“Good Teacher… what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Mark 10:17
The first lesson we learn from the rich young ruler is this: To enter heaven, you must be good like God.
When the rich young ruler asks his question, Jesus takes him up on the goodness thing: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone” (10:18).
How do you measure goodness? All measurements are made against a particular standard. You can use a yardstick, but how do you know that the one you are using is accurate?
If we measure goodness by Adolf Hitler, we come out looking pretty good. If we measure goodness by Mother Teresa, we come out looking pretty bad.
It’s easy to talk about goodness, but Jesus says, “You need to understand that no one is good except God alone. Good means good like God.” Jesus says that to enter heaven you must be good like God. In Matthew, Jesus puts it like this: “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mat. 5:48).
Another way to say this is “keep the commandments.” The problem with saying it that way is that a lot of people think they have done that. This man was one of them. “All these I have kept from my youth” (Mark 10:20).
This man completely missed the point. The first lesson we learn from his story is that to enter heaven, you must be good like God. Anything less would ruin heaven. And God won’t let that happen, which is why we will see in the next few days that it is only possible through Jesus.
Are you living as if salvation was “impossible” for you, or “difficult” for you?
