CHILDREN, HOW HARD IT IS TO ENTER THE KINGDOM OF GOD!
Mark 10:17-31
Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
It is quite amazing that this Jewish man, who had scrupulously kept the Law from young, cared enough to seek Jesus out to learn how he could have eternal life. We are not told what he imagined to be eternal life but surely it is related to the life in the hereafter and the presence of God. We are told that he was rich and yet he was aware of his own spiritual poverty and yearned to be right with God. There surely was something special about this man and we are told that Jesus loved him.
That the man did not dispute with Jesus nor tried to bargain with him tells us that Jesus’ pointed challenge hit home and hit hard. While he “loved God” and sought to be right with him, he had not “loved his neighbour” and opened his heart (and purse) to them. He was ready to be a follower of Jesus, kneeling at his feet and acknowledging him as teacher, but he was not ready to be “good”, yet Jesus clearly placed this hurdle between them both.
Why do you call me good? No one is good—except God alone.
Was Jesus suggesting that if he believed Jesus to be good then he must believe Jesus to be God? Or was he saying that if he wanted to be right with God he must keep the Law in such ways that express God’s goodness—not just following the letter of the Law but expressing and embracing the spirit of the God who gave the Law? Or was he pointing out the ambivalence within the man: kneeling and asking to know eternal truths, yet not going beyond addressing Jesus as “Good Teacher”?
Whichever it may be, Jesus’ next few words forced the man to think hard about who Jesus is. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” There is only one view of me that will lead you to do what I ask. This is the one thing you lack.
The way I understand it, Jesus’ instructions addressed the man’s “one thing you lack”. I don’t think that we are all required to sell everything to have eternal life; but all of us need Jesus to be Lord of all our life.
Jesus tells us that “the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field” (Matthew 13:34). The man sold everything he had to buy the field and legally (rather than steal) possess the treasure. He was happy to do so. Where your treasure is, there your heart lies. It would seem that the man who encountered Jesus wanted eternal life but had little idea of what it entails; he had little idea of God. He was a rich man and his treasure was on earth and in truth, there his heart lay.
How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Jesus made it clear that to follow him one must deny oneself and take up the cross. You leave everything on the table. But Jesus assures us that when we leave everything on the table, God will return our faith with more than we can imagine. The church, on the other hand, tries very hard to convince people that it is easy to become a Christian: Just say these few words in prayer and the deal is sealed.
Jesus makes it very clear that it is hard to enter the kingdom of God, perhaps even impossible in our eyes; but if we are willing, God makes it possible. If our Gospel is easy, under the mistaken notion that since Jesus has “paid it all” then it costs us nothing, it is likely fake. The truth is that it costs nothing to enter the kingdom because Jesus paid for our passage with his life, but in entering you renounce your life; you lose your life to save it.
Then Peter spoke up, “We have left everything to follow you!” “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”