Another Look at the Rich Young Ruler
Mark 10:17-22
This story has inspired or compelled thousands if not
millions of people over the centuries to sell all their possessions and to give
them to the poor, or at least feel really guilty over their wealth. Why?
Because this is what Jesus told the rich young ruler to do. But is this what Jesus is telling us to do?
This story occurs in the three synoptic gospels (Matthew,
Mark, and Luke). Matthew is the only one
who said that he was young, and Luke was the only one who said he was a ruler.
The man asked Jesus what he had to do to inherit eternal
life. This expression does not occur in
Mark prior to this and only occurs in the Old Testament in one place: Daniel 12 , which speaks of the end
of the world as we know it. “Everyone who is found written in the book will be delivered. Many of those who sleep in the dust of
the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt.” I believe the reader of Mark can assume that
this passage motivated this man to seek this everlasting life.
Jesus’ answer is strange for most Christians. Jesus refers the man to the Old Testament
law, which He quotes a portion of. The man then replies that he has kept all
these things from his youth up. But look
again at the commandments that Jesus quoted.
The ones in capital letters are direct quotes. Then there is the one command, Do not
defraud, in small letters. That means
that Jesus is not quoting the Old Testament.
The commandments that Jesus quoted are from the second part
of the Ten Commandments, and one is missing.
Thou shalt not covet. Jesus
essentially substituted the one for the other.
But why?
Coveting is an act of the heart. Nobody can see the coveting. But the coveting is the motive for all kinds
of actions that can be taken to acquire the things that are coveted, like
defrauding.
When the man heard Jesus starting to rattle off the
commandments, he knew what He would say next, so he said that he had kept them
all without actually listening to what Jesus was saying. I believe Jesus was saying that basically
this man got rich by defrauding.
Now defrauding sounds pretty crooked. But people who know and look at the law very
carefully often can find things that are quite legal, even though they are
utterly lacking in compassion or love for one’s neighbor. People can fall into hard times and get
behind on their mortgage payments. Does
the lender seize the property and sell it to someone else, keeping all the
equity that has been built up? Or does
the lender work with the debtor to see that the debtor can keep possession of
the house?
I believe that the rich young ruler became rich though
entirely legal means, but other people were not as shrewd as he was, so he was
able to profit at their expense over and over again.
The word ‘saddened’ that describes his reaction to Jesus’
words is not a common word, and I would question the accuracy of this
translation in this passage. It seems
the only reason it is translated as ‘saddened’ here is that the word is used in
Matthew 16 to describe
weather, and there it is translated as ‘gloomy,’ which I think is questionable. I don’t think we would describe the weather
prior to a major storm as gloomy. More
like ‘threatening’ to me.
This exact phrase is used three times in the Old Testament
to mean ‘appalled at,’ translating a Hebrew expression with a clear
meaning. The corresponding adjective is
translated as ‘indignant’ another time. The
other two occurrences have no bearing here.
The man was not saddened; he was upset, to put it mildly.
When Jesus told him that he lacked one thing, it was not his
love of wealth that He was targeting. I
believe it was his winner-take-all approach to others that focused on himself
to the exclusion of others. When he was
told to give his wealth to the poor, I think he was stunned. Why these were the very people who deserved
to be poor, because they were not as financially astute as he was! This is like winning the championship and
then being told to give the trophy and all the prize and product endorsement
money to the losers. Jesus’ words seemed
totally unfair and wrong to him. In his
mind, he hadn’t done anything wrong.
The word translated ‘grieving’ can also be understood as “to cause
severe mental or emotional distress, vex,
irritate, offend, insult.”
He was not grieving
so much as feeling insulted. He had kept
the law with all diligence from his youth, and now it was like all his
scrupulousness was considered as nothing.
He wanted to know what to do to gain eternal life and found out that
everything he had done so far in his life meant essentially nothing. Think of an employee expecting a good review
at work and a promotion only to see something far less worthy receive the
promotion and the employee being let go for something that he thinks is totally
unfounded.
So if the issue here
was just wealth and apparently this man’s attachment to it, I would have expected
that such a universal, all-encompassing rejection of wealth would have had a
much greater emphasis in the Bible.
After Pentecost and
the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the people freely gave up their wealth for
the common good of the community. I am
not so sure that we would have the same result if people were just told to do
this.
The very next verse
after this story seems to be at first glance a condemnation of wealth in
general.
Hard, but not impossible.
Wealth, like authority, gives a
power that can be very hard to handle properly, providing temptations that many
people find hard to resist.
William Barclay has some interesting remarks about wealth in
this context:
No
one ever saw the dangers of prosperity and of material things more clearly than
Jesus did. What are these dangers?
(i)
Material possessions tend to fix a man's heart to this world. He has so large a
stake in it, he has so great an interest in it, that it is difficult for him to
think beyond it, and it is specially difficult for him to contemplate leaving
it. Dr. Johnson was once shown round a famous castle and its lovely grounds.
After he had seen it all, he turned to his friends and said, "These are
the things that make it difficult to die." The danger of possessions is
that they fix a man's thoughts and interests to this world.
(ii)
If a man's main interest is in material possessions it tends to make him think
of everything in terms of price. A hill shepherd's wife wrote a most
interesting letter to a newspaper. Her children had been brought up in the
loneliness of the hills. They were simple and unsophisticated. Then her husband
got a position in a town and the children were introduced to the town. They
changed very considerably—and they changed for the worse. The last paragraph of
her letter read—"Which is preferable for a child's upbringing—a lack of
worldliness, but with better manners and sincere and simple thoughts, or worldliness
and its present-day habit of knowing the price of everything and the true value
of nothing?"
If
a man's main interest is in material things, he will think in terms, of price
and not in terms of value. He will think in terms of what money can get. And he
may well forget that there are values in this world far beyond money, that
there are things which have no price, and that there are precious things that
money cannot buy. It is fatal when a man begins to think that everything worth
having has a money price.
(iii)
Jesus would have said that the possession of material things is two things.
(a)
It is an acid test of a man. For a hundred men who can stand adversity only one
can stand prosperity. Prosperity can so very easily make a man arrogant, proud,
self-satisfied, worldly. It takes a really big and good man to bear it
worthily.
(b)
It is a responsibility. A man will always be judged by two standards how he got
his possessions and how he uses them. The more he has, the greater the
responsibility that rests upon him. Will he use what he has selfishly or
generously? Will he use it as if he had undisputed possession of it, or
remembering that he holds it in stewardship from God.
The
reaction of the disciples was that, if what Jesus was saying was true, to be
saved at all was well-nigh impossible. Then Jesus stated the whole doctrine of
salvation in a nutshell. "If," he said, "salvation depended on a
man's own efforts it would be impossible for anyone. But salvation is the gift
of God and all things are possible to him." The man who trusts in himself
and in his possessions can never be saved. The man who trusts in the saving
power and the redeeming love of God can enter freely into salvation. This is
the thought that Jesus stated. This is the thought that Paul wrote in letter
after letter. And this is the thought which is still for us the very foundation
of the Christian faith.[1]
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