On the rich young ruler.

When the Rich Young Ruler asks Jesus, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus rebukes him by saying, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.” This has often been misunderstood as Jesus denying His own moral perfection or divinity, but it’s actually the exact opposite.

The man comes to Jesus with the basic idea that some people are good (they get eternal life) and other people are bad (they get eternal death), and he wants to be sure he’s on the right spiritual career track. He seems like a very admirable and serious man of religion. But his insecurity about whether he might be missing some minor aspect of salvation is palpable. And far from reassuring him, Jesus instead rips out from underneath his assumption that anyone but God can be good.

See, this man (like many others before and since) thinks that his material wealth is evidence of his good standing with God, an error the Bible dispels repeatedly, most famously in Job. Quite on the contrary, his wealth (both morally and materially) is precisely the problem. He’s so full of his own worth that he can’t even see how far away from godliness he is and how Godliness Itself is actually standing right in front of him.

That’s why the final assignment to sell everything, give it to the poor, and follow Jesus is so devastating. Jesus simultaneously obliterates the man’s entire system of self-justification and declares His own identity as the only One worthy of being followed. But the man is so sad with what he’s losing that he can’t even see what he would gain. And the tragic irony is that his entire goal of practicing religious perfection in the first place was to eventually be allowed to spend eternity with the Being standing right in front of him, extending the invitation to come in. (Mark 10:17-22)