The Wrath Of The Young Man
THE WRATH OF THE YOUNG MAN
LUKE 18:24-30
What is the main preoccupation of our life?
The Lord looked with grief after the retreating figure. He was like so many, pleasant to know, upright in character, generous, no doubt, and a useful member of the community, but unwilling to follow Christ. The dominant power in the young man’s life was his wealth. The guarding, cherishing and maintaining of his fortune must have been the main preoccupation of his life. Had this not been the case, the Lord would not have recommended such drastic surgery.
His attitude must, in fact, have been unusually severe, for it puzzled the Twelve, especially when the strange saying about the camel and the needle was added. Much ingenuity has been expended on the phrase. Some suggest a gate into Jerusalem so small that it was called the “Needle’s Eye,” the access point in the hours of darkness when the main gates were shut. A camel could pass through only if its load were removed. There is no evidence that such a gate ever existed.
Another explanation is that the words for “cable” and “camel” were alike. The Greek for camel is kamelos, with a long “e” pronounced like “air” or “aye.” If the word for cable or ship’s hawser was kamilos, with a long “i,” confusion would be easy, since vowels in Greek were already undergoing the transformation which has made them all sound like “i” in modern Greek. This is an attractive explanation: “It is as hard for the wealthy to make a full committal of their life to God as it is to thread a cable through a needle.” The only doubt lies in the paucity of evidence for the existence of the word kamilos.
The simple explanation is Eastern hyperbole, or picturesque exaggeration. The West always finds such poetic language difficult. Even the Twelve found it disconcerting. The Lord’s enigmatic word in 18:27 means: “God sees things differently—sees possibilities lost on us, openings for grace which elude us.”
Notes 18:24: “entering the kingdom of God” is synonymous with “inheriting eternal life” (18:18), and “being saved” (18:26). 18:28: Gk., “abandoning our homes.” 18:30: “age to come—“the age which is being realized.”