The Tribune

By NICHOLAS MORLEY

Luke 18:18-23, 25 (KJV): “And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God. Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother. And he said, All these have I kept from my youth up. Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me. And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful: for he was very rich.”

To make a long story short, Christ was testing the rich young man’s humility. His lack of faith and trust in Christ’s commands was a result of him not humbling himself. Humility plays a vital role in faith building. Without it, we would not be able to have the required faith that moves the hand of God. This will result in one’s debasement (Matthew 23:12). The world teaches us that the exaltation of self will bring to us our heart’s desire, while Christ teaches us that the exaltation of self will keep us out of the Kingdom of God. This was the rich young ruler’s problem, and this is the context of the story. However, what else can we learn from it? Was humility his only problem? Let’s dig deeper.

The rich young man represents many of today’s modern believers. We tread on the borders of right concepts, yet our acceptance and our approach is fuelled by subjectivity.

We always act according to what feels good or what we think, rather than what the principles say. Sadly, we treat the Bible this way. We know that God’s Word should be our only rule, faith and practice, yet we exalt portions of the scriptures and leave the rest out. This was what the rich young man did.

Luke 18:18 says that he came to Christ in search of everlasting life. The rich young man went knowing that Christ alone had the answer; he went knowing that Christ was the Word in flesh (John 1:14). He went knowing, that the same authoritative Word given to Moses on Mount Sinai’s summit is the Word incarnate. This is how we treat the Bible; we know that the Bible has in it words of life (John 6:63), yet we up keep portions of the scriptures, and worse, we often use our own interpretation on the Word of God. Had the rich young man done otherwise, the result would have been different. Had the young man prepared his heart in the sanctification of prayer before he approached Christ, he would of been a great example for the multitude, because the words would have touched his heart and there he would of been prepared to make a life change.

Question, are we prepared for a life change? Are we prepared to take the Word of God as a whole instead of exalting portions of it and putting man’s thoughts and ideas first?

After the rich young man asked the question of requirements for eternal life, Christ took him to the portion of scripture he knew by heart. Perhaps his heart skipped a beat in joy to hear Christ recite some of the very things he knew and kept: “Yet lackest thou one thing,” was Christ’s reply, “sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.”

This was to the young man a new thing, something he haven’t heard before. Although that the commandments the young man claimed he kept came from the same place, although all carried the same weight and power, perhaps he thought that he was fine with the way things were and he needed no change. Perhaps I don’t need to keep all of Christ’s words, he thought. Perhaps his riches got in the way of accepting the full words of Jesus; the seed of the Word of God fell on a ground of thorns, thus leaving him in a pool of sorrow. Whatever may be the case, the rich young man never accepted the Word of God fully. The same is happening with us today, because portions of God’s Word do not appeal to our lifestyle, our first response is to humanise the Word, water it down or forget about it completely. We are all victims of this.

Our first response to the Word of God should be to pray. Ask the Holy Spirit to arrest our hearts and minds that His Word may find root there, and that His will may be done through us at the end of it. Finally, we should practice meditating on God’s Word day and night, feeding our spirit that we may not just be hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word (James 1:22).

The young man took this for granted. Had he taken up the notion as the psalmist and meditated on God’s Word day and night, then would he would have gone down in history as one of the greatest witnesses for Christ (Psalms 1:2).

We all have the right concept that God’s Word is truth, but let us today ask God to teach us to turn this plain conceptual thought into a heartfelt practicality, and watch God’s Word fully transform you as you accept it.

• For comments and questions e-mail nicholasrmorley@gmail.com.