About that dress...

 This week's verses are Luke 18:18-23:

Now a certain leader asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’” The man replied, “I have wholeheartedly obeyed all these laws since my youth.” When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” But when the man heard this he became very sad, for he was extremely wealthy. 

 These verses are part of the well-known parable of the rich young man. People usually teach on the whole thing, but the thing that's interesting to me can be found in this shorter section. Less reading means more time for Netflix once you've ticked that "Bible Study" box for the week, right?

A fairly successful man came up to Jesus and asked him a good question: "how do I get eternal life?" But when Jesus answers him, he's upset! Have you ever asked a question you didn't want to know the answer to? It's a bit like the classic "does this dress make me look fat" question. Some people ask questions to obtain knowledge, and others ask them in order to be validated.

I can't read the man's mind, so I can't say for sure that he was trying to get some validation from Jesus, but you could be forgiven for wondering, if you've seen the pattern play out before: First the throwaway compliment "Oh girl those shoes look great, are they new" and then the setup for the validation demanded in exchange: "Do you think my hairdresser should have charged me $200 for the makeover I had today?"

In the young man's case, he starts off by calling Jesus "Good teacher" (throwaway) and then asks what it takes to win the game, so that Jesus can validate him and tell him he's set for eternity and can finally relax and ease into a life of prepaid sin. Except Jesus doesn't tell him that. He is handing out truth and knowledge, not empty validation. For pretty lies, ask Satan.

Jesus calls him out: "Why are you calling me 'good?' That's God's call to make, not yours." The man's throwaway compliment does him no good because Jesus is already validated by God himself, not in a shallow insincere way, but eternally and truthfully. Do you care what other people think of you if the one person who matters thinks you're great? To the extent that being good matters, God has us covered in full.

Then Jesus starts on the answer. Basically "if you want to be good, you've got the whole Old Testament as a rule book you can follow." It's bait, which draws the man's real motives to the surface: "Oh yes, that's exactly how good I am. I followed them all! King me!" At this point the validation has to be coming, right? I mean, how do you top acing the Old Testament? But it's still not enough.

Jesus has him: "You're only missing one thing: Everything!" We normally key in on Jesus telling him to sell all he has and give it to the (probably undeserving) poor, but then we miss that he also tells him to come and follow him. He's not just asking for his money. He's also making an open-ended claim on his time! He's asking for everything!

And that's half the point: We can't earn eternal life by acing the Old Testament, or by doing all of the "good" moral things our society imposes on us. There isn't a point where we're earned enough points to cut out on our own without Jesus and enjoy our retirement in peace. There's always going to be something more needed, even when there's nothing more to give. That's why we need Jesus.

The rest of the point is found in Jesus telling the man, basically, "when everything you have that makes you great is gone, then come to me." The man had money, possessions and power, and all of those things gave him a sense of value. When people saw those things, they saw a good righteous man. But only God can make that judgment in the eternal sense, and for that we need to see him directly.

There are a lot of things we can try to use to validate ourselves as far as whether we've earned our way into heaven. Life is a minefield of those kinds of things, all of them cheap lies that distract us from the true justification of our value. We can't declare ourselves to be good enough, but Jesus can and made sure of it on the cross.