The Rich Young Ruler: What Has a Hold on Your Heart?

In this sermon on the rich young ruler, Daniel McInnes asks what it really means when Christ tells the young man to sell all he has. The problem, he explains, was never wealth itself, but the hold that wealth had over the young man's heart. Whatever sits on the throne of our hearts in Christ's place becomes a weight around our necks, and the godly sorrow of seeing it clearly is the beginning of repentance. When Christ is at the centre, the good things of this world are not denied us but restored to their right place.

Transcript

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today we heard Jesus talking to the rich young ruler. The rich young ruler came to see Jesus and asked him a question. He said, "What more must I do to be saved?" And we might ask that question ourselves. What more must we do to be saved? We come to church. We do what we can with regard to the rules that the Church gives us, all those kinds of things. But sometimes we feel there is something missing, that there must be something more. And this rich young ruler apparently felt that way too, because he came to see Jesus and to ask him, "What more must I do to be saved?"

When the young man came to him, he addressed him as "Good teacher." And Jesus said, "Why do you call me good? Only one is good, and that is God." What he was saying to the rich young ruler was this: if you know that I am God, fine, you can call me good. But if you think that I am only a man, then don't come to me with flattery. Flattery doesn't work. Coming to God with flattery, or coming to anyone with flattery, is not the way we approach. So he was saying, don't flatter me.

But St. John Chrysostom does say that this rich young man was coming to him sincerely, unlike the Pharisees, who used to come to him with these questions to try to trip him up and find ways to accuse him. No, this rich young ruler came to him sincerely, asking the question: what more must I do to be saved?

And Jesus said to him, "Keep the commandments." He simply pointed him back to the commandments that God had given his people to follow. He said: do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honour your mother and your father, and love your neighbour as yourself. Jesus repeated these things to many, many people. So he just said, "Do these things." And the rich young man said, "I have done all of these things. What more must I do?" And Jesus said, "If you would be perfect, sell all that you have and give it to the poor." And it says that the young man went away sad, because he was very wealthy.

Now, at that point we could say a great deal about wealth and about what Jesus is saying concerning it. He does say later that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. But he is not saying that wealth by itself is bad. In fact, as you look through the Bible you will find that one of the blessings God provides is actually wealth. Many of the patriarchs were quite wealthy. Abraham and others had great flocks and all kinds of possessions. They were blessed with wealth. So he is not saying that wealth in itself is bad. He is also not saying that we should never think about money at all, because if you don't think about money at all you will certainly become a burden on other people. Try living without money for a couple of weeks. It's a good way to diet, I suppose, and to lose your house and perhaps a few other things as well. So money is important; we can't simply not think about it.

The problem here, and what we are seeing in this story, is not a general rule about wealth — as though anyone with money must sell everything and give it to the poor. Jesus isn't saying that. What he is doing is diagnosing the actual, real problem that this young man had, the problem he had come to ask about without quite realising it himself. And what Jesus is saying to him is: your wealth is a chain around your neck. It is dragging you down. If you would be perfect, you need to sell it and give it to the poor.

Now we can take that as a command, and say that he must sell it and give it to the poor. Or we can also see it as Jesus giving him a way to see his own reality — giving him a command that Jesus knows this young man cannot do at that point in time. He is not ready for it, and Jesus would know he is not ready for it. So he says it in order to induce in him exactly that response: godly sorrow. In the readings this week we have St. Paul speaking about godly sorrow. Godly sorrow leads to repentance. It leads to a change in life, to an alteration of the way we live. It leads us to life. The other kind of sorrow leads us to damnation, where we simply say, "Well, I can't do it, so forget about it, I'll just live how I like." But godly sorrow leads us to repentance.

So I hope that this was the case with the rich young ruler. Although he could not do it at that point in time, by saying what he did, Jesus showed him where the problem lay. Now he realises that this is a thing for him — that his wealth has a hold over him that it should not have, and that he should do something about it.

For us, of course, you can look at this story and say it is all about wealth. But the general point is not purely about money. Anything that has a hold on us other than Christ, anything that has that place in our heart — sitting on the throne of our hearts — anything sitting on the throne of our hearts that is not Christ is a weight around our necks, dragging us down. And they can be good things. Wealth by itself is not bad. We read in the Scriptures that the love of money is the root of all evil. It is when we place the acquisition of wealth at the centre of our life that it becomes a problem. And that is, of course, not the only thing that can sit at the centre of our life and cause a problem. There are many other things as well. So when we read this, we shouldn't only be thinking about wealth. We should be thinking about all kinds of things. I'll leave it to you to consider what they might be, but there are so many things that can be on the throne of our hearts other than Christ.

And it can sound extreme to say that we should simply put Christ at the centre of our life in everything. It isn't. When we have Christ at the centre of our life, all of those other things are not denied. They are not denied at all. They are simply put in their right relation by having Christ as the centre of our life, by having Christ on the throne of our hearts and serving him, following his commandments. All those other things are not thrown away. No — they find their right place in our life. They find the place that will actually lead us to salvation, because we can use wealth in a good way. We can use it to help people. We can use it to do good things. And the same is true of our bodies, of food, of all the other things that can become snares and weights around our necks. All those things can be used well, and when they find their right part in our life they become life-giving, both to us and to the people around us.

So what is it that is around our necks? What is it that is holding us down? For each of us it may be slightly different. Obviously Jesus here is talking about wealth. In first-century Judea most people were not wealthy; just about everybody was dirt poor. So for them wealth was not really a snare — they didn't have anything, they were living from hand to mouth. But for us in our day, absolutely. Wealth is an issue for a great many people in our society. If you go on any social media you will find people trying to tell you all the ways you can make heaps and heaps of money and retire early and do all these kinds of things, as if that were the purpose of your life. So it is a big issue for us in this day and age, certainly — but it is not the only one.

So what is it that is holding us? What has a higher place than it should in our lives? I'll leave you with the key thought in today's story: to think about the things — not just wealth, but anything — that have a disproportionate hold on us, a hold beyond what they should have. The things of this world are for our use, but they should not be our master. Christ should be our master. And if we see those things that we know should not be mastering us, that is the indication that we have something to work on. That should lead us to godly sorrow, which then says, "All right, I need to do something about this. What will I do?" And the Church provides all kinds of things we can do to help us with that.

So may the Lord help us to see those things that have such a hold on us, and also to find the way to overcome them. Because as Christ says in this story, with men it may be impossible, but with God everything is possible. Whatever has a hold on us does not have a hold on us in some unbreakable way. Through the work of Christ in our life, anything can be overcome.