| The Rich Man Devotional | 21 Jun 2006 |
This devotional is not about how to turn you into a rich man; it is about the rich young man mentioned in the bible in the books of Matthew, Mark and Luke.
16 Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?"
17 "Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments."
18 "Which ones?" the man inquired.
Jesus replied, " 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, 19 honor your father and mother,' and 'love your neighbor as yourself.' "
20 "All these I have kept," the young man said. "What do I still lack?"
21 Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
22 When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.
23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, 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."
25 When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, "Who then can be saved?"
26 Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."
Matthew 19:16-26
Now, I have always interpreted this passage to be about being unable to let go of certain things that we hold on dearly to, and for this case it is wealth. However, after reading an article by Ps Cho Yonggi, which I will quote here, I had a different revelation.
Now, if we come to God and say, “Father, what can I do for my salvation?” God would answer you “Keep the law.” If you say, “I have kept the law, like the young man in the Bible.” Then God would ask you to do a more difficult thing. He would say, “Go home and sell everything, then come and follow Me.” If you try to work out your own salvation, then God will ask you to do impossible things. Now we can come to God and say, “God, how can I be saved?” You will have nothing to do because God has finished salvation.
Excerpt from ‘No Easy Way to Pray’
This is a one-point devotional, and it is a simple point indeed.
1. God loves you and died for you, and nothing you can do can merit that
I think when the young man went to Jesus, and asked him what good thing he must do to get eternal life, Jesus already knew the man missed the point. The thing is, even till today, that same question is still being asked by prebelievers. My girlfriend mentioned that before she received Christ, she had wondered why one can be forgiven for his/her sins, and that same bewilderment is common in people nowadays. Why the inability to understand the concept of unconditional grace?
I would venture a guess – culture. How many times have we heard the maxim ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’? In modern context, we always doubt the possibility of something that is free. We think there must be a catch somewhere out of reflex, or that there must be a hidden cost or agenda somewhere. This is because we associate it with marketing and consumerism, and we know that there is no such thing as a ‘free’ gift or service. Or we associate it with our own egocentric human nature. In fact, if we do believe that something can be free, we usually associate it with low quality, because we think that something that is free cannot possibly cost much. Also, in our meritocratic upbringing, it is ingrained in our heads that we need to earn something. We need to do well to earn a reward, because this is the way that we have been educated, especially here in Singapore.
However, the salvation that Jesus offers is free. It is definitely not cheap, because it was bought at a high price – the life of an innocent Man. It cannot be earned, because it is a gift given out of love. Just like the parents of a newborn baby naturally would shower love on the baby because they wanted to have and thus conceived the baby, God loves us because He conceived and created us. There is nothing we can offer God that He has not already owned, except our time that we could choose to spend with Him.
Knowing this, Jesus deliberately challenged the young man with the commandments, but he said he kept them. Then Jesus delivered the coup de grace – He said “If you want to be perfect” and told him to do the thing He knows a rich man would find most difficult to do, which is to give up all his wealth. In the book of Luke, the ‘rich man’ was phrased as ‘rich ruler’, so he must be someone who has immense wealth and power. I now understand why Jesus did it this way - if He merely wanted to test the young man as to whether he is willing to relinquish his wealth, Jesus would have asked him to abandon his riches right away, but he did not. I believe Jesus wanted him to realize that he cannot attain salvation by doing something to earn it. I believe that Jesus was listing things that could be done in increasing order of difficulty so that the rich man would realize that it is beyond his human strength to do so, and therefore turn to God.
Indeed, when the disciples were later confused and asked ‘who then can be saved?’, Jesus explained that, in my own paraphrasing, it is not possible to save yourself by your human strength, but if you rely on God, you can be saved. God has already done all the work on your behalf, and all you need to do is to claim it.
Even for Christians, this is still a likely struggle. Every now and then, after sinking our heart and soul into ministry, we start to forget that God operates on grace, mercy and unconditional love. We then start to place our significance and security in the ministry or the work we do for God whenever we approach God. When we sin, we feel as if God stops loving us; when we do something noble, caring or heroic, we feel as if God loves us more. However, the fact of the matter is, those are merely our perceptions framed by our meritocratic paradigm. God loves us the same whether we sin or do not, only that when we do sin, He needs to discipline us because He loves us. Even as a 9-year old Christian now, I still have to remind myself from time to time of this truth, because it is a way of thinking that easily creeps in when we get busy with working for God rather than working with God.
God loves you, period. Not that you earned it, but because He made you.
It is as simple as that.
Further Reflections
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