The Rich Young Ruler

S. Mark x. 17–31

The name of the young’ ruler has not been preserved. It was suppressed by the Evangelist, probably out of a tender consideration for his feelings. It is thought by some that there are sufficient coincidences between his history and that of Lazarus of Bethany to warrant a conjecture as to their identity. They are not, however, strong enough to justify any confident conclusion. All that is certain is that he was a man of wealth and social position, either president of some local synagogue, or a member of the Great Council of the Nation.

As our Lord left the house he ran to meet Him in a state of great excitement, and put to Him a question which he was eager to have solved: “Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?”

It is said that it was an altogether novel mode of addressing a Rabbi; if so, he could hardly have been surprised that it called forth some observation. He had used the title “good” on the impulse of the moment, and Jesus tried to awaken some serious reflection upon what it really involved. It was not a term to be tossed about as a mere courteous compliment, but one belonging to Him alone Who is absolutely perfect.

It has been strangely supposed that in His reply, “Why callest thou Me good? there is none good but One, that is, God,” He repudiated the title, and that it furnishes an argument against His Divinity. Christ cannot contradict Himself. Did He not say that He was One with the Father, and did not that unity imply that He shared His goodness as all His other attributes? Is it not a fact that the Jews even threatened to stone Him because He made Himself equal with God? The sole reason then for His appearing to disclaim the application of the title to Himself was an unwillingness to accept it when erroneously applied.

Then for the answer to his question the ruler was referred at once to the Commandments.

It was no doubt a great disappointment to him. He expected to be told of something new, of some grand heroic deed by which he might win the prize. The common duties of life he had fulfilled, according to the conventional standard; and he answered, not perhaps in a wholly self-righteous spirit, “All these have I observed from my youth.”

It was the custom of Rabbis to kiss their pupils in token of their approbation of their conduct, and it is possible that the same mark was given on this occasion, and led to the observation that Jesus “loved him.” At all events, it sets aside the idea that the above assertion was simply that of a self-righteous man. There was something deep down in his heart which attracted the Master, and made Him yearn to enlist him for ever in His personal service.

But such a step involved a total surrender of all earthly goods. He must leave everything if he would follow Him. The other disciples had made the sacrifice, and there was no reason why his case should be an exceptional one. True, it was harder for the rich than the poor, and so he felt it. “He was sad at that saying, and went away grieved.” He was not angry, and he offered no remonstrance, but a shadow fell upon his face, as when a thick and lowering cloud casts a sudden gloom over a sunny landscape. He did not dispute our Lord’s authority, for he was conscience-smitten, and found himself weak when he thought he was strong. He felt as a man feels when the physician makes an examination of his constitution, and reveals some concealed and unexpected mischief. The terrible awakening was followed by a momentary struggle, for it was hard to disobey, but harder still to yield to the advice; and he who had come to Jesus so full of eager hope and expectation went away with a heavy heart.

We are apt to judge him harshly, but many allowances ought to be made. He had been trained to look upon poverty as an evil to be deprecated above all human miseries, so dire in its consequences that a man was absolutely forbidden by the Oral Law to part with all his possessions and to have embraced beggary, such as was put before him, involved a sacrifice far beyond our imagination.

When he was gone, the Master turned to His disciples to draw a warning from what they had witnessed. We lose something of the true teaching by the familiar translation, “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!” It is not the equivalent of “scarcely,” but betrays the difficulty, the distress, the harassing, the irritations, which the rich man will experience on the journey. When His disciples were perplexed by what they heard, He reiterated the verdict almost in the same words, but prefaced it by a term of endearment to remind them that He could not be unduly harsh; and He drove it home by a proverbial saying that must have made His meaning unmistakable. It matters little whether He drew His illustration from a familiar object, some well-known wicket-gate called the “needle’s eye,” through which no beast of burden could possibly pass till it had laid down its load; or whether the expression was to be interpreted naturally as indicative of something superlatively difficult. It only added force to what had gone before, for it called forth the astonished exclamation from the bystanders: “Who then can be saved?”

The disciples had listened with eager attention to the conversation, and no doubt Peter spoke the thoughts of most of them when, with characteristic impulsiveness, he asked the Lord how far it applied to them. Had not they done just that which He counselled the young ruler to do? True, they had no “great possessions,” but such as they had they had willingly surrendered. They had “left all, and followed Him.” And Jesus, knowing out of the depths of His Own experience how great is the joy of self-sacrifice, how transcendently superior to everything else, assures them that they will have their reward both here and hereafter. Here in a vastly intensified appreciation of earthly enjoyments, finding new homes and new friends wherever they go, and seeing new beauty in the commonest things — in earth and air, and sky and sea. It was true they would meet “with persecutions,” but these would not mar their happiness, for by a mysterious law, understood by those alone who experienced them, they were accompanied by a “joy unspeakable and full of glory.”

And hereafter they would receive the fullest compensation, “an eternal weight of glory” in the life everlasting.

One further word of no less vital import before the conversation closed. It would humble them in the hour of earthly triumph and success: it would console them in trouble and depression, when the world turned its back upon them, and they should find themselves lightly esteemed of men. It was the assurance that hereafter human judgments would often be reversed by the Divine, “the first should be last, and the last first.”

It lends a sad significance to the utterance to remember that it was made in the hearing of Judas, and by One Who “knew from the beginning who should betray Him.”

Note: Dean Plumptre says that they” are such as to carry the evidence to a very high point of probability.” He refers to indication of riches in the precious spikenard which his sister lavished upon Jesus: to the fact that S. Mark leaves her unnamed, as he has left the ruler: and to the correspondence between the “one thing is needful,” and the “one thing thou lackest.” Cf. Com. on S. Matt. xix. x(>.

Note: Sadler quotes from the Commentary of a Bishop of the Church:” We must place this young man in our memories by the side of Judas, Ananias, and Sapphira.”

Note: Modern travellers have noticed that there are not infrequently two gateways in Oriental cities, one for beasts of burden, and one for foot-passengers, and that the name given to the latter is Es Summ el Kayut, The eye of the needle. Cf. Kitto, Pict. Bible. The figure of an elephant passing through a needle’s eye is sometimes used in the Talmud. Cf. Lightfoot in loco. A “cable” has been conjectured for “camel,” but the reading rests on no MS. authority, and would destroy the whole Oriental spirit of hyperbole, which belongs to the proverbial saying in its generally accepted form.

Note: In the catalogue, “or wife” is omitted in some of the oldest MSS. and versions, and “wives” are not mentioned in the list of those blessings which will be multiplied, so that there was no ground for the sneering jest of Julian about the multiplicity of wives which the Christian was taught to look for.