[Note: This sermon expounds Matthew 19:16–30. Delivered 7 December 1980, Montreal.]
We continue our study in Matthew chapter 19, now at verses 16 to 30, the well-known passage about the rich young ruler. "Behold, one came up to him saying, 'Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?' And he said to him, 'Why do you ask me about what is good? One there is who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.' He said to him, 'Which commandments?' And Jesus said, 'You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' The young man said to him, 'All these I have observed; what do I still lack?' Jesus said to him, 'If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.' When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions."
A first point of translation needs clarifying. The RSV says "what good deed must I do?" but the word "deed" is not in the original. The young man is asking more broadly: what good — whether one thing or many — must I do? And in Mark and Luke, he addresses Jesus as "good teacher," asking, "Good teacher, what good must I do to inherit eternal life?" The two uses of the word "good" are significant and the Lord immediately notices them.
Now, there are two parts to the Lord's answer: first, "keep the commandments," and second, "come, follow me." The question is whether these are two independent alternatives, so that one can choose to keep the commandments and skip discipleship, or choose discipleship and skip the commandments. Are these two separate paths to the same destination? The answer matters enormously — one reading could suggest that moral living is enough without following Christ, or conversely that discipleship exempts a person from the requirements of the law. We shall see that they are not two alternatives but two parts of one inseparable answer.
The Lord's first move is to question the word "good" itself. When the young man asks about doing good, the Lord replies: "Why do you ask me about what is good? One there is who is good" — and in Mark and Luke: "There is no one good but God." The Lord is not being evasive. He is pressing the young man to think: do you understand what the word good means? If you want to do something good enough to inherit eternal life, you need to understand that the only absolute and correct standard of good is God himself. Only God is good. Therefore, any act that could be called good in God's eyes must conform to the character of God — which is holy love. Can you do a work of that quality? Can you live a life of that standard? That is what the question about doing good implies.
Then the Lord answers his own question: if you want to know what God is like, look at the commandments. The commandments reveal God's character — both his holiness ("you shall not kill, not commit adultery, not steal, not bear false witness") and his love ("you shall love your neighbor as yourself"). Keep the commandments and you will enter life. Now this seems to be at odds with the standard evangelical message that we enter life by believing in Jesus, not by keeping the law. The apparent contradiction disappears, as we shall see, once we understand what the Lord is doing.
A striking feature of the Lord's answer is what he leaves out. He does not quote any of the first three commandments — those dealing with our relationship to God. He quotes only from the commandments that govern human relationships. This is deliberate and instructive. We may profess great devotion to God — prayer three times a day, regular attendance at the temple, genuine reverence in our hearts — and the Lord does not doubt such a profession for a moment. But the acid test of whether that devotion is real shows in how we relate to other people. Your spiritual life is shown in your relationships. If you cannot love your brother or sister, if you cannot get on with your roommate or your spouse, then your profession of commitment to Christ is hollow. It does not stand up to examination. The human relationship commands are what the Lord presses, because it is there that self-deception is stripped away.
When the rich young ruler hears which commandments are in view, he says: "All these I have observed from my youth." This response reveals either profound ignorance of what these commands actually require, or deliberate dishonesty — which of the two we leave to God to judge. But consider: any person who has genuinely tried to love his neighbour as himself will know he has failed at every point. "All these I have observed from my youth" — how can anyone who understands the commandment say this? The Lord does not rebuke him sharply; he is patient. He sees that the young man does not yet grasp the depth of what is being required.
This leads us to an important question about the law itself. We have been taught as Christians that the law is abolished and we are saved by grace, not by law-keeping. Paul says plainly in Romans 7 that the law is good and spiritual — but we are sinful and weak, and therefore we cannot keep it. The problem is not with the law; the problem is with us. The law is not to be thrown away or abolished in its spiritual requirements. As the Lord says in Matthew 5:17, he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfil it. The ceremonial aspects of the law are fulfilled in Christ and thus set aside; but the spiritual requirements — holy love, expressed both toward God and toward the neighbour — remain in full force. Paul himself says in Romans 13 that loving the neighbour is the fulfilment of the whole law.
The real issue is that we cannot love the neighbour as ourselves in our own strength. And this is why we need more than the commandments — we need the enabling power that Christ provides. Paul writes in Romans 5:5 that "God has shed his love into our hearts." That is enabling grace — grace that enables us to do what we cannot do on our own. The law shows us what we must become; grace provides the power to become it. These are not two alternative paths — they are two dimensions of one answer.
[Continues in Part B]
# What Good Must I Do to Inherit Eternal Life? — Matthew 19:16–30 (Part B) — Perfect as God Is Perfect; Discipleship as Transformation
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on Matthew 19:16–30, continuing directly from Part A. Delivered 7 December 1980, Montreal.]
The Lord, seeing that the rich young ruler still does not understand, changes his approach. He does not say: "You ignorant man — don't you see what these commandments require?" He is patient. He simply reframes the answer in new language, saying in verse 21: "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess, give to the poor, and come, follow me." Many readers assume that "perfect" here refers to a higher stage — that keeping the commandments is the basic level, and discipleship is the advanced level for those who want to go further. This is a widespread misreading.
The Lord himself has already defined what "good" means in this conversation: only God is good. The parallel passages in Mark and Luke add: "There is none good but God." Now what is the difference between "good" and "perfect"? In the way the Lord uses these words, there is none. Both mean: like God. To become good is to become like God, because only God is good. To become perfect is equally to become like God, because only God is perfect. This is exactly what the Lord states in Matthew 5:48: "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." And the parallel in Luke 6 makes it even clearer — the equivalent statement in Luke is "be merciful as your Father is merciful." To be merciful is to be perfect; to be perfect is to be good; all three mean: be like God. The Lord has therefore not raised the bar; he has simply used a different word to explain the same bar, hoping that where "good" did not penetrate, "perfect" might.
If the young man had truly observed all the commandments from his youth as he claimed, he would already be perfect — there would be nothing left to add. The very fact that the Lord says "if you would be perfect, do this other thing" shows that the commandments, if genuinely kept, and discipleship are really one answer, not two stages. The young man does not understand the commandments he claims to have kept. He needs to follow Christ precisely because following Christ is how one comes to fulfil the law, through transformation.
"Come, follow me" — this is the Lord's final answer to the question of what one must do to inherit eternal life. Why? Because to inherit eternal life you must become like God, and the only way to become like God is through fellowship with the one who is God. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3:18, we are "being transformed from one degree of glory to another" as we behold the Lord with unveiled face. Discipleship is that process. It is not a course for advanced Christians; it is the definition of what a Christian is. In the New Testament there is no such category as "ordinary Christian who is not a disciple." Disciple and Christian are the same word. If you are a true Christian in the biblical sense, you are a disciple — called to follow, to be shaped by, and to be conformed to the image of Christ.
This is Paul's statement in Romans 8:29–30: those whom God foreknew he predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. This is the whole point. God's purpose for every person he calls is transformation — not just forgiveness, though forgiveness is the glorious beginning, the clearing away of all the accumulated mess so that a clean foundation exists on which to build something new and beautiful. But God is not calling us simply to wait around, forgiven, until we die and get to heaven. He is calling us to be the light of the world — to display his character in this world. And we cannot be light unless we are like him, and we cannot be like him except through the fellowship of discipleship.
This also means that there are not two parallel roads to eternal life from which you may choose the one that suits you best. The commandments and discipleship are not competitors; they are the same answer stated twice. We are not saved by keeping the commandments, because we cannot keep them in our own strength. We are saved by grace, yes — but that grace is the enabling power that makes it possible to live the life the commandments require. As Paul says, Christ's blood cleanses our past sins; the Holy Spirit enables us to live the righteousness the law demands going forward. Both are necessary; neither replaces the other.
The rich young ruler went away sorrowful because he had great possessions. He was earnest — he had knelt before the Lord — but his obedience was conditional. When the condition included his wealth, he could not proceed. How far are you prepared to go? The Lord's answer to the question of eternal life is as simple as it is demanding: follow me. I will make you the kind of person who shows forth God's light in this world. He that has seen me has seen the Father, and as we look at him with unveiled face, we are changed into the same image. That is the Christian life. That is the answer.
Let us be quiet before God in prayer.