Give Up

In Matthew chapter 19 there is a familiar story of a rich young ruler that approaches Jesus and asks Him a great question. “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” (Matthew 19:16) What a great question! Jesus answers this man with the phrase “keep the commandments” (Exodus 20:12-16). The ruler replies, “Hey I have done these good things since my youth, what else to I lack?”. Jesus then tells him to give up everything he owned and follow Him.

Wow, how many times throughout history has this little story been repeated. A person cries out to God about something more to life, (i.e. eternal life) they think it’s about doing things for God, state to God that they are pretty good at keeping the rules and then Jesus asks them to do the very thing they are not willing to give up (lifestyle, habits, preconceived notions, etc…).

The surprise in this story is that everyone in that day expected the rich people to be the closest to God. After all it was the rich that gave the money to the temple, had the time to study the scriptures and even in this case was able to obey the ten commandments fully. The rich had the advantage so it was a surprise to hear Jesus tell them that the rich often have a very hard time with the kingdom of God.

See the problem that we, who have a lot, often have is that the things we have usually have us! Sure we can enjoy our blessings and take time to appreciate what we have, but the test to determine if it has us comes when Jesus asks us to surrender it. If we won’t surrender something we choose distance over intimacy. In other words we don’t want to really know Him and have Him know us we just want to know about Him.

As a result we exchange that desire to be close with an arms’ length relationship based on knowledge. We stay content to pack our lives with requirements and “to-do’s” and lose our chance to actually know our creator. And in that moment do the same thing the rich young ruler did.

“When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.” (Matthew 19:22)