Jesus answered a teacher of the law by sending him back to the law. The lawyer had "tempted him" (Luke 10:25), and Barnes says he "feigned a desire to be instructed." Rather than give a new answer the man could argue with, Jesus asked what God had already written. Barnes says Jesus referred him to the law "as a safe rule," meaning to show him what the law required and so show him that he needed a better righteousness than his own. The first question asks what the law says. The second, "How readest thou?", presses the man to say how he himself reads and understands it.

The lawyer answered from the law: "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" (Luke 10:27). Jesus approved his answer: "Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live" (Luke 10:28). But the man, "willing to justify himself," came back with another question: "And who is my neighbour?" (Luke 10:29). That question opened the parable of the Good Samaritan.

A "lawyer" in the Gospels was not a courtroom attorney. Barnes describes him as one who professed to be skilled in the laws of Moses, "whose business it was to explain them." So Jesus was asking an expert to answer from his own field.

Gill connects "How readest thou?" with the daily reading of the Shema, the words "Hear, O Israel" in Deuteronomy 6:4, which he says Jews recited morning and evening. The lawyer's answer joins two commands from the law of Moses: love for God (Deuteronomy 6:5) and love for neighbour (Leviticus 19:18).

Jesus did not treat God's earlier word as outdated. When asked about eternal life, He pointed to what God had already said, and He told the lawyer he had "answered right" (Luke 10:28). The problem was never that the law was unclear. Gill notes that the bare reading of it was not sufficient; the command was "this do."

Barnes says Jesus was leading the man to see what the law required so he would see his own need. Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary puts it plainly: "No one will ever love God and his neighbour with any measure of pure, spiritual love, who is not made a partaker of converting grace." The lawyer's next question (Luke 10:29) showed how quickly a person can know the right words and still look for a way around them.