Good Grace!

Luke 18:18-30

July 16, 2017 • Mount Pleasant UMC

It’s called the “omnipotence paradox,” and its origins go back to at least the middle ages. Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas talked about it in his writings, and still today it’s a fascinating thought experiment. Basically, the paradox is usually phrased like this: Can God make a stone so heavy that even God can’t lift it? In other words, can God’s infinite power overwhelm his own infinite power? You could also ask it like this: can God beat himself in a fist fight? Or can God dream up a mathematical equation too difficult for him to solve? It’s a paradox, an impossible question, or, as one author put it, sheer nonsense. As C.S Lewis said, “Nonsense is still nonsense even when we speak it about God.” And yet, those are the sort of things people will sometimes come with as they try to challenge the faith of a believer, or even as they try to challenge the existence of God. But it’s the same sort of quandary even the disciples found themselves in in our Gospel reading this morning. Is there something impossible for God to do? When Jesus takes on the questions of a rich young ruler, the disciples think they may have found a genuine omnipotence paradox, because they begin to think, “If this wealthy, successful man can’t be saved, who then can be?” That is still a question worth asking—and answering.

This morning, we are continuing our series called “Trending,” during which we are looking at questions you all asked on Facebook. My goal in this series is not only to answer the questions, but to equip you to answer them as well when people come to you. It’s not just about gaining knowledge, but being able to share what you’ve learned with those who are seeking. So last week, we began by asking, “Can I trust the Bible?” And we looked at how the Bible stands up against questions and criticisms still today. Today, then, we want to go more into the heart of the Biblical message and talk about the nature of salvation, about what it takes to get to heaven or gain eternal life. There’s this idea that has floated around for as long as there have been people on earth that you can “earn” your way into paradise, that if you just do enough good things and build up enough credit, you can bust through the doors of heaven because you’ve earned your place there. That’s an idea rooted deeply in the American psyche, where we believe that if you’ve gotten anything good, you must have earned it. We’re taught to “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” and become “self-made people.” And when we do the right things or good things, we expect to be rewarded. So, when we bring that mindset to our faith, the question that we and others will ask goes like this: “How good do I have to be to get into heaven?”

That is the question very much on the mind of a ruler who approaches Jesus while he is on his way to Jerusalem for his final week. Jesus is not quite to Jericho, so geographically he’s probably somewhere along the Jordan River, in the middle of nowhere but northeast of Jerusalem. And this man approaches him with a question. Luke says the man is a “certain ruler,” but we’re not told what he is a ruler of. It’s possible he had a government job of some sort, or perhaps he was a leader in the synagogue; it’s apparent that Luke doesn’t think we need to know his exact title, just that he had some measure of authority (cf. Card, Luke: The Gospel of Amazement, pg. 206). He comes to Jesus with a question that, in fact, Jesus has already been asked. Back in chapter 10, Jesus was approached by an “expert in the law” and asked this same question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (10:25; 18:18). On that occasion, Jesus asked the “expert in the law” what he knew about the law. What did the law say about how one “inherits” eternal life? That man answered with Jesus’ “great commandment” of love God and love your neighbor, and Jesus told him he had answered correctly. Then Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, a story we’re going to look at in detail in a few weeks. So here, in chapter 18, Jesus is once again asked that question, this time by a ruler who at least had some sort of religious inclinations. There is something in him that is dissatisfied with the life he has been living. He knows there must be more than what he currently knows, so he seeks out Jesus to get some answers. “Good teacher,” he says, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (18:18).

It’s an inherently flawed question. Inheritance, generally speaking, has very little to do with what we do. When we inherit an estate, or an item, or money, it’s not because we’ve necessarily done anything to earn it. Most of the time, the inheritance comes because of who you are related to, or who you are connected to. You don’t do anything to gain an inheritance; inheritance is all about whose you are, who you belong to, who you are connected to. Least of all can we expect to “inherit” eternal life because of our actions, and that’s where both the legal expert from chapter ten and this ruler from chapter eighteen get it wrong. This man even gets it wrong in the way he addresses Jesus. He calls Jesus, “Good teacher,” a title Jesus rejects pretty quickly. “Why do you call me good?” Jesus asks. “No one is good—except God alone” (18:19). Now, that’s an interesting response to what appears to an attempt at flattery. The rabbis of the time had a similar statement; they said, “There is nothing that is good but the law” (Barclay, The Gospel of Luke, pg. 227). In the rabbis’ statement, the law was equated with God since it had come from God. But Jesus even disagrees with that. In one sentence, he challenges the rabbi’s definition of “good” and rejects the description for himself. 

The word both the ruler and Jesus use that is translated “good” means profitable, generous, upright, or virtuous. It’s not “good” as in “tastes good,” but rather “good” as in “morally good.” People who are “good” do the right thing, they try to live a “good” or moral life all on their own. And the belief, at least in our culture, is that there is a cosmic scale somewhere that is measuring how much good we do versus how much bad we do. If, in the end, we do more good than bad, then we win. We get in. In all the years of my ministry and all the funerals I have done, only once in twenty-four years have I had someone sit in my office and not say that the deceased was a “good person.” And, in that case, after they spent over an hour telling me how awful a person the deceased was, they still stood up at the funeral and praised the person for being “the best person ever.” Or listen to interviews of friends and family members after someone has gone on a shooting spree or after they have injured someone else. What do you hear them say? Usually something along the lines of, “It’s such a surprise, they were such a good person.” We get to that belief because we think that, somewhere, the scale will certainly determine there were more good deeds done than bad deeds, and that person will ultimately win. How good do we have to be? Our culture says—you have to do at least one more “good deed” than bad deeds. That’s how good you have to be. And that’s the same mindset that’s behind the ruler’s question to Jesus. But the problem with that system is that we never know. We don’t have access to the scales. We can’t see them. We can only “hope” that we’ve done enough good to outweigh the bad. We won’t really know until we die. How good do I have to be? Just barely good enough, we hope.

What’s interesting here is that Jesus rejects that word “good” even in describing himself. “Why do you call me good?” he asks. Why does Jesus reject the description for himself? If anyone could be said to be “good,” it would be the Son of God. He says, in fact, that only God is good, and if Jesus is God, then doesn’t that make him, by default, “good”? Why not accept the flattery here? At least part of what is going on here is Jesus rejecting normal social conventions. Since the ruler has called him “good teacher,” the man would be expecting Jesus to honor him by addressing him with some sort of title in return. Jesus isn’t interested in playing those games. When matters of eternity are at stake, earth-bound titles don’t matter for anything (cf. Green, The Gospel of Luke [NICNT], pg. 655). More than that, it seems that Jesus’ point, especially as the conversation moves forward, is that the ruler’s focus should be on something other than what he can “do.” If Jesus accepts the title of being “good,” the man’s focus will likely continue to be on Jesus’ good deeds, his healings and his actions, rather than on the kingdom of grace that Jesus came to bring. Jesus is good, but not in the way this man thinks.

Yet, he begins on the same ground where the ruler already is. “You know the commandments,” he says, and then proceeds to list half of the Ten Commandments: no adultery, no murder, no theft, no lying, and honor your father and mother (18:20). There’s no doubt that the ruler (and everyone else standing around) knew these commands by heart. The Ten Commandments formed the basis of the Jewish people’s relationship with God. And so the ruler proudly responds, “All these I have kept since I was a boy” (18:21). Really? You’ve kept all of them? My suspicion is that this man has done what we do: he’s redefined the commandments so that they are keepable (cf. Card 206)—just like we do today. We redefine sin in our favor. But Jesus has given his own redefinition of these commands in his Sermon on the Mount, and his redefinition does not fall in our favor. Adultery, he says, begins with lust. Murder begins with harboring anger against someone else. Lying begins when we make an oath; instead our “yes” should be “yes” and our “no” should be “no.” For Jesus’ followers, integrity should be so high that nothing more than that is needed. Jesus had summed up the law this way: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (cf. Matthew 5:21-48). If he wanted to, he could drill down on the specific commandments with this ruler. Have you kept this one? Or have you only redefined it? And if inheriting eternal life was primarily about what we do and how good we have to be, Jesus would be right to do just that. “All these I have kept since I was a boy” sounds like quite a big boast.

Instead of quizzing the ruler, though, Jesus asks him to do one thing. Only one. If he wants to inherit the kingdom by doing things, then this is all he has to do. “Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (18:22). And, after that, there is no more conversation between Jesus and the ruler. No more honorific titles. No more talk of commandments. Luke tells us that the ruler “became very sad, because he was very wealthy” (18:23). Jesus answers his question in perhaps the only way he wished Jesus hadn’t. He asks him to give up the one thing he was worshipping.

You see, our god is the thing that we give all our time, thought, energy and devotion to (cf. Barclay 229). For this man, it was all the stuff that he had: his possessions and his wealth. Those things defined him—and more than that, it appears he was living selfishly. He had vast amounts of the world’s resources, and yet he was keeping them all for himself. As William Barclay puts it, “His real God was comfort, and what he really worshiped were his own possessions and his wealth” (228). He could not imagine his life without those things. Obeying the commandments was good and proper, but that obedience wasn’t what his problems was. If he kept holding onto those things, the stuff he owned, he would never be able enter God’s kingdom like a little child, which is the example Jesus used right before this ruler asked Jesus his question. Without this step, this ruler would never experience the humble trust that allows God to be God (Wright, Luke for Everyone, pg. 217).

To say that everyone around would have been shocked to hear Jesus’ response is an understatement. The same heresy that exists today was strong in those days, too. Like us, they tended to believe that wealth was always a sign of a blessing from God. It can be, but wealth is not a guaranteed indication that God is involved. Bigger is not necessarily an indication that God is actively present. The disciples are stunned by this revelation. If anyone in their world would have been thought to be a shoe-in to get to heaven, it would have been this guy. That’s why they begin to wonder if anyone can be saved. If what Jesus says is true, what hope does anyone have? So they ask, “Who then can be saved?” If not this guy, then who? After witnessing this exchange, the disciples and others who are standing around become concerned for their own position, which leads to the question we really want answered out of this passage: is Jesus’ command meant for everyone throughout all time or was it only meant for this young ruler? Are we, too, expected to sell all our possessions and give to the poor? Are we going to have to go without in order to enter the kingdom of heaven?

The answer is…maybe. As with many commands, we have to take in the context and figure out what Jesus is really saying. What is the principle behind the command? In this case, he is obviously talking directly to the young ruler, a man who has many possessions, who is, as Luke puts it, “very wealthy” (18:23). Jesus is not intending to lay down a rule for everyone; he doesn’t turn to the gathered crowd and say, “This goes for you, too.” In fact, most of those listening to him probably didn’t have very many possessions of their own. Jesus’ point, the underlying principle here, is that we need to get rid of whatever it is that stands between us and God. This young ruler was trusting in his goodness and in his material wealth to earn him favor with God. He believed doing good things would help him inherit eternal life, and that’s why Jesus asked him to strip all that away. Get rid of everything, and then he would no longer be able to trust just in his own goodness.

So what are the things trust in? For us, in today’s world, that may be wealth, or it might not be. It is true, though that our nation is among the wealthiest in the world, and even in places where the income is not what we might wish it would be or even what it should be, we are still wealthy. Are we trusting in that as a sign of God’s blessing, as our guarantee to get into heaven? Jesus might call us, then, to loosen our grip and lessen our trust in the things we have. Or for many of us, it might be our good works. We do lots of good things—help the poor, contribute to every campaign that we do here at church, for heaven’s sake we brought in 45 pairs of shoes! Doesn’t that get us somewhere? For some of us, it might be the fact that we’ve grown up in the church, we’ve been through Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, and every all-church study the church has ever offered. Maybe you’re in the building every time the doors are unlocked and sometimes when the doors are not unlocked. God has to accept me; I’m a model Christian! Or maybe you’re trusting in your knowledge of Scripture, or your position in the church, or your position of influence in the community. Now, none of those things are necessarily bad things. Wealth is not evil, good works are commanded, being involved in the church is healthy. We cross the line, however, when we do those things thinking we will somehow earn salvation in that way. We don’t do those things to get into heaven. We live that way to be able to draw closer to Jesus, not to impress him. He’s already impressed with you. He’s already overwhelmed with love for you. And we know that because he gave his very life for you and for me. You see, there’s a major difference between religion and Christianity. This question we’re dealing with (how good do I have to be?) comes out of a religious mindset. Religion is all about doing. Or, as someone has said, religion is spelled D-O. 

But Christianity is spelled D-O-N-E. Christianity is not about earning our way into the kingdom. Christianity is about receiving grace. There is nothing we can do to earn salvation. Jesus already made all the arrangements. He already paid the price that needed to be paid when he died on the cross. Max Lucado draws attention to the absurdity of our determination to do it ourselves with this illustration: “Suppose God simplified matters and reduced the Bible to one command: ‘Thou must jump so high in the air that you touch the moon.’ No need to love your neighbor or pray or follow Jesus; just touch the moon by virtue of a jump, and you'll be saved. We’d never make it. There may be a few who jump three or four feet, even fewer who jump five or six; but compared to the distance we have to go, no one gets very far. Though you may jump six inches higher than I do, it's scarcely reason to boast” (Lucado, In the Grip of Grace, pgs. 39-40). It’s the same even with Jesus’ great commandment. Even if all we have to do to get into heaven is love God and love others, all the time, we’d never make it. At least I’d never make it. Maybe you do better than I do at loving others, but I’m still fairly certain even you don’t get it perfect every time. That’s why we need grace. That’s why we need Jesus. There’s nothing we can D-O to meet God’s standard, which is why Jesus did it for us. Christianity is spelled D-O-N-E.

If you need more evidence, just look at the stories that follow this morning’s passage. At the end of this chapter, Jesus is headed into Jericho when he meets a blind beggar, a man who literally can not do anything to make his situation better. He cries out to Jesus for his sight, and finds so much more. His blindness is taken away, and he goes away praising God. Though we don’t know much about his story, it seems his blindness had gotten in the way of his having a full relationship with God. When Jesus takes it away, his immediate response is praise. Jesus rescues a man who cannot help himself. Then, in the beginning of the next chapter, he meets a man named Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus, besides being a wee little man, is a tax collector. In Jewish eyes, he’s the worst of the worst. He’s a Jew, most likely, who is collaborating with the Romans, their enemies. He’s taking their money. If the young ruler was “automatically saved” in their minds, this man was automatically not. He was going the other way. And yet Jesus goes out of his way to call this tax collector down from the tree he’s in and even goes to his house to have lunch. It upsets the good, religious people, but Jesus says of Zacchaeus, “Today salvation has come to this house.” That’s grace. Zacchaeus didn’t earn it. He had probably done some despicable, underhanded things in his business dealings. But salvation isn’t a matter of D-O. It’s a matter of D-O-N-E. It’s a matter of responding to Jesus’ call to follow. It’s a matter of G-R-A-C-E.

Who then can be saved? the disciples ask. And Jesus says, “What is impossible with man is possible with God” (18:27). What we don’t think we can do, what we can’t do on our own, God makes possible. Let’s listen in on a conversation about this parable.

SKIT: “The Rich Young Ruler” (Missy Burton)

How good do I have to be? That is the question that plagues and haunts many people today. The answer is that we can’t be good enough. There is not enough good we can do to earn God’s approval but the problem is not our actions; it’s our heart. The thing that separates us from God is our sin, all the ways we have rebelled against God in thought, word and deed. That’s where most people get it wrong. We have that “cosmic scales” idea in our minds, and so we try to do lots and lots of good to earn our way—when Jesus has already done everything that’s needed for us to have a new relationship with God. D-O-N-E. He offers what he did as a gift to us, a gift of grace. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, says that what Jesus has done for us has been credited to those who believe as righteousness (cf. Romans 4:22-25). When you get a credit, it’s something in your favor, and in this case, Paul is saying that when we come to Jesus, when we put our trust in Jesus, we get credit for every good thing Jesus has done—which is good, because Isaiah says our righteous acts are like “filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6). Years ago, I heard Tony Campolo say that he can’t wait until he gets to heaven and he hears God begin reading out of the book of life. He said he wants his wife there as God begins to read all of the good things Jesus did that are credited to his account because he knows his wife will object. “You didn’t do any of those things!” she will say. To which, Dr. Campolo says, he will quickly respond, “It’s his book, let him read it!” The truth is none of us can earn grace. None of us can ever do enough to “earn” heaven. The good news of grace is that we don’t have to. Jesus has already done it all and, when we accept him into our lives, it’s all credited to us. Then everything we do from that point on is a response of love to him, not something we do to try to earn his love.

This morning, I want to invite you to a time of prayer, a time where we seek to receive grace and leave behind performance-based religion. If you’d like to come forward to the kneelers, you’re welcome to do that, but I’d like to invite you, if you’re not coming forward, to open your hands in your lap like this, as a sign that you’re open and wiling to receive God’s grace. One of my favorite pictures is this one, a painting simply titled “Grace.” If you look carefully, you can see a person standing in the middle of this swirl of colors. The person is standing with their arms open, and grace rushes down from above to swirl and surround the person. That’s the image I have in my mind when I am asked, “How good do I have to be?” I can’t be good enough, so I just want to throw open my arms, my hands, my whole being and let grace surround me. Will you allow God’s grace to sweep you up like that? If so, either come forward and kneel or open your hands in your lap and let’s pray for an outpouring of grace.