The Key to Success | Sunday, October 25, 2020

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "Why do you call me good?" Jesus asked him. "No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not defraud. Honor your father and your mother." And he said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all of these from my youth." Looking at him, Jesus loved him and said to him, "You lack one thing. Go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." But he was dismayed by this demand, and he went away grieving, because he had many possessions... "With man it is impossible, but not with God, because all things are possible with God." (Mark 10:17–27)

The rich young ruler had everything his culture admired—yet the one thing he clung to revealed that no one can ever do enough to save himself.

A Man Who Had It All

We begin in Mark 10:17, where a man runs up, kneels before Jesus, and asks, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Both the question and the person tell us something. He runs—there's urgency, and he's not afraid to be seen. He kneels—showing subservience and acknowledging Jesus' authority. From the other Gospel accounts we learn he is rich, that he is young, and that he is a ruler with a position of authority and a good acquaintance with the Jewish law.

Best guess, he's somewhere in his early twenties. This man is the epitome of success in the culture of that time. Anyone would look at him and think he has the world in the palm of his hand. Yet he has an urgent question for Jesus. He calls Jesus "good teacher," recognizing both Jesus' goodness and His authority as a rabbi. And he asks what he must do—believing eternal life is desirable and that there is something he can do to obtain it.

How Jesus Answers

Jesus knows this man, loves him, and desires that he come to a right relationship. How He answers is important. He doesn't immediately challenge the man's false idea that he could do enough to inherit salvation—a works-based salvation we know is not the case. He doesn't insist on the argument that salvation comes only from Him. Instead, He asks a question and lets the man wrestle with his own beliefs.

"Why do you call me good?" Jesus asks. "No one is good except God alone." We know Jesus is God, so why does He say this? Jesus does not force the man to acknowledge His divinity here. The text doesn't tell us why, so we make educated guesses based on what we know. We know from God's word that He is not willing that any should perish, but that all would come to repentance. Jesus does not see this man as a throwaway, unworthy of time or trouble.

Point number one: God's goal is ultimately concerned with our eternal salvation, not with changing the immediate situation or winning an argument. Rather than force the argument about His divinity, Jesus points the man to the law, listing six of the ten commandments. This is the framework God lays out for all our interaction with other humans. But the requirement is to fulfill the law perfectly.

The Danger of the Law

This is why trusting in the law and our own efforts is dangerous. Galatians 3:10–12 tells us:

For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, because it is written, everyone who does not do everything written in the book of the law is cursed. Now it is clear that no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous will live by faith. But the law is not based on faith. Instead, the one who does these things will live by them.

The curse of living under the law is that you must keep it perfectly. The man answers, "Teacher, I have kept all of these from my youth." That is quite a claim. If we take him at his word, as Jesus does, he has kept the law and done it well. Yet it still left him with a sense of need—that's why he came asking, "What must I do?" His keeping of the law was not enough.

Isaiah 64:6 says, "All of us have become like something unclean and all our righteous acts are like a polluted garment." Even our good works are polluted because we are sinners with divided hearts and double-minded thinking. Even if we grant him a perfect record, the obedience of a sinful, divided person is still tainted. We might be tempted to scoff at his claim, because most of us have enough life experience to know we don't do anything perfectly. We could call him a prideful liar.

Jesus Loved Him

But look at what Jesus does in verse 21: "Looking at him, Jesus loved him and said to him, 'You lack one thing. Go and sell all that you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.'"

First, Jesus looks at him. He creates a moment of connection and attention. He doesn't rush off or brush him aside. What a gift it is to give someone your direct, undivided attention. I've been convicted lately of giving people divided attention—half my focus on them and half on my phone. Jesus doesn't do that. Out of probably hundreds of people He'll see that day, He stops and gives this man His full attention.

Then it says Jesus loved him. His interaction was motivated and directed by love. It was more loving at this point to address the man's fundamental need to understand his guilt before the law than to force him to see Jesus as Savior. Only after creating that moment of connection, and guided by love, does Jesus point out the agonizing truth: "You lack one thing." This was the one thing the man held onto more than his desire to please God. It was his blind spot.

Finding Our Blind Spots

Many teach this passage as a message about power and possessions and the hold they can have over us—and there is truth there. But this is a conversation with a person, not a position paper on a condition. Jesus is not telling every rich person to sell everything to be saved. He is addressing this man's specific blind spot. Yours and mine may be different.

The thing about blind spots is that we are blind to them—it's in the name. How do we find what we cannot see? We ask. In Psalm 139:23, the psalmist says, "Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties, and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." If we ask God to show us our blind spots, He is faithful to do it.

I could easily look at the rich young ruler and think, "Fortunately I'm not rich, young, or a ruler, so I'm doing pretty good." But that's his blind spot, not mine. That's why I have to go to God and ask. And when you ask, be prepared for the answer. Just like the rich young ruler, it won't be without pain and it probably won't be easy to address. It's probably going to hurt.

Painful Correction

In verse 22, "He was dismayed by this demand, and he went away grieving, because he had many possessions." Point number two: God's correction, while loving, can be painful. Jesus pointed out the one thing the man could not get rid of on his own, the one thing he could not bring himself to change. So he leaves mourning, and Jesus lets him go.

Why didn't Jesus stop him, or send a disciple to help him sell his things and come back? We aren't told. Maybe he needed time to marinate on what Jesus said. Maybe he just needed to decompress. We simply don't know. But remember his initial question: "What must I do to have eternal life?" He leaves sad because his thinking has a fundamental, common flaw—the belief that he could do something to make himself perfect. The problem is that once you have a flaw, even if you repair it, at best you are something repaired, not perfected. None of us can be perfect enough to merit eternal life on our own.

Impossible for Man, Possible for God

In verse 23, Jesus turns to His disciples: "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God." They were astonished. He says 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 a rich person to enter the kingdom of God."

The genius of this is His choice of example. Almost everybody wants to be rich. We may not want to be Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos rich, but if we're honest, we all wish we had a little more. We sell lottery tickets like hotcakes, enter contests and sweepstakes, and sacrifice time with our families to amass as much as we can. It was no different in Jesus' time. The disciples have just watched the epitome of Jewish success walk away grieving, and Jesus tells them how impossible it is for such a man.

They grasp it perfectly, as we see in their question in verse 26: "Then who can be saved?" Notice they're still focusing on the person being saved, not on the Savior. That's the main issue. It's impossible to be good enough to be worth saving. No one can save themselves by their works—and if we're honest, we know that. We all have defects and deficiencies that make us fall short.

But in verse 27 Jesus says, "With man it is impossible, but not with God, because all things are possible with God." Galatians 3:23 says:

Before this faith came, we were confined under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith was revealed. The law then was our guardian until Christ, so that we could be justified by faith.

It is through faith, not through works. The law was the prison that confined us until the freedom of faith was revealed. The disciples' whole way of thinking was backwards. They kept looking inward to be good enough, never able to pull it off, when they should have been looking to Jesus, who was right there.

The Main Thing

This is the main thing: people cannot do enough to save themselves, ever. But God can and does save all who call upon Him. Following the law made this young man right in the eyes of his culture. It gave him status, comfort, and something to be proud of—but it left him with a blind spot. Jesus pointed it out, it hurt, and he left.

We don't get the end of this man's story. We don't know if he ended up following Jesus. That's God's business, not mine. My concern, and yours, should be: are we rightly following Jesus? Am I trying to earn my salvation by being good enough, or am I resting in the finished work of Jesus on the cross to pay my debt?

The Children and the Kingdom

In all three Gospels, this story comes directly after another event. Luke 18:15–17 says:

People were bringing infants to Jesus so that he might touch them. But when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. Jesus, however, invited them. He said, "Let the little children come to me. Don't stop them because the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."

The contrast highlights the issue Jesus is addressing. People brought their babies for Jesus to bless, and the disciples rebuked them, seeing it as a waste of His time—"get the kids out of here, we have important stuff to do." But Jesus saw it very differently. He invited the children and rebuked the disciples, saying the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.

How does an infant receive anything? With many years of observation, I can tell you babies do absolutely nothing to deserve or merit the attention they require. It sounds harsh, but hear me out. Do they have skills or talents that make up for the demands they place on those around them? No. They cry, coo, poop, wiggle, and sleep. They are completely dependent on others.

Our Value Comes From His Love

So what makes us go through this over and over? If it's four in the morning and you're sitting up with a baby, hang in there—it gets better. What makes us do it is our love for them. Love makes us go without sleep, keep listening to the crying, and sacrifice almost anything for them—even lay down our lives.

It is the love of God that gives us our value. Your value is not based on what you do. You could fail badly in two minutes and your value is not diminished in the sight of Christ. You could lead a thousand people to Christ in five minutes and your value is not increased in His sight. Our value is given to us by the love of God. The same way we love our children when they've done nothing to deserve it is the same way God loves us—and we are just as helpless as a baby when it comes to deserving our salvation.

Coming Like a Child

These two stories work together. God wants us to come to Him like infants, totally trusting in Him. But we want to come like rich young rulers, trusting in our own efforts and proud of our law-keeping. This leaves us with a fundamental question: Am I coming as a child, seeking nothing more than to be blessed in the presence of Jesus, or am I pridefully showing God my works as the source of my worth?

We are called to rest in the arms of Jesus for our salvation. Only then can we grow and mature in our faith. When we rest in His arms, secure in His love, we see the law for what it truly is—a teacher to learn from in honoring God and loving each other, not a stairway to heaven based on our performance. So instead of grieving over our shortcomings when they're pointed out, like the rich young ruler, we can grow in our relationship with Jesus like a child, using His word as the guide.

That's the question we have to answer. Are we going to show up like the rich young ruler, full of pride in what we've done? Or are we going to rest like an infant in the arms of our Savior, knowing that our value comes from His love for us?

Closing Prayer

Heavenly Father, as we close out this service and spend a little more time in worship together, I pray that You would remind us even more that our worth comes from Your love, and that we can trust and rely on You. That we don't have to base our worth on what we do, Lord, and we don't have to strive to attain salvation, but instead can enjoy growing in maturity and being closer to You. So Jesus, we give this time to You. We pray that You would help us grow in wisdom, in knowledge, in our love for You, and in our love for the people around us. We pray these things, Jesus, in Your name. Amen.