Amy C Walters

The Rich Ruler | Luke 18:18-30

At first glance, this story seems to say that followers of Jesus must all sell everything they have. But digging deeper, we see that Jesus was getting at the rich ruler’s heart, revealing what he really trusted in. But salvation is only possible with God.

As we’ve seen with many of these stories in Luke, just getting a cursory understanding of a story can actually lead us to the wrong conclusion. In this story, we’re challenged with Jesus’ answers to the ruler’s questions.

The rich ruler asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” First, Jesus challenges the ruler with what he thinks about Jesus. “Why do you call me good? Only God is good.” And then Jesus says, “You know the commandments,” and he names five of them that all have to do with how he relates to others. 

Jesus does not point to these commandments as the roadmap to salvation but to prove to the ruler that he has not fulfilled them perfectly. He is not good enough to earn his salvation. Only God is good. 

Does the ruler get that point? No, he misses it. He says, “All these I have kept from my youth.” He claims to have kept every single commandment perfectly from when he was a little kid. 

So Jesus presses the point even further. “One thing you still lack. Sell everything you have and distribute it to the poor, and you will have rewards in heaven, and come follow me.” 

This sounds like more than “one thing.” Sell everything, give it to the poor, follow Jesus. That’s three things. Can’t Jesus count? And, these are not really “things,” they’re actions. How does this all fit together and make sense?

I think we need to look at these things all together, and ask ourselves, what attitude is needed to produce these actions? What would it take to sell those things, and to follow Jesus into the unknown? The answer: it would take total dependence on God. That’s the one thing that’s lacking here. The rich ruler’s self-reliance and dependence on his wealth and his (perceived) goodness were holding him back. 

The story before this is Jesus blessing the little children (Luke 18:15-17). When the disciples complain that people are bringing their children to Jesus, he says that they have to receive the kingdom of God like a child in order to enter it. You receive it, not buy it. You inherit it, not work for it. It’s the same lesson that we see in this story–helplessness and faith are essential for eternal life. 

One of the ways that we can get tripped up is by thinking that Jesus is saying that all his followers have to sell all of their things, live like a nomad, and depend on everybody else for everything that you need. But the Old Testament has many stories of people who were both godly and wealthy: Abraham, Job, David. So wealth itself is not the problem. 

Jesus is trying to get through the veneer to the ruler’s heart. Just like Simeon prophesied in Luke 2:35 that Jesus would reveal the thoughts of people’s hearts. And in the ruler’s heart is self-dependence, self-reliance through wealth and goodness. And neither of those are going to get him eternal life.

When the rich ruler hears that he has to let go of his self-reliance, he gets really sad. What Jesus is asking him is too much. He’s not willing to go that far. 

When Jesus sees the ruler’s sadness, he says, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for those who are rich to enter the kingdom of God.” 

This is a wild statement. A lot of people try to soften it. You may have heard people say that Jesus was referring to an actual gate somewhere in Jerusalem that was really low. If a camel was going to go through there, you had to unload them, and they had to go through ducking and on their knees. 

But that is entirely missing the point. If that’s what Jesus is saying here, then that means that through a lot of effort, we can get eternal life. And that is actually exactly the opposite of the point Jesus is making. 

Notice that right after this, the people who hear Jesus say this ask, “Who then can be saved?” And Jesus’ response is, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.” 

Jesus’ point is that it’s impossible for people who rely on their wealth to be saved. Not just really difficult, like a camel crawling through a gate. He’s saying it is as impossible as the largest animal you know going through the smallest object that you know. It’s that level of impossible.

Jesus also doesn’t say, “What’s impossible with the rich is possible with God.” He just says “what’s impossible with man,” with humanity in general. We all have the same problem of the impossibility of salvation on our own, through whatever means we try to attain it.

Anyone who tries to come to God on their own will not succeed. Only God makes that possible. In fact, that’s our key truth for today: salvation is only possible with God. 

So, it’s impossible for those who rely on their riches to save themselves. And it’s impossible for anyone who relies on their brains or their family or their upbringing or their history or their goodness or their resources or their reputation or their other religions.

All of those things will fall short of eternal life. Only God can save. 

Maybe one of the reasons that Jesus picks so much on the wealthy is because it’s easy to be self-reliant when you have plenty. Remember from the parable of the dishonest manager that money fights for our affections (Luke 16:1-15). Remember from the parable of the rich fool that we have to guard against greed (Luke 12:13-21). And remember from the story of Jesus cleansing the ten men with leprosy that saving faith is in Jesus alone (Luke 17:11-19). Anything that we rely on other than God himself will not lead to salvation.