DYNAMIS!
A publication of St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral
Wichita, KS

St. Mark 10:17-27 (1/31)      For Thursof the 36th Week after Pentecost (Thurs of 31st Week)

 

Worlds Apart: St. Mark 10:17-27 RSV, especially vs. 17: “Now as He was going out on the road, one came running, and knelt before Him and asked Him, ‘Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?’”  How far apart this earnest man was from the Lord Jesus and the from the journey upon which the Lord was embarked - toward Jerusalem, the Passion, and the Cross!  So intent was the Lord upon this goal that His disciples were “amazed” as He pressed ahead (Mk. 10:32-34).  The earnestness of the unnamed man - to learn how to inherit eternal life - is demonstrated in his unusual behavior: he ran rather than walked up to the Lord Jesus.  He knelt before One he considered to be a Rabbi (that was not customary with Rabbis).  He addressed the Lord in an unusual way, one not practiced by either Jews or Greeks - when he called Him “Good.”

As the account unfolds, the gap between the Lord Jesus and the man becomes more and more evident: to overcome the man’s obsession with “inheriting” eternal life, the Lord confronts him with an extreme demand - to renounce all and follow Him to death (vs. 21).  That demand reduces the man to grief, and he walks away (vs. 22).

This petitioner believed that a finite, mortal man could rationally understand how to inherit eternal life.  The Lord knew better.  The man was deluded.  He believed that God expects more than is revealed in the Law for men to inherit eternal life (Deut. 30:19).  The Lord Jesus, Who actually gave the Law, reminded him that the Divine standard does not change (Mk. 10:19).  The man assumed that sinners, by their own effort, could win eternal life.  Christ our God knows that only He makes eternal life possible (vs. 10:27).  They were worlds apart.

The Lord Jesus’ response when He was called “Good,” reveals a basic error in the man - the man believed Jesus could set the terms by which a person inherits eternal life.  The man believed that the person he saw before him, the famous Rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, as a man knew the answer.  The Lord’s question and assertion, “Why do you call Me good?” rejected the assumption that any human can be “good,” for only God is good (vs. 18).  St. Hilary of Poitiers points out that the Lord “would not have rejected the attribute of goodness if it had been attributed to Him as God.”

The idea that human beings have the capacity to discover and take the path to eternal life is inherent in most all of the world’s religions, but it is utterly foreign with respect to serving the true God.  From the first Divinely stated requirement for life (Gen. 2:17), to the Apostolic declaration that “eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us...is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 Jn. 1:2,3), God alone reveals and extends the mystery of eternal life.

There is no esoteric knowledge for the earnest who desire eternal life.  Through His Holy People - Israel and the Church - God has revealed to mankind “what is good; or what...the Lord require of thee...to do justice, and love mercy, and be ready to walk with the Lord thy God” (Micah 6:8).  Still, the man who came to the Lord wrongfully sought a human answer.  This the Lord exposed by quoting the Law (Mk. 10:19).  As St. John adds: “I write no new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning” (1 Jn. 2:7).

The distance between the deluded man and the Lord Jesus was fully revealed when Christ exposed his sin to him.  Still, what the Lord requires is for all (Mk. 8:34).  Knowing the state of the man’s heart, the Lord placed this demand before him in unavoidable terms which he could not rationalize.  The man chose to turn away, for he knew he was incapable of doing what he was told was required to obtain eternal life.  Sadly, he did not wait to hear the Gospel caveat: “With men it is impossible; but not with God; for with God all things are possible” (Mk. 10:27)!

O Master, by the precepts that Thou teachest, save me Thine undeserving servant. 

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