Luke 18:18-27 - Inheriting Eternal Life - October 23, 2022

You often find them in locker rooms and classrooms. You’ve probably seen them posted on social media or tacked on the office bulletin board. They are usually set to majestic backdrops of mountains, rivers or oceans – to give the impression that they are conveying something profound – and they are printed with phrases like: “If you just put your mind to it, you can do anything!” “When we work together, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish!” “If you believe in yourself, there’s nothing you can’t achieve!” They are motivational posters. And while a precious few might actually find these posters motivational, they are also a vivid reminder of the proud mentality that lurks deep inside every human being. It’s the mentality that there is nothing we can’t do if we try hard enough, work long enough, or want something bad enough. And, yet, from the beginning of time there has been nothing man has tried harder to achieve than immortality. Adam and Eve had it, lost it, and then had to be driven out of the Garden of Eden to prevent them from regaining a cursed version of it in this fallen world (Genesis 3). Around 200 B.C., the self-declared first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, obsessed over finding immortality in the form of a magical elixir. As fate would have it, his elixir of choice was mercury, which not only failed to give him immortality, but wound up shortening his life considerably. [1] More recently, many people have chosen to have their bodies cryogenically frozen in the hope that a future technology will be able to revive them from death. It’s a tragic irony, isn’t it? As humans we love to imagine that we can accomplish anything we set our minds to, and yet we have been 100% unsuccessful in preventing the only thing besides taxes that is absolutely guaranteed in this life; the one thing we fear most: death.

One day, a certain ruler came to Jesus searching for the secret to immortality: Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? This man was likely a leader in one of the local synagogues. He had been taught by the rabbis that the way to eternal life was through obedience to the laws of Moses. Jesus played along, saying: “why ask me, you know how to get to heaven – keep the commandments: you shall not commit adultery. You shall not murder. You shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony. Honor your father and mother.” According to rabbinical (not divine) law, a male was not obligated to keep the law until he turned 13. [2] This man was certain he had been perfectly obedient since then: I have kept all these since I was a child. Which begs the question: if he was so confident he had kept God’s law, why would he come to Jesus asking about eternal life? Wouldn’t he already have earned it by virtue of his perfect obedience? Didn’t he know that God promised in Leviticus 18:5: Keep my regulations and ordinances. Anyone who does them will have life through them. I am the LORD. According to this man’s own confession, he was well on his way to achieving eternal life on his own. But something brought him to Jesus, something was bothering his conscience; he could sense that despite his supposed obedience, he needed something more.

Jesus agreed with his self-assessment: you still lack one thing. Sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me. Now, Jesus’ answer was not at all what we would consider today to be a politically correct or properly sympathetic response, was it? Our politically correct world would probably say: what a jerk, I thought Jesus was supposed to be loving and kind, this man is trying his best, why not encourage him rather than command him to do something impossible? The truth is: Jesus was acting out of love. Mark tells us Jesus looked at him [and] loved him (Mark 10:21). This man thought he could earn eternal life by obeying the law and he needed to realize how badly mistaken he was. So Jesus aimed an arrow of law at his Achilles’ heel. And this arrow had its desired effect: when the ruler heard these words, he became very sad, because he was very rich. Wealth had become this man’s idol. This man walked away sad because, perhaps for the first time in his life, this man realized that he had failed to obey the most important commandment: You shall have no other gods (Exodus 20:3). By making this seemingly impossible demand, Jesus was showing the rich ruler that he had been fooling himself all along, that far from earning eternal life by his obedience, he had forfeited it by his idolatrous greed.

“Well. Thank God I’m not rich then, right? Fortunately for me the issue is having too little, not too much of the green stuff.” The thing is, this encounter isn’t really about money. Scripture never says money is the root of all evil. 1 Timothy 6:10 does read: the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. Being wealthy is not a sin. Loving wealth more than God is. And we might argue, we might try to justify ourselves, saying: I don’t love money. I don’t spend every waking moment thinking about it. I don’t spend most of my energy in gaining more of it and storing it up. I don’t trust in money to provide for my every need and help me in every trouble. Maybe not. Maybe it’s not money for you. But what do you cherish most in this life? What is the one thing in this world you could not live without? What if Jesus was standing here, looking at us, taking aim with the arrow of the Law, saying: you still lack one thing. Give up all those hours you spend in front of the TV; give up that hobby that so often comes before time with God’s Word; give up your nice home, your pension, your nest-egg; give up your children or your spouse; give up social media; give up thinking that you are better and smarter than other people; give up your fear of death – give up those things, and you will have treasure in heaven. Jesus focuses on wealth in this story because the ruler before him idolized his riches. But if Jesus was taking aim at the idols in our hearts, would we walk away any happier than this man?

“How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God! In fact, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Jesus understood perfectly what is so difficult for mankind to recognize and remember: it is impossible for anyone – you, me, rich, poor, man, woman, old, or young – to enter the kingdom of God on our own. This is what the picture of the camel and the needle is all about: as impossible as it would be for a camel to go through the eye of a needle it is even more impossible for any sinner – wealthy or otherwise – to enter the kingdom of the holy God. Why? For the same reason that ruler walked away sad – God doesn’t demand that we give it our best effort – he says be perfect (Matthew 5:48); he doesn’t demand to be in the top 5 in our lives – he demands 1st place; he doesn’t expect us to love [him] with all [our hearts]…[souls]…strength…and…[mind] (Luke 10:27) only when it’s convenient – he demands our absolute loyalty 24/7, 365. And when God shoots an arrow of his law at our hearts, when he holds up the mirror of the law to show us how wicked and idolatrous we have been; we can’t help but walk away sad like that rich ruler. We can’t help but realize that we haven’t lived up to God’s demands. We can’t help but tremble in terror and cry out with the disciples then who can be saved?

And with that, we are back to the rich ruler’s question, aren’t we? The question that has captivated people since the beginning of time, the most important question that can be asked in this life: what must I do to inherit eternal life? It’s the right question – but wrongly phrased. What I mean is that this question is contradictory on its face, isn’t it? How can a person earn or do something for an inheritance – isn’t an inheritance, by definition, a free gift? This man was so close to his answer, in fact, he was speaking with the Answer, but the things of this world had clouded his vision. He was bound by the worldly opinion that if you want something you have to earn it. And that has been the flawed condition of mankind ever since the fall into sin. Adam and Eve longed to take a bite out of the tree of life; many have spent fortunes searching for an elixir of immortality; others have had their dead bodies turned into popsicles; and countless masses hope that when Judgment Day comes God will give them a pass because they tried their best to be good little boys and girls.

But the point of the 10 Commandments and the point of this lesson is simple: It is impossible for us to earn eternal life no matter how hard we try. God demands perfection, and we are far from it. But God didn’t give us his law to make us despair of ever reaching eternal life – he gave it to us to lead us to despair of achieving it on our own; to show us that we need a Savior; the Savior that is standing right before us this morning: [Jesus] replied, “What is impossible for people is possible with God.” Our almighty, immortal God knew from eternity that his most treasured creation, mankind, would plunge from perfection into the depths of sin. But he wasn’t going to let Satan steal our souls so easily. He wasn’t about to let his precious creation perish eternally in the fire of hell. So he did something about it. He started right away in the Garden with Adam and Eve, where he first sowed the seed of eternal life: I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will crush his heel (Genesis 3:15). And then, over the course of thousands of years God protected his promise, he nurtured and sheltered the Eve’s seed within his chosen people of Israel. For thousands of years, God guided the entirety of human history with one goal in mind – to fulfill his promise to redeem all people from the death their sin had earned them (Romans 6:23). And then, 2000 years ago he put his plan into effect – when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son to be born of a woman, so that he would be born under the law, in order to redeem those under the law, so that we would be adopted as sons (Galatians 4:4).

What was impossible for man, God made possible all by himself. God threaded the camel through the eye of the needle. God came to this earth and was born as a baby in Bethlehem. Baby Jesus grew and was tempted and suffered just as we do – yet he never sinned. Never once did he let his family or friends or job or wealth come before his Father in heaven. Never once did Jesus ever lose his focus on his mission of redemption. Never once did Jesus have to walk away sad because he was too busy, too proud, or too selfish to serve God and fallen mankind with all his mind, soul and strength. In fact, just the opposite, Jesus gave up everything to save us: he gave up his Father’s riches in heaven, he gave up his seat of power at God’s right hand, he gave up his position as judge over all the earth – and Jesus was anything but rich and powerful when he lived on this earth; he didn’t have a penny to his name or even a place to call home. Jesus did the impossible not once but three times: he lived a sinless life, paid for the world’s sin by his death, and then overcame death itself by rising to life three days later. Jesus is the answer to life’s most important question: who can be saved? By God’s grace and through faith in Jesus’ merit, anyone can be because what is impossible for people is possible for God.

Motivational posters might be useful when it comes to building morale and self-confidence. The mentality “there’s nothing you can’t do, if you just put your mind to it” might be true when it comes to shooting rockets into space, curing disease, and all sorts of wonderful and beneficial inventions. But when it comes to defeating death, mankind has struck out. But where man failed, God succeeded. Jesus did what no other man could do: he lived under the law but never broke it; he died but didn’t stay dead. And he gives this elixir of immortality to us regularly through baptism, absolution and the Lord’s Supper – the means of grace which confirm that because of Jesus, while you may die, you will live eternally (John 11:25-26). What must we do to inherit eternal life? Nothing but receive it as God’s free gift through Jesus! Amen.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170411-the-army-that-conquered-the-world

[2] https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2957494/jewish/Why-Are-Bar-and-Bat-Mitzvah-at-13-and-12.htm