U. The rich young ruler (18:18–30)
U. The rich young ruler (18:18–30)
18. Luke alone tells us that this man was a ruler. The term is a very general one and ‘denotes Roman and Jewish officials of all kinds’ (Gerhard Delling, who sees the rulers in this Gospel as a group of people distinguished from the elders, scribes and high priests32). We cannot be specific about his office and suggest for example that he was a ruler of the synagogue (in any case, as Matthew tells us that he was young, this is unlikely). But at least he was among the ruling classes. His greeting, Good Teacher, was not in use among the rabbis because it ascribed to man an attribute possessed only by God (according to Plummer there is not one example in the whole Talmud of a rabbi being addressed in this way; Fitzmyer finds one example, but it is dated in the fourth century). It was a piece of thoughtless flattery. He proceeded to ask what he must do to get eternal life. He assumed that eternal life must be earned and that some work he was not at present doing was required.
19. Jesus proceeds to show the shortcomings in the young man’s position. No one is good but God alone is not to be understood as a repudiation of the epithet good as applied to himself. If that was his meaning, Jesus would surely have said plainly that he was a sinner. Rather he was inviting the ruler to reflect on the meaning of his own words. What he has just said had implications for the Person of Jesus. If he was good and if only God was good, as all rabbinic teaching agreed (see on v. 18), then the ruler was saying something important about him. So far from repudiating the deity of Jesus as some hold, the question seems to invite the young man to reflect on it.
There is probably also a further depth of meaning in Jesus’ question (as scholars such as Caird and Ellis hold). Jesus invited the young man to reflect on what he was asking for himself. The eternal life he was seeking was life in the presence of the awe-ful purity of God. If he would only reflect on what that meant, he would surely see that he was totally unfitted for the blessing he sought. He would then cry out for mercy, not complacently seek reward. It is the tragedy of the young man that he did not see the drift of the comment, let alone respond to it.
20–21. The ruler has asked what he should do, so Jesus answers in terms of doing. He directs him to the commandments. If he will not reflect on the implications of the goodness of God, perhaps he will think of how he stands over against the demands of the law? When anyone takes seriously the requirements of the law he is on the way to coming to Christ (Gal. 3:24). Jesus quotes five commandments dealing with our duty to our fellowmen, but none with that to God. He will bring that out in another way. The young man sees nothing new in the commandments and is sure he has kept them ever since he was a boy. The rabbis held that the law could be kept in its entirety, and for example R. Eliezer could ask, ‘Akiba, have I neglected anything of the whole Torah?’ (Sanhedrin 101a). The young man’s claim was thus not outlandish, even if superficial. It showed that he had not thought deeply enough about what keeping the commandments meant.
22. The ruler had not reflected on what God’s goodness meant, nor had he measured himself against God’s commandments closely enough to see his failure to reach God’s standards. Now Jesus issued a challenge which showed that he came short of what was required. There is an implied call to faith, for the man could not do what Jesus asked without trusting him wholeheartedly. The call to give everything away was more than simply a dramatic challenge: it showed that the man had not understood the commandments he professed to have kept. The first of them enjoins the worship of one God. But when he was faced with the choice he found that he could not serve God if it meant parting with his money. It was not really God that had first place in his heart.
23–25. Luke does not actually say that the young man refused, only that he became sad. But the refusal to rise to the challenge is implied. Jesus went on to point out that it is hard for the rich to enter the kingdom. The affluent are always tempted to rely on things earthly and they do not find it easy to cast themselves on the mercy of God (contrast v. 13). The same is true, of course, of those whose riches are other than material, the intellectually outstanding, those rich in moral or artistic achievement and the like. Such always find it difficult to rely on God rather than on their own efforts. Attempts have been made to explain Jesus’ words about the camel and the eye of a needle in terms of a camel shuffling through a small postern gate, or by reading kamilon ‘cable’ for kamēlon ‘camel’. Such ‘explanations’ are misguided. They miss the point that Jesus is using a humorous illustration.
26–27. All this represents a reversal of accepted ideas. It was commonly held that riches were a sign of God’s blessing, so that the rich had the best opportunity of getting the good things of the next world as of this. So Jesus’ hearers ask, Then who can be saved? They do not ask, ‘What rich man?’ but, ‘who (of any kind)?’ If the rich with all their advantages can scarcely be saved, what hope is there for others? Jesus makes it clear that there is none. But what people cannot do God can. Salvation, for rich or for poor, is always a miracle of divine grace, always God’s gift. God is ‘not only more demanding than people cared to think, but also more generous than they dared to hope’ (Richardson, p. 31).
28–30. This leads Peter to say, we have left our homes and followed you. Some take Jesus’ reply as humorous: ‘Whimsically Jesus promises that those who have left home and family for the service of the kingdom will find themselves caring for a far bigger family than the one they left’ (Caird). Most, however, take the words to mean that God is not under obligation to anyone. If someone gives up anything for God he will be repaid manifold more in this time, to say nothing of eternal life in the coming age. It would be quite out of harmony with this whole passage to understand these words to mean that people may follow Jesus with a view to worldly benefits. If gain is their motive they have not begun to understand what discipleship means. They must renounce all worldly things. But that does not mean that God will bless them grudgingly. Where there is the genuine spirit of selfsacrifice, there God supplies all his servant needs (cf. Phil. 4:19). Ryle thinks we should take the words in a spiritual sense, for ‘The wisdom of God is sometimes pleased to allow a converted man to be a loser in temporal things by his conversion.’