Our Good Things

In the story of the Rich Man in Mark 10: 17-27, the rich man asked, “What should I do to get eternal life?”  After quoting the second half of the Ten Commandments, the rich man said, “Teacher, I’ve obeyed all these commandments since was a child.” In verse 21, Mark said, “Jesus felt genuine love for this man as he looked at him. ‘You lack only one thing,’ he told him. ‘Go and sell all you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’”

Jesus reveals two levels of religious commitment. The first level is one’s own religiosity. We obey the laws and avoid all sin. It sounds rigid. But it’s easy to follow. It doesn’t lead to life, though. It’s dead orthodoxy. The second level is one’s commitment to Jesus himself. One’s agenda must be put aside, for He has a new priority implanted in us. He always wants us to go deeper. Perhaps, in the beginning of faith, the simple truth “obey all laws and avoid all sin” works for a while. As time goes by, Christian faith is not that linear. Jesus raises the bar a bit, saying “go, sell, come, and follow.” What Jesus is saying is that what you have becomes your god. That’s why Jesus doesn’t quote the first half of the Ten Commandments. You may live an ethical life, but you are far from getting into eternal life. “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!” (10:25) We can’t hold on to our god. And at the same time we want to enter the Kingdom of God. Not only do we “obey and avoid,” but also “go, sell, come, and follow.”

Tim Keller said:

In other words Jesus says: “If you want to follow me and to have eternal life, of course you shouldn’t commit adultery; you shouldn’t defraud people or murder them. You shouldn’t do bad things. But if you just repent of doing bad things, all it will do is make you a religious person. If you want eternal life, if you want intimacy with God, if you want to get over that nagging sense that there’s still something missing, if you can’t find a way to get the stain out, then you have to change how you relate to your gifts and your successes. You have to repent of how you’ve been using your good things.” [King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus (New York: Dutton, 2011), p. 131.]