MATTHEW 19:13-30
Alice was close behind [the White Rabbit] when she turned the corner, but the Rabbit was no longer to be seen: she found herself in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging from the roof. There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again. Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass; there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, and Alice’s first thought was that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas! Either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at any rate it would not open any of them.
However, on the second time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!
Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage... she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head though the doorway.
There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on it. This time she found a little bottle on it... and round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words ‘DRINK ME’ beautifully printed on it in large letters. It was all very well to say ‘Drink me,’ but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. ‘No, I’ll look first,’ she said, ‘and see whether it’s marked “poison” or not’... for she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked ‘poison,’ it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.
However, this bottle was not marked ‘poison,’ so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, she very soon finished it off. ‘What a curious feeling!’ said Alice [as she began to shrink]; ‘I must be closing up like a telescope.' And so she was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going through the little door into that lovely garden.
The beginning of Alice in Wonderland is a fitting illustration for the whole of our passage. For here in the middle of Matthew 19 we find a young man stuck (metaphorically speaking) in a long dark hallway at the edge of a lovely garden. And, like Alice, he is stuck, not because he doesn’t have the right key, but rather because he is too big. This “young” (Matthew's description), “rich” (Mark’s description), “ruler” (Luke’s description) is too big to fit through the impossibly small door of the kingdom of heaven. He is like a giraffe or an elephant or a camel (yes, a camel!) trying to squeeze its way through the tip of a tiny sewing needle.
The Rich Man's Question
From the start of this story, however, this “camel” doesn’t look too tall or too wide or too hefty. In fact, this camel is somewhat commendable in his “smallness” of appearance and action. He is to be commended for coming to the right person, Jesus. In Mark’s version he “ran up and knelt before” Jesus (Mark 10:17). He is also to be commended for coming with the right (okay, half-right) question: “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” (Matthew 19:16). This question, despite its obvious flaws, displays his fear of God, his recognition of Jesus’ authority, his genuine concern for his own soul, and his belief in life after death—the “attainment of the resurrected state.” I think if most of us were honest we would admit that we think very little about life after death. It is simply not our everyday preoccupation. It is not what makes us restless. It is not what worries us. Our biggest concerns usually revolve around missing out on the benefits of this life. Most of the so called important questions we ask have something or other to do with the here and now. They are earthbound questions. But this man appears to be genuinely concerned about life after death, not simply and superficially about this life. So this man’s question, though he himself will prove to be full of love for the present world, is the right question in that it asks “the essential question.” His question is a good question, but it is not the perfect question; its imperfections are found right in the middle—“what good deed must I do?” The words “deed” and “do” are problematic. By those words this man implies a piety of achievement that stands in direct contrast to Jesus’ teaching in Mark 10:15 that one must “receive the kingdom of God like a child” and Jesus’ modeling in 19:13-15 of that reception—those children brought to him for blessing. Instead of coming to Jesus helpless, dependent, as small as a child, this young ruler comes as a man, a rich man, an able man, a good man. But Jesus will attempt to show him (commendable as he may be) that he is still far too big for the wonders of Wonderland!
The Question of Goodness
This is why Jesus says to him in essence, “I see by your very question that I need to make you smaller. Take and drink of these words.” Matthew records it this way: “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good” (v. 17a). With the first half of this response, Jesus basically asks him, “Who is really good?” And the answer, Jesus reminds him, is that God alone is good (cp. Mark 10:18b). Here Jesus does not deny his own goodness; rather he spotlights the unique goodness of God in the hope that this man will recognize that the only way to obtain eternal life is to be utterly reliant not upon sinful self but upon a good and gracious God.
It follows then that after Jesus has reminded this man (in v. 17a) that God alone is “good,” next (in vv. 17b-19) he specifically tests this man’s so-called goodness by means of God’s good law. In essence, our Lord asks him, “Are you good?”
If you would enter life, keep the commandments... You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Jesus gives no new spiritual insight or revolutionary teaching here; rather he takes this Jewish man back to the heart of the Jewish religion: the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20; Deuteronomy 5) and Leviticus 19:18, the most quoted verse in the New Testament from the Pentateuch. Christ understands well that if we feed on the heart of the Law—the inward and outward ethics of it—we should quickly learn how bad our life is in the sight of a truly good God. We should learn, as the Apostle Paul taught and discovered for himself, that “through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20; cp. Galatians 3:24).
Like a sword, Jesus here wields the Law of God to sever the plastic armor of this man’s goodness and tear away his robe of self-righteousness in order to expose the reality of his not-good heart. And how our Lord strikes him and wounds him with the Word is most fascinating to me. Take a good look at verses 18, 19. Here Jesus does something very interesting with the Ten Commandments. He omits from them (if I can put it that way). He makes two omissions.
First, he left out the first four commandments, the first table of the Decalogue. Why do that? Why, to this particular man, does our Lord make this noticeable omission? Our Lord’s quote from Leviticus 19:18—“You shall love your neighbor as yourself’—provides the answer. By quoting only from the second table Jesus places the mirror of neighborly love before this man’s face, saying, “Hey, how do you look? Have you defrauded anyone to make your fortune [see Mark 10:19, where Jesus adds “Do not defraud” to the commandments]? Have you made your riches through exploiting the poor? Have you been generous and compassionate, rich man with your wealth, young man with your vigor, rich young ruler with your judgments? Have you truly loved your neighbor as much as you love yourself?”
The first intentional and ingenious omission is the first four commandments. The second omission is the last commandment, the Tenth Commandment, which is, “You shall not covet” others’ possessions (Exodus 20:17). You would think that of all the commandments Jesus would have cited to this rich man, the last commandment would have been first. So why, to this particular man, does Jesus make this small but significant omission?
The reason is that the rest of Christ’s response will focus exclusively on this command. This man’s particular vice, his obvious moral defect (as divinely detected by Jesus), is his failure to adhere to the Tenth Commandment. This man is filled with the disease of coveting. And so after this man declares his innocence—“All these I have kept. What do I still lack?” (v. 20)—Jesus lovingly (see Mark 10:21) applies the painful remedy. Jesus asks him in effect, “Have you really kept all the commandments? All of them? Every single one of them? Ever since you were young? Well, how about, ‘You shall not covet’?” He puts it this way: “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (v. 21). Jesus calls him to perfection, “perfect” in the sense of keeping both tables of the Law. He is to love others, especially the poor (i.e., widows, orphans, blind beggars, and perhaps Christ’s followers), and follow (i.e., love first) Jesus.
The rich man knew he lacked something. That is why he asked Jesus what he asked. But he thought whatever it was he lacked could simply be added to his life. But the one thing he lacked was a childlike dependence on Christ. So our Lord, seeking to bring this man to the point of such dependence, challenged this rich man to cut off his riches (“sell all that you possess and give to the poor”) and challenged this rich ruler to cut off his self-rule (“come, follow me”). Here our Lord demands not almsgiving (giving something to someone) but everything (give everything to others and everything to me). He demands everything.
Give everything to others—love your neighbor.
Give everything to Christ—love the Lord your God.
Well, such a challenge was too hard, too impossibly difficult. The arrow of Christ’s command struck the young man’s Achilles’ heel. The weight of just the Tenth Commandment crushed him. This man who only moments ago knelt before Jesus enthusiastic and expectant now stood up, turned his back on our Lord, and “went away sorrowful” (v. 22). Why? There is only one reason given: “for he had great possessions” (v. 22), or we might rightly say, because great possessions had him.
At the very core of this man who led an exemplary but idolatrous life lay the sin of coveting. He sincerely loved things more than he loved God, more than he wanted eternal life. “Majestic mighty” money was the highest of his gods. Here we see the Parable of the Soils at work. We see the “deceitfulness of riches” (13:22) grow like a thousand thorns, moving up and around this man’s body until the seed planted in his heart is choked. Here we see a man strangled to death by mammon. He walked away sad. He walked away bigger, taller, fatter, and deader.
The Danger of Riches
In Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard recalls the tragic story of the Franklin expedition to the North Pole. In 1845 a group of English explorers died because they were ill prepared for the challenges they would face. Instead of providing room on board their two ships for storing additional coal for the steam engines, these careless adventurers used the space for a large library, a barrel organ, china place settings, and cut-glass wine goblets. Needless to say, when they ran out of coal, as they did, their books and tea cups and ornate musical instruments were not enough to warm their freezing bodies. Every member of that expedition died. Sadly, 128 men lost their lives.
Years later when the search party found the remains of the men who had set off to walk for help, they discovered one skeleton dressed in a fine blue cloth uniform edged with silk braid, sadly grasping in his hand a place setting of sterling silver flatware. What a picture of their deadly foolishness.
This rich young ruler in Matthew acted as foolishly as that dead British explorer. But instead of trying to carry sterling silver through the frozen Arctic, this man was trying to carry all his possessions through the tiny entrance into the kingdom of God. And just as all those explorers had to do was make sure their ships had more coal and fewer luxuries, so too all this rich man needed to do was unhinge this huge weight from his back and walk as a small man, a poor man, a humble man, a childlike man... walk in faith uprightly through the small and narrow way.
However, this is easier said than done. Jesus knew that. That is why, if you look again at our passage, he turned to his disciples and said to them:
Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you [“children,” Mark 10:24], it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. (vv. 23, 24)
Mark Twain once wrote, “It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.” I think Jesus’ words in verses 23, 24 are understandable but bothersome. And because they are so very bothersome it is tempting for us to make them incomprehensible. That is, to take these clear words and blur them, to convince ourselves that these words were addressed to this particular rich man and his particular sin at this particular time in history, and thus it is more than appropriate for us modern disciples to “whittle away the radical demand [and] make it more reasonable” and to create, as is necessary, “an imaginary ‘riches danger line’” that we always manage to fall below, for we can always find someone who earns more and has more than we do. “He’s the rich man,” we say, “not me!” It is tempting to make Christ’s words apply to anyone other than us. But to do so would be both wrong and unwise.
We well-to-do Americans can indeed take some comfort in the fact that Jesus does not categorically condemn wealth and in the fact that our Lord never commanded every rich person he encountered to sell all of his or her possessions. In fact, this is the only incident we have of such a command. However, based on the fact that Jesus in the Gospels has nothing positive to say about money, that he never speaks of wealth as a blessing, that he repeatedly uses illustrations regarding the abundance of possessions to be “toxic to the soul,” it is fair to state that wealth (in and of itself) can be and often is a great barrier or roadblock on the path to paradise. In other words, nothing fattens the camel like an abundance of worldly goods!
For me, one of the great surprises of this text is that Jesus, who certainly was testing this particular rich man to see if he would covet the kingdom more than cash, turns to his disciples and says nothing at all about coveting. Instead he says, “only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven” (v. 23). I expected him to say something along the lines of, “How difficult it will be for those who covet or hoard or love riches to enter the kingdom!” But that is not what he said. Our Lord here recognizes an inherent danger in having much money.
We think of the rich as privileged, but Jesus consistently saw them as underprivileged. The people of his day saw riches as a manifest sign of the blessing of God, but he saw wealth as a hindrance to spiritual progress. (And that’s why it is dangerous!) In Jesus’ estimation wealth naturally creates all that makes people too big, too fat, and too adult. Wealth often “deadens the instinct for self sacrifice.” Wealth often fosters the ungodly notion that this world has much to offer. Wealth often numbs our minds to the reality of the joys of the Kingdom and the torments of the grave. There is always something more on earth to buy or look forward to when one has wealth. Wealth often lures us into believing that everything can be had for a price. In most cases with wealth comes self-indulgence, self-reliance, self-importance, and self-security. Wealth has a way of ruling one’s life, ruling one’s time, ruling one’s vocation, ruling one’s commitments, ruling one’s concerns. And the whole point of Jesus’ “colorful hyperbole” about the camel and the eye of the needle reinforces the truth “that those who are ruled by money cannot be ruled by God.”
Thus, while it is true and not to be forgotten that “it is not so much the having of money, as the trusting in it, which ruins the soul,” it is likewise true that it is easier to trust in it if you have it to trust in. And what is required by Christ and his gospel is a childlike faith in the heavenly Father. What is demanded is a poverty of spirit that so often goes hand in hand with a poverty of possessions.
The Impossible becomes Possible
If you are a bit offended or perplexed or aghast, you are not alone. The disciples couldn’t believe what they were hearing: “When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, ‘Who then can be saved?”' (v. 25). In their minds, if this good (seemingly faithful to the Law) and rich (obviously blessed) man could not enter the kingdom of heaven, then who on earth could?
Jesus likes what is happening here. Finally the disciples are asking the right question. So here in verse 26 Jesus confirms their thinking. “That’s right. No one qualifies!” “Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this [salvation you speak of; this eternal life he wanted] is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”’ Here Jesus answers them in these “absolute terms” in order to impress upon them “that salvation, from start to finish, is not a human achievement.” The great won't be let in because they are great. The good won’t be let in because they are good. The rich won’t be let in because they are rich.
Jonathan Edwards once wrote, “To take on yourself to work out redemption, is a greater thing than if you had taken it upon you to create a world.” This world is full of those who think they can enter into a saving relationship with God (and then get to the Kingdom) any way they like. But how foolish they are, for it would be easier to shape the mountains, to drive the winds, to till the oceans, to spin the planets, and to scatter the stars than it would be to take upon the work of their own salvation. Salvation, my friends, is a miracle. It is completely beyond the sphere of human possibilities. For, as Paul says, “The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot” (Romans 8:7). Salvation is impossible for man, but not for God. Here Jesus explains the possibility of the impossible. Here we discover just how Jesus plans to get a fat camel through the eye of a needle. Here is the answer to how any sinful human being is able to enter into the kingdom of God. Jesus later said:
See, we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day. (20:18, 19)
There it is! Jesus suffers. Jesus dies. Jesus rises again! And looking upon the holy one of Holy Week, we trust in him like little children trust their parents for bread and clothing and shelter and life. Jesus suffers. Jesus dies. Jesus rises again! And we believe.
Think of it this way. I’ll take you back to the introduction to this chapter, where I cited part of the opening scene from Alice in Wonderland. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is like that potion placed upon the table. It is a free gift given from above. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16a). Alice could choose to drink the potion or not, she could refuse it thinking it was poison or in faith take it, believing it was the remedy for her dilemma. We too are faced with a decision—to drink or not drink, to believe or not believe. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). In John 6:53, 54 Jesus puts it this way:
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
Eat. Drink. Taste and see that the Lord is good. For us the impossible becomes possible when God gives to us a life of faith, a childlike faith (back to 19:13, 14; cp. 18:3,4) that demonstrates itself in daily dependence—drinking in Christ and eating him up... for life. This is the kind of faith Peter expresses, interestingly enough, in Matthew 19:27. Peter said to Jesus, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?”
At first I thought Peter’s response was yet another thoughtless blunder. I might have said to Peter, “Oh, Peter, you have once again missed the whole point. The real issue here is not possessions but loyalty. It is not about whether or not one gives up one’s house, family, and land; it is rather about whether one gives one’s ultimate allegiance to Jesus.” Yet the way Jesus responded in verses 28-30 corrects my poor perception of Peter. Our Lord saw Peter’s reply not as childish but childlike. You see, the early apostles did in fact give up all earthly allegiances. They left their jobs to follow Jesus. They left their families (at least for a time, if not for a lifetime) to follow Jesus. They left their homes and property to follow Jesus. And because of such faith, a faith demonstrated with such sacrificial works, Christ gave them here a word of comfort and blessing. In verses 28-30 Jesus said to them:
Truly, I say to you, in the new world [think “new heavens and new earth”], when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me [thus excluding Judas and including Mathias] will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel [whatever he means by this, this is no little responsibility and reward]. And everyone [not just you] who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold [in this life? Perhaps. In the next life? Certainly] and will inherit eternal life [what the rich young ruler was after]. But many who are first [like the rich man] will be last, and the last [like Peter] first.
Christian (Noun)
An early edition of Webster’s Dictionary defined a Christian as “a decent, civilized, or presentable person.” The rich man would surely qualify under that easy but faulty definition. The Random House Dictionary does a slightly better job with its definition. It says a Christian is one who exhibits “a spirit proper to a follower of Jesus Christ, as in having a loving regard for other persons.” That’s a bit incomplete, but not completely bad. But here’s a better definition, one that comes from my summation of Jesus’ teachings: a Christian is simply someone who is last who places Jesus first', that is, someone who is humble and trusting enough to subordinate all allegiances to Christ. That’s what a Christian is.
It was nearly twenty years ago that God, in his infinite and irresistible grace, used this very story in this very Gospel as one of the means of converting me to Christ. For the first half of my life I was told and believed the most common religious lie—that I was basically a good person who occasionally sinned, but did nothing that would ultimately disqualify me from one day entering the joys of eternal life. But then the Bible taught me what should have been obvious—I was a sinner. Not a good person who occasionally sinned, but a sinner (at heart a very bad person) who was in a continual state of rebellion against a good God and his good Law. I didn’t love God. I didn’t love others. And I certainly loved myself.
But it wasn’t just the first half of this passage but also the second half that the Lord used to change my mind and heart and will. I knew that God alone was perfectly good. I believed that Jesus was indeed the Son of God and the Savior of the world. But at that time in my life he was never my Savior. He was never my Lord, the supreme Lord of my life. And as I prayed to God those many years ago and asked him to forgive me and to clean me up on the inside, I also (with this passage in mind) told him (in so many words) that I would “sell everything,” that I would put him first in my life—first above self, first above family, first above career, first above education, first above sports, first above every aspect and every love of my life. I told him I would be last, and he would be first!
My brothers and sisters, dear Alice may have unexpectedly entered Wonderland by drinking from that bottle. However, we are given a sure promise that if we drink of Christ we gain that which is most refreshing in the here and now (real life) and that which makes us small enough to enter the kingdom of heaven, where there is indeed (so I'm told) an ever-so-lovely garden and life everlasting. May we one day—by God’s grace and goodness alone—find ourselves there.
(R. Kent Hughes. and Douglas Sean O'Donnell., 2013; edited Carl Hinton., 2020)