36), and that love should then grow until it conforms to what is described here. To do this then will certainly reveal that a man has eternal life, because it will reveal the work of God that has taken place in his heart (Luke 11:13). But it did not solve the Scribe's problem, for the question still arose, ‘but how can I do this?'.

Jesus' words were true, and perfectly orthodox. No Jew could have denied them. The Scribe could not fault Jesus on this. However, how to achieve them was another question. For who could possibly show the perfect love for God that was required, and how could it be brought about?