What Must I Do to Receive Eternal Life?
Introduction: Anyone who takes seriously the responsibility of sharing his faith with unbelievers knows that one of the most important aspects of evangelism is finding an opening to bring the Gospel into a conversation. Last Tuesday I was returning from a short trip to Minneapolis and happened to be seated next to a man on his way to Fort Lauderdale for business. We struck up a conversation, first about the weather (that’s always a good topic in Minneapolis in January), then family (he had five kids under eight, so there was lots to talk about there), and finally business.
Eventually he asked why I was in Minneapolis. I’ve learned that if I say I’m a pastor it often ends the conversation prematurely, so I told him I was on denominational business. That seemed less threatening to him, and before long he was telling me about the fact that his wife was a Catholic but he was still searching. For an hour and a half I looked for a way to steer the conversation from church to Christ, but the closest I could get in the time allowed was to talk about the reliability and authority of the Bible. He promised to read a sermon on our web site entitled, “I Believe the Bible.”
But once in a great while I meet someone who has been what I call “pre-evangelized.” Either because of seeds planted by others or due to certain events in his life, he is like a piece of ripe fruit that’s just ready to drop. He may simply say, “How can I be saved?” or “How can I be sure I’m going to heaven?” Then all I need to do is to share the Four Spiritual Laws or the Roman Road and they’re ready to pray a sinner’s prayer.
In His ministry Jesus met many people like the man on the airplane. For example, the woman at the well was one with whom He had to steer the conversation, using the everyday circumstances in her life to get her to think about spiritual issues. Nicodemus is another example. But in our Scripture reading today we come across one of those rare incidents when a seeker just pops the question to Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Talk about an opening!
You know, this happened once to the Apostle Paul also, when the Philippian jailer fell down trembling and asked, “What must I do to be saved?” But here is the interesting thing. Paul’s answer hit the bull’s-eye: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved” (Acts 16:30-31). How can you beat that for brevity and theological accuracy? But Jesus’ response in our text today violates all the rules I learned in Bible College, in seminary, in Evangelism Explosion, in Campus Crusade, and in the Billy Graham School of Evangelism. Jesus apparently would have flunked Evangelism 101. It’s actually kind of embarrassing.
The story I’m referring to is found beginning in Luke 18:18, but we’re going to pick up our reading a few verses earlier. In your Bible there are probably three different headings from verse 15-34, indicating that these are three separate incidents. But I want to suggest that while they may be three separate incidents, they are not unrelated. Luke selected events from the life of Christ and put them in a certain order for a reason. All three of these sections seem to be concerned with the question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Luke 18:15-34:
People were also bringing babies to Jesus to have him touch them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”
A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good–except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.'”
“All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said.
When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth. Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved?”
Jesus replied, “What is impossible with men is possible with God.”
Peter said to him, “We have left all we had to follow you!”
“I tell you the truth,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life.”
Jesus took the Twelve aside and told them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be handed over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again.”
The disciples did not understand any of this. Its meaning was hidden from them, and they did not know what he was talking about.
The first point Luke makes is that if I am to inherit eternal life, …
I must come to Jesus with the heart of a child.
Parents were bringing their little children, their infants, to Jesus to have him touch them and bless them. This is something rabbis did routinely, and since Jesus is recognized by many as a rabbi with an unusual sensitivity to God, it is not surprising that people would want Him to bless them. The disciples, however, are not sympathetic. Their leader is a busy man. He’s on His way to Jerusalem, He has speeches to deliver, and He has enemies to confound. Besides, little children are a nuisance. Let Jesus spend His time where it can produce the most good—teaching adults who can then teach their own children.
But Jesus will have none of it. He calls the children to Him and rebukes His disciples. “Don’t hinder the children,” He says, “for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” Now some would extrapolate from this brief account that Jesus was proclaiming little children full-fledged members of God’s family, which some do today when they baptize them and suggest that their original sin is just washed away. But I think that is going way beyond the text. Jesus is using a simile—teaching His disciples about saving faith by reference to the common characteristics of children. Notice the words “such as” and “like.” They are comparative words. The kingdom of God belongs to people who are child-like.
Well, what exactly is it about children that believers should emulate? Children show us the way in their utter dependence, their unworldliness, their openness, and in the completeness of their trust.[i]
Sadly, few of the world’s great religious teachers have been greatly concerned with children. But Jesus is different. We need no more than this passage to justify the major commitment our church has made to Children’s Ministries. Frankly, nothing we do is more important. Children are not an inconvenience; they are the future church. The foundation we are helping parents lay through Sunday School, Junior Worship, AWANA, and Passport is invaluable as these children become teenagers and begin to make their life choices. Most people who follow Christ begin that spiritual journey when they are children.
If I want to inherit eternal life, I must come to Jesus with the heart of a child. Second, …
I must relinquish the “gods” in my life and trust God alone.
The story of the rich young ruler, repeated in each of the first three Gospels, is surely one of the most fascinating encounters of Jesus’ ministry. The man is a ruler, which is a broad term for a person of significant authority and influence. Matthew adds that he is young, and Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell us he is very rich. He reminds us of one of the young bucks who has made a fortune in the computer industry by age 30 and, with billions in his portfolio, begins to ask, “Is this all there is?”
But the question is not being asked out of intellectual curiosity or philosophical amusement. He is in dead earnest. Mark tells us he runs to Jesus and falls on his knees in desperation. The question on his lips is one that anyone who regularly shares his faith loves to hear: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” What an opening!
But in His response to the rich young ruler’s question, …
Jesus violates some of our cardinal rules of evangelism.
I hope you see that little word, “our,” which I just used. I don’t mean to imply that Jesus violates any of God’s rules here—He just doesn’t do it like we would do it. And, of course, we would do well to learn from this case that evangelism does not lend itself to hard and fast formulas. We should be sensitive to every individual’s unique needs. First, …
He allows Himself to get sidetracked on semantic issues.
The ruler has addressed Jesus as “Good teacher,” and He answers in verse 19: “Why do you call me good? No one is good—except God alone.” Jesus, what are you doing? Don’t get into a debate with him about how he addresses you. Focus on his question. He wants to know how to be saved. Strike while the iron is hot.
I remember in Evangelism 101, I was warned that people will try to put up smokescreens when you talk to them about the Lord. “Where did Cain get his wife?” “What about the heathen?” “Why are there so many abominations, I mean denominations?” Always we were advised, “Tell them that’s a good question and you’ll be glad to talk about it later. But bring them back to the issue of salvation.” Here the ruler starts at the issue of salvation and Jesus seems to be the one putting up the smokescreen.
That’s only what appears on the surface, however. The address “Good teacher,” is highly unusual. Scholars tells us there is not a single example in the whole of the Talmud of a rabbi being addressed this way, because it ascribes to man an attribute which they believed was possessed only by God. The ruler is either using thoughtless flattery or he is recognizing the uniqueness of Jesus. If the latter, Jesus wants him to think carefully about the implications. If he really means to attribute to Jesus the divine attribute of goodness, then he’d better be ready to listen to and obey what He has to say.
OK, the semantic diversion is over. No real harm done. But now it’s time for Jesus to tell him how to be saved, that it’s by grace through faith. But look at what He does next:
He focuses on law rather than grace and faith. He says to the ruler, “You know the commandments: Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.” Good grief, Jesus, why tell him that? I learned when I was still a child that the law can’t save a person; it can only condemn him. In fact, it was drilled into my head that the Ten Commandments were God’s instructions about how to live a long happy life, not how to gain eternal life. I was told that a person could break all the Commandments and so long as he truly repented could still enjoy eternal life. (Now I wasn’t encouraged to break them, mind you; in fact, I was warned that there would be lasting scars for breaking them; but never was I told that the keeping of them had anything to do with inheriting eternal life). Yet here Jesus seems to be saying to this man, “You want to know what to do in order to inherit eternal life? I’ll tell you what to do—obey the Law.”
But once again we are only looking at the surface. Does Jesus really believe that keeping the Law can save this man? Of course not. He has just said that “No one is good except God alone.” In other words, no one keeps God’s law fully. What He is trying to do is to get this man to acknowledge his spiritual bankruptcy and cast himself on the mercy of God. But instead, the man claims he has kept the law since he was a boy!
Now I don’t know if he’s a liar or simply deluded. But what he clearly fails to understand is that the Law goes much deeper than just outward behavior. Did you notice that the five Commandments Jesus reiterates are from the second half of the Decalogue, which deals with horizontal, human relationships, and are probably easier to keep than the first half? But even with these Commandments, there is a deeper meaning beyond what is obvious. Elsewhere Jesus makes it clear that adultery is not just committed through an illicit physical relationship; it can also be committed in the mind through lust. Hatred is a kind of murder. Exaggeration is a kind of lying. Does this young man realize that the moral law of God is demanding and all-pervasive?
Furthermore, the Law is a unit. Even if he had somehow kept the laws governing horizontal relationships, what about the vertical ones? The very first Commandment says, “You shall have no other gods before me.” This is not merely a prohibition against bowing down to idols; it’s about God being first in our lives. He must take precedence over every other loyalty. Jesus is trying to get this man to realize that while he lays claim to good religious behavior, there is something in his life that is clearly more important to him than God. Unless he is willing to let go of this, he can never inherit eternal life.
In verse 22 Jesus responds to the man’s claim to have kept the Law with these words, “You still lack one thing.” Finally, Jesus is going to deal with the main thing. At last he’s going to tell him to believe in Him so that his sins can be forgiven. Right? Wrong.
He gives the ruler something to achieve rather than something to believe. He says, “Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” What in the world is Jesus doing here? Give everything to the poor and God will give you eternal life? Is this the formula for salvation? For this particular man, yes. If he could do this, he could be saved.
What do you mean, Pastor? Jesus has identified an issue in this man’s life that is an insurmountable roadblock. Had Jesus simply come to him and said, “Believe, and you will be saved,” he would have jumped on the bandwagon, but that issue would have remained unresolved. Had Jesus told him to tithe his wealth or even give half of it away, I strongly suspect he would have readily agreed. But for this man, to whom money is a god, giving it all away is beyond question. He cannot; he will not.
Friends, money itself is not the real issue here. If you look in the very next chapter you find a man named Zacchaeus who also had a problem with money. He gave away a lot of it, but not all of it. He apparently remained a wealthy man, yet Jesus said about him, “Today salvation has come to this house.” Abraham, David, and Solomon were all extremely wealthy. They each could have probably bought and sold this rich young ruler several times, yet God never told them to sell everything and give to the poor. The reason Jesus demands it of this man is that He knows his heart, and He knows the man is a money-lover and a money-server. Back in chapter 16 Jesus told the parable of the Shrewd Manager. Here’s how He summarizes in verse 13: “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”
Jesus does not just tell the rich young ruler to sell everything and give to the poor. He also says, “Then come, follow me.” Following Him is the bottom line, but that will never happen unless the god of wealth is dethroned. Brad Harper, our former Associate Pastor and now Pastor of Cornerstone EFC in Webster Groves, shared with me an interesting thought this past week. He suggested that we may need to pay a little more attention to Jesus and a little less attention to Paul on this crucial issue of how to inherit eternal life. Now that sounds like heresy, and since Brad is the source of it, no surprise. Just kidding! Frankly, I think he may be on to something.
Please don’t misunderstand. He and I both believe that the words of Jesus and the words of Paul are equally inspired and accurate. Neither of us believes there is any real contradiction between them. But it is obvious that much of what Paul wrote on the doctrine of salvation was written against the backdrop of strident legalism. It was his task to stop the pendulum that in the early church was swinging toward an emphasis on religious performance, and bring it back to the Cross and grace and faith.
The danger (and many have fallen into it) of listening to Paul alone is that we may come to think that if we simply say, “I believe that Jesus was the Son of God who died on the cross to forgive my sins,” then we’re saved. To such thinking our Lord’s brother, James, also inspired by God, writes, “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that — and shudder.” (James 2:19) But they’re doomed to hell.
When we listen to Jesus talk about eternal life, we find that He focuses on two words more than anything else—follow me. Certainly that entails a recognition that He is the Savior of the world, having died for our sins and been raised from the dead. But it entails more than that. It involves entrusting ourselves fully to Him as Lord. This rich young ruler cannot be saved if he is not willing to let go of that to which he is clinging and is not willing instead to latch onto Jesus. Is he willing?
In verse 23 we read that when the rich young ruler heard what Jesus said, “he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth.” Now Jesus has him where he wants him! He has created an emotional crisis in the man’s life, and surely now He will press home the invitation. Surely now he will tell him that God loves him and has a wonderful plan for his life. Surely now he will tell him that He was just kidding about selling everything—a generous contribution to the Building Fund will be sufficient. But once again Jesus violates a cardinal rule of evangelism:
He fails to close the deal. Look at it in verse 24: “Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
The salesman who cannot close the deal is generally a hungry salesman. You can have the best product in the world; you can have the best service; and you can have the best pitch. But if you don’t know how to bring the client to the point of decision, you won’t sell much. The same principle is taught in Evangelism 101. I was told, “Never share the gospel without asking the person if he wants to pray to receive Christ. Never preach a sermon without an invitation at the end. Otherwise you might let someone off the hook who is on the verge of believing.”
But what does Jesus do? He looks at the man (Mark adds that He looked at him and loved him) and observes, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God!” and He lets the man go. But is that wrong? Jesus knows this man’s heart. He knows the man is unwilling to switch his allegiance from money to God. There is no point in further emotional appeals.
But God may still be talking to us. He may desire to press home the truth of this man’s story so that we might believe and follow Him. So let’s talk a little further about what Jesus means when he says it’s hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God and when He uses the humorous illustration of a camel trying to go through the eye of a needle. I think He means that worldly wealth has a dulling effect on our spiritual lives. The more we accumulate coins on which is stamped “In God we trust,” the more difficult it is for us to trust in God. We find that wealth can buy our daily bread, wealth can purchase medical healing, wealth can provide for our future, wealth can eliminate our enemies, wealth can get us justice. What do we need God for?
And friends, as I’ve tried to emphasize each time we have come across one of Luke’s frequent references to worldly wealth, the issue is more “How much do I want?” than “How much do I have?” Some lovers of money happen to be very poor. On the other hand, some very rich people are poor in spirit and walk humbly before God. Do not assume for a moment that the application of this passage is limited to the suburbs of Clayton, Ladue, and Town and Country.
And while we’re talking about the danger of putting worldly priorities in the place of God, let’s not limit ourselves to money and possessions. There are other things that can be just as effective in keeping us out of the kingdom. What about those seeking status and success? What about the intellectually brilliant? What about those rich in moral or artistic achievement? The question is this: Is there anything in your life that if God said, “I want you to give that up completely and follow me,” you would be tempted to walk away with your head bowed in sadness? Whatever that might be, God calls us to renounce all trust and dependence upon it and place our hope in Him alone.
Jesus’ disciples have observed His interaction with the rich young ruler, and now
In a teachable moment with His disciples, He drives home two critical points.
First,
Salvation is always a miracle of divine grace. In verse 26 they ask, “Who then can be saved?” The genesis of this question is their assumption that riches are a clear sign of God’s blessing, not an uncommon view. If a rich man, obviously blessed by God, could not be saved, how could anyone be saved?
Jesus’ response is profound. What human beings cannot do, God can do. No matter what it is that we are holding onto for security, we cannot let go of it without God’s grace. Only He can change our hearts and turn them from ourselves to him. The second point is this:
Those who follow Him will never be sorry. Peter speaks in verse 28: “We have left all we had to follow you!” It’s hard to judge what Peter’s attitude is as he says this, but I think it is probably not prideful but tentative and searching: “Lord, can we be saved?” And Jesus answers, in effect, “I tell you the truth. Listen up and never forget it! No one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life.”
Here Jesus claims that whatever we lose in following Him, God will make it up to us—both in this life and in the next. In his account Mark adds two things to Luke’s—one better and one worse. He says no one will fail to receive 100 times as much as he sacrifices for Christ. And then in parenthesis he specifies what he’s talking about (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields); in other words, if you give up your personal family for the sake of Christ you will receive a spiritual family 100 times as valuable, including homes for shelter and fields for food. But then he adds, “and with them, persecutions.” Why did he have to add that?!? Because the Scriptures are always honest. Following Jesus is not always going to be a bed of roses. But no one who chooses to do so will be sorry.
So far we have seen that the answer to the question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” is first that I must come to Jesus with the heart of a child. Second, I must relinquish the “gods” in my life and trust God alone. Finally, …
I must see Jesus’ death and resurrection as the solution to my sin problem.
In the last few verses of our text today we learn that Jesus takes the Twelve aside and warns them about what is going to happen in Jerusalem, namely everything written by the prophets about the Son of Man is going to be fulfilled. This consisted of essentially six things: He will be handed over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him, and kill him. Then he will rise from the dead on the third day. Peter had called the attention of Jesus to the sacrifice he and the other disciples had made (verse 28). Jesus now rivets the attention of the group on the infinitely greater sacrifice He is about to make.
This is the seventh time in the book of Luke that the passion of Jesus is predicted. To Luke it is critical, particularly at this point when he has just dealt with the issue of inheriting eternal life, to stress that Messiah Jesus has an appointment with death. His death will not be an accident. It has been planned from all of eternity and predicted since the early chapters of the book of Genesis.
The choice of following Jesus cannot be divorced from the death and resurrection of Jesus. If He is only a great prophet whose life deserves to be emulated, He is no better than hundreds of other prophets who have helped mankind down through the centuries. But the fact is He is unique in that He and He alone died for the sins of mankind, and He enables us to follow Him all the way to the Father’s house.
Several years ago an eastern paper reported this story:
One evening a woman was driving home when she noticed a truck behind her that was driving uncomfortably close. She stepped on the gas to gain some distance from the truck, but when she sped up, the truck did too. The faster she drove, the faster the truck did.
Now scared, she exited the freeway. But the truck stayed with her. The woman then turned up a main street, hoping to lose her pursuer in traffic. But the truck ran a red light and continued the chase.
Reaching the point of panic, the woman whipped her car into a service station and bolted out of her car screaming for help. The truck driver sprang from his truck and ran toward her car. Yanking the back door open, the driver pulled out a man hidden in the back seat.
The woman was running from the wrong person. From his high vantage point, the truck driver had spotted a would-be rapist in the woman’s car. The chase was not his effort to harm her but to save her even at the cost of his own safety.
Many people, like the rich young ruler, run from God, fearing what He might do to them. But His plans are for good, not evil. He wants to rescue us from sin and to bless us as we follow Jesus.
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[i]Leon Morris, The Gospel According to St. Luke, 266.