CHRIST AND THE RICH YOUNG RULER.
By John H. Thomas
A WORD fitly spoken is like apples of gold in baskets of silver. A weight of wealth lies in the words of the divine Teacher; and as one digs for hidden treasures, so should we study them profoundly if we would possess all the lessons taught in them. Here one comes to the Lord with the great question of life, which all human wisdom has confessed to be unanswerable, Immortality, how can we assure ourselves of it? The inquirer is in dead earnest; he comes running, and in his eagerness, although he belongs to the ruling class, he kneels in the dust of the highway before the attending throng, to the Galilean Teacher whom Pharisees deride as untaught; he was a young man with all the ardor of youth; he was a worthy man, for our Lord beholding him loved him; he was a wealthy man and had great possessions. Everything seemed to join to claim the Saviour's attention. And he to whom the young ruler knelt, how shall we describe him? He, too, was a young man and a ruler. Though his sovereignty was veiled in humility, he was King of kings and Lord of lords. More than ten legions of angels, even then, though unseen, waited upon his bidding. He was rich, too; all the gold and the silver were his, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. But though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, that we through his poverty might become rich. He had foregone all his wealth that the poor might have the gospel preached to them. "Good Master!" was the respectful salutation of the young ruler. What a strange reply he received from the Lord: "Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God." When an inquirer comes asking, What shall I do to be saved? how tenderly we receive him, how gladly and lovingly we instruct him! Why this strange rebuff from the lips of divine love? What is its meaning? It was to startle him into thought as to something that must come before the answer to his question. It means that to be blest in coming to Christ we must first settle in our minds what his character is. What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is he? Long before this Jesus had said, in proof of his character as the Messiah: "The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me." If the proof was sufficient then, it had grown tenfold stronger now by repetition. The time had come for confessing him to be the Christ, even if rulers should cast the confessor out of the synagogue. If he is only a good master, as the Jews loved to call Gamaliel and Hillel and Shammai, then there is no answer to the inquirer but to refer him to the law. The dilemma our Lord would put the young man in is this: there is none good but One; all men are sinners, great teachers as well as others; either Jesus is not good, a sinner like the rest, or he is God. Whatever the young man understood, we must read our Lord's answer in the light of the cross, which was already casting its deep shadow athwart his pathway, that cross the crown of his life and climax of his work, which is explainable only in his bearing thereon the sin of the world. And reading his words in its light, Jesus claims absolute Godhead when he says, "There is none good but One, that is, God." If we come to him as such, the burden of sin will fall from our shoulders as the load fell from Christian when, hastening from the City of Destruction, he came in sight of the cross. Him to know aright is eternal life.501Notice now the divine wisdom shown in dealing with the young man. It may have been omniscience that revealed to our Lord the fact that the young man was very rich. Certainly it was divine knowledge that enabled him to discern his besetting sin, and, reading his heart, to probe it as the surgeon does the wound. How a word from Jesus or a look goes straight to the heart! Our Lord next discloses to us the self-righteous man. His question is, What good thing shall I do? Luther makes the comment, "Nicht von Thun und Lassen sondern von Werden," not doing and leaving undone but being. He wanted, perhaps, to use a part of his superfluous wealth to buy immortality. The Jews held one to be worthy of divine favor because "he loveth our nation and hath built us a synagogue." Perhaps he would become an Essene, in order by works of supererogation to establish a claim to eternal life, or he may have thought the Teacher who said he came to fulfill the law would have him devote his remaining years to the study of the Thorah. Jesus, when asked at another time, What shall we do that we might work the works of God, answered directly, This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom he hath sent. This self-righteous man needs a different treatment. Jesus, reading his heart, sees he trusts to be saved by obedience. He must be shown his sinfulness so as to lead him to abandon this ground of hope, and our Lord, taking him on his own ground, refers him to the commandments, and says, in substance, This do and thou shalt live. The young ruler is a self-deceived man. The calm assurance of his answer takes away our breath. "All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?" The apostle Paul wished for perfection, aimed at it, but in his old age, after years of effort and growth, counted not himself to have apprehended it. This young man has attained it. And like all professing perfection, is sadly self-deceived. He had not attended to the divine exposition of the law in the Sermon on the Mount. He had not learned how exceeding broad it is; that to say to our brother, Thou fool! is to break the sixth commandment; that to look upon a woman with desire is to break the seventh commandment; that the law requires us to be perfect, as God in Heaven is perfect. And yet, the mass of men trust now to be saved by their own merits. The common saying is, I guess if I do about as well as I can, I'll get through. Ah! how sin blinds the eyes of the judgment! In our Lord's reply this self-complacency is ruthlessly torn away: One thing thou lackest: If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in Heaven; and come take up the cross and follow me. Jesus had quoted the commandments; did he mean to add an eleventh? After obeying the law, is renunciation of wealth necessary to obtain eternal life? Is voluntary poverty necessary to perfection? No; such a meaning would contradict all other scriptures. We may notice that our Lord, in dealing with the young man, only quoted the second table of the law. Why? Because self-righteous men wholly ignore the first table—never give a thought to the Lord's sovereignty and his claims upon them for obedience, worship, service. They think of perfection only in their relation to men. In enjoining poverty upon him our Lord did not give a new commandment; but he discovered his failure to keep the first commandment of all, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart." His possessions occupied a place before God in the young man's heart. Even now, with his danger revealed to him, he cannot give up mammon as his God. He had come earnest, ardent, eager, with his great question. He goes away grieved and sad with the divine answer. How solemn the apothegm of the evangelist Luke upon the scene: "He was very sorrowful, for he was very rich"! We are told no more of the rich young ruler with his question. The natural curiosity to learn whether our Lord's faithful dealing with his soul bore fruit unto eternal life, we must lay aside, with much else, to await the wider knowledge of a better life. The purpose of revelation is not to give a full biography of men, but a full answer to the young ruler's question; not to satisfy our curiosity, but to teach us how to be saved from the consequences of sin. Of unspeakable importance to sinful man are the lessons our Lord would teach here. And they are these: That by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified; that Christ, the divine Teacher, claims divine authority, demands divine reverence. Once more, the law is a school-master to teach the necessity of salvation through grace alone and to bring us to Christ.—Rev. John H. Thomas, in Interior.