Back to Jesus and the man who asked him about eternal life. In Matthew and Luke this story’s about a wealthy young ruler. In Mark it’s not. This isn’t to say (as skeptics will immediately jump to conclude) this man wasn’t really wealthy, young, or noble. Mark just doesn’t include these details. It’s a synoptic-problem thing.
Quite possibly Mark left it out because if we’re neither wealthy, young, nor noble, we’ve just been handed three convenient excuses to dismiss this guy: “I’m not in any danger of being like this man.” So Mark lowered the story to its lowest common denominator: This man, he pointed out, had a lot of stuff. And anyone can have a lot of stuff. Even homeless people have shopping carts full of stuff. And just like this man, our stuff can get in the way of the Kingdom.
The story.
A man had run toJesus and knelt before him. WhileJesus was going to the road,the man asked, “Good teacher, what can I do so I can inherit eternal life?”Jesus told him,
“Why do you say I’m good? Nothing is good but One—God. You’ve known the commands: Don’t murder, don’t adulter, don’t steal, don’t testify falsely, don’t commit fraud, honor your father and your mother.” He was telling
Jesus , “Teacher, I’ve guarded all thesecommands since youth.”Jesus looked him in the face, loved him, and told him,
“One thing has escaped you. Go. Sell whatever you own. Give to the beggars. You’ll have treasure in heaven! And come follow me.”Appalled at the message,
the man went away, distressed: He had many possessions.—
Jesus was en route to the road to Jerusalem. In his group of followers was this man. Movies tend to depict him as running to meet the group, flinging himself at Jesus’s feet, and asking the question about eternal life—as if he were in a great hurry to find out the answer. In my experience, the only folks who are in a hurry to find out the answer are people who might die soon. And such people have no trouble giving away all their stuff. So that particular spin on this story doesn’t strike me as at all realistic. If the dude was in a hurry, it wasn’t a hurry to get answers; it was a hurry to catch up with Jesus.
And the Greek verb tenses suggest the running and kneeling (both past tense) had happened before Jesus left for the road (present tense). That’s why I translated it that way: This guy had joined Jesus’s group in the past, in great zeal, and likely became known as “the guy who ran to Jesus and knelt before him.” He wasn’t the first person to do this. You might remember the leper. For all we know, this was the leper.
Regardless, along the way he asked this question… and got an answer he totally did not expect.
“Why do you say I’m good?”
Jesus’s response began with correction:
Christians tend to misunderstand why Jesus did this. They read their own attitudes onto Jesus. “The stranger was altogether too obsequious and effusive in his approach,” comments Dennis Nineham in Studies in the Gospels, which is a common attitude among commentators: Jesus verbally smacked down this guy because he was a bootlicker. Problem is, that’s our motive for such behavior; that’s not Jesus. He has the fruit of the Spirit in abundance: He’s altogether loving, kind, patient, and good. Regardless of how brown-nosing and oily this man was, or came across, Jesus didn’t return bad behavior with bad behavior.
Jesus corrected him because he is, like the man said, a teacher: When you use empty phrases, it means you’ve not turned your brain on. Call a theologian “good teacher,” and you’re gonna get a theology lesson: “Wrong. Humans sin. Only God is good.” Yeah, Jesus is God, but (as John Calvin likewise pointed out, Commentaries at Mk 10.17) Jesus wasn’t trying to make that point right now. He was trying to engage the man’s mind. A teacher isn’t just a dispenser of wise and profound sayings. A teacher gets you to think about them, realize their truth on your own, and make them your lifestyle.
So now that the good teacher had seized the man’s attention, he could point him to the Law.
“You’ve known the commands.”
You say you want eternal life? Then does your lifestyle show you’re serious about it? Are you producing the fruit of repentance?
Again, commentators misunderstand why Jesus pointed to the Law. They assume it was to demonstrate to this man how the Law doesn’t save: First point to the commands (to which the man would respond, “I keep ’em”) then demolish him by showing the commands just aren’t enough: We’re saved by God’s grace, not by our good deeds. Where this interpretation goes off the rails is it pays no attention to the way the story ends. If Jesus’s purpose was to crush this man’s dependence on good works, mission accomplished. But then Jesus didn’t turn round and teach him grace. He let the man leave, distressed and hopeless. If Jesus’s point was to teach grace, not works, he did a horrible job. So this can’t be what he was trying to do.
The Law doesn’t save. It never did. It was never the point of the Law anyway: The Law only shows us the lifestyle of the Kingdom. But we aren’t saved by practicing the lifestyle; we’re saved by God. Then, after we’re saved, we’re empowered to practice the lifestyle. So if the man really was following the Law, it was a sign he was Kingdom-ready. And that’s why Jesus pointed to the Law: “You know the commands. How’re you doing with them?”
The man’s response: “I do them.”
Jesus’s response: Love. Here’s a man who was sincere about wanting eternal life. He was making the effort to follow God. He was doing precisely as Jesus wanted.
Well, almost.
“One thing has escaped you.”
Maybe this guy’s wealth wasn’t a problem at the time. Maybe it was. Either way, Jesus realized it was a stumbling block for the man, so he zeroed in on it: “Get rid of it. Give it away. Don’t invest in the present kingdom; invest in the next one. Then follow me.”
Commentators are a little too quick to point out Jesus’s instructions to this man aren’t necessarily his instructions to us. We might not have a hangup with wealth, and need to be rid of it lest it keep us out of the Kingdom. And that’s quite true: We might not. But the chances are far, far greater we might. There are way too many Christians who only want to follow Jesus so long that he lets us keep our stuff. And when following Jesus comes with strings attached, it’s idolatry.
So when Jesus has to start stripping away or smashing our idols, some of us can’t take it. We’re under the false impression these things are infinitely good; that Jesus would be glad to let us take them into the Kingdom with us. But everything must go. Our status and prestige. Our jobs. Our money and possessions. Our relationships, both unhealthy and healthy (though they’re hardly healthy if we’ve put so much value on them). Our sense of security, which was always false anyway. Our comfort. Our standards for society—“the way things ought to be,” which tend to be either too lenient or too strict, ’cause they’re based on our prejudices, and not on God’s will. Even our theology and Christianity has to go: The beliefs and practices we use to get close to God must never, ever take priority over God himself.
We must never assume, as this man seems to have done, that we have arrived—that we’re following every command just fine, and we needn’t do more. We can always do more. Half the reason for this man’s distress was finding out he wasn’t as righteous as he thought. He thought, as many Christians wrongly think, his prosperity was a sign of God’s favor, and blessings he was meant to enjoy. He never thought of them as possible distractions or temptations. So he built his life around them… never realizing he was constructing a fortress out of stumbling blocks.
It’s a huge blind spot for most of us. So let’s open our eyes to it. Our stuff gets in his way. It must not. We need to give it away, and put our treasure in heaven. Is there anything we have that we never want to give up for God—or never think he would ask us to give it up? Give it up just the same. Give it up before you end up like this guy.