10:17
Never ask Jesus a question! At least not unless you are prepared to have all of you thinking challenged. A man ran up to Jesus, fell at His knees and asked “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Now why did he do this? Did he realise there was something missing in his life, despite his great wealth (see v22)? Was he seeking to justify himself? Or did he recognise that in Jesus there was someone far greater than him, someone very different from everyone else?
10:18
“Why do you call me good?” Jesus seems to be trying to get the man to focus on the fact that he recognises something special about Jesus. “No one is good - apart from God”. The Old Testament says that all have sinned. It says it explicitly in Isaiah 53:6, and in the Psalms, and the whole of Old Testament makes it abundantly clear that if anyone is good it most certainly is not Israel.
10:19,20
Jesus then reminds the man of the ten commandments, or at least about half of them. The man would, of course, be fully aware of these. The ones cited by Jesus all involve outward behaviour, and the man declares that he has kept these since he was young. And this was probably true, but the man knew that something was still missing. I guess we can all identify with this. Outwardly we may pretty well conform with many of the commands, but we know that there are things within us, thoughts, attitudes, desires, that are definitely not godly. If we are honest we know that there is something wrong with us.
No comments:
Post a Comment