Matthew 19[:17]: “If you wish to enter into life, keep the Commandments.” Luke 10[:28]: “Do this, and you will live.”
Matthew 19[:17]: “If you wish to enter into life, keep the Commandments.” Luke 10[:28]: “Do this, and you will live.”
§ 23. Bellarmine goes on and seeks a second foundation of proof in the statements of Christ: “If you wish to enter into life, keep the Commandments” (Matt. 19[:17]) and “Do this, and you will live” (Luke 10[:28]). He says, “These are very obvious promises of eternal life, and yet they demand the very obvious condition of obedience.” To prevent anyone from being able to counter, saying that Christ spoke these words ironically to indicate that it was impossible for anyone to keep the divine Commandments, Bellarmine calls up four points:
(1) If the response was ironic, it would be so because it was being directed to the lawyers or Pharisees. But Christ addresses His apostles in the same way, not ironically but properly and seriously: “If you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them” [John 13:17]. “You are My friends if you do what I command you” [John 15:14]. “If you forgive people their sins, your Father in heaven will also forgive you” [Matt. 6:14]. (2) The man to whom the Lord said, “If you wish to enter into life, keep the Commandments” [Matt. 19:17], was neither a scribe nor a Pharisee but a rich young man, and he did not come to test Christ but to learn the way of salvation. (3) The man to whom the Lord said, “Do this, and you will live” [Luke 10:28], was a lawyer and came to the Lord intending to test Him. But this testing was not to trick the Lord but to investigate what the Lord was teaching in regard to the way of salvation. (4) When Christ was tempted slyly and deceitfully, He was not accustomed to responding ironically but in straightforward fashion.
We respond. (1) The passage in Matthew 19 will be dealt with in subsequent paragraphs when works of supererogation will be considered [§§ 97–98]. Here we point out that it has no connection with this argument. Christ did not speak ironically but seriously and directly. Therefore He was setting forth the proper doctrine of the Gospel. In fact, He intended to urge the Law and the perfect fulfillment of the Law to lead His listeners away from the false opinion of their own righteousness with which they had become fascinated, and toward the knowledge of their sin and their lack of power, and to stir up within them the desire for a physician with His demonstration of their ailment.
(2) That the young man who addresses Christ in Matthew 19 was swollen with an opinion of his own righteousness and perfect fulfillment of the Law is quite clear from the text, for he says, “All these have I kept from my youth” (v. [20]). In Luke 18:[18] he is called a “ruler,” which title is given to the Pharisee Nicodemus (John 3:1). It is obvious, then, that this young man was well versed in the school of the Pharisees and was associating the fulfillment of the divine Law with some sort of external obedience. That is why he shapes his question in this way: “What good thing shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” [Matt. 19:16]. Surely he wants to be saved through his own works. Thus Christ also says this particularly to convince him that he loves neither God nor man perfectly because he is unwilling to desert all his substance and give his goods to the poor on account of God’s specific command.
(3) That the lawyer mentioned in Luke 10 was puffed up with an opinion of his own righteousness is also clear from the text, for he asks, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (v. 25). In substance he is saying: “You call Your disciples blessed because they see and listen to You, and yet my colleagues and I hope for eternal life. God gave us the Law through Moses that He might thereby show us the way to eternal life. We have no doubt but that we are going to enter eternal life through our observance of the Law, or can You teach us a better and shorter way?” Therefore Christ sends him back to the Law. He says, “What is written in the Law?” (v. 26). After he recites the summary of the Law word for word, Christ adds: “You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live” (v. 28), which is to say: Better and more excellent works cannot be found than those that have been commanded in the Law. But a knowledge of the Law is insufficient. One must also keep it. Just any kind of obedience is insufficient. Rather, a perfect obedience, absolute in every detail, is required, and this is something the lawyer lacked, who “desired to justify himself ” [v. 29], that is, who “trusted in himself that he was righteous” (Luke 18:9). Christ proves this clearly from the fact that he did not know who his neighbor was, much less did he fulfill the Law perfectly by loving him. In fact, with the parable He teaches him the corruption of our nature introduced through sin, the powerlessness of the Law for salvation, and the benefit of the heavenly Samaritan to lead him to the true road to salvation.
(4) Therefore in this way Christ gave various responses on the basis of the diversity of questioners and listeners. When people who were enamored of an opinion of their own righteousness came to Him and asked what they should do and with what works they should gain eternal life for themselves, He then sent them back to the Law, since there is no rule of works more holy and perfect than the teaching of the Law, and by being perfectly obedient to this Law they certainly could acquire eternal life. Yet Christ does not declare on account of this that the young man or the lawyer or any other people of that ilk did or can fulfill the Law perfectly. Rather, He points this out that He may convince them that they cannot fulfill the Law perfectly. But when He was approached by people who were terrified by a sense of sin and were contrite, He did not send them back to the Law but rather set before them the true comforts of the Gospel, as the Gospel accounts demonstrate throughout. Indeed, such people were aware of their ailment, they desired a physician, they were looking for consolation while all the rest, touched with a spiritual madness, were dreaming that they were healthy.
(5) So clearly there is nothing to Bellarmine’s saying, “Christ did not return evil for good and therefore did not answer ironically but in a straightforward fashion.” Far be it from us that we attribute an ironic answer—that is, in the sense of being sly and deceitful—to Christ. Nor did this occur to Dr. Luther in his commentary on Galatians 3. Rather, he says the same thing we have shown before in detail, namely, that Christ wanted to call those who were enthralled by an opinion of their own righteousness back to the Law to bring them to a knowledge of their sin and of their weakness.
(6) But a little later [§§ 24, 27] we shall give an explanation of the sense and respect in which Christ demands the condition of good works and of new obedience from His apostles and therefore from all the reborn.