Main news for 22 April 2022

King James Version (en)

Luke, Chapter 18, verses 19-20

¹⁸ A ruler that would follow Christ but is hindered by his riches

¹⁹And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God.

²⁰Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother.

NOTES

What does it take to be a good person? The answer is more or less clear even to those who have not read Scripture: do not deceive, do not kill, respect others... The healthiest...

The Savior's answer to the question about eternal life is both simple and difficult. It is simple because He offers nothing new. It is the same old, well-known path of the Torah, outer and inner, the path of keeping the commandments. It is what the questioner has known from childhood. But then comes an unexpected demand: give everything away and follow Him, his Teacher. And here the questioner stops. He is not ready for such a step. Jesus then speaks about the rich, for whom it is hard to enter the Kingdom. What kind of wealth is meant here? The questioner was materially rich. But the apostles were not rich, and yet they too feel uneasy. Who, then, can be saved?

They seem to have understood the Teacher correctly. Leaving everything is not only about material things. The concept of poverty in Yahwism, as in Judaism of the Second Temple era, was very multifaceted. Already Isaiah of Jerusalem spoke of poverty more as a spiritual state than as a material situation. And he considered himself a poor man, though he was a courtier and an aristocrat of the highest circle. Poverty means leaving everything. Jesus' question to the one interested in eternal life is this: can you leave everything? And Peter's question is: look, we have left everything; what comes next? The matter is no longer property.

The point here is to renounce one's own life. Not physical life; to renounce it means renouncing only a specific form of one's own existence. What one has to renounce is oneself, not one's life. That very self which, as most religious people believe, will not disappear even if earthly life is taken away. This is the self one has to renounce. A separate life, a separate existence. And everything connected with it, everything that defines it. Everything that can be described by the word "mine." And what remains, the true, pure "I," which one does not manage to notice right away, this pure "I" receives another, new life.

It enters another stream, infinitely more powerful and pure than the former one. There is nothing of one's own there in the narrow, earthly sense of the word, but there each "I," each one of us, begins to possess all the fullness of the life of God's great world, the life of the Kingdom. But for this, one must unclench the will by which we hold onto our present likeness of life. For it is precisely this will, clenched convulsively, that binds us to the life of this world. And unclenching it is far harder than unclenching the hand that holds a rope when you are hanging over an abyss. But otherwise nothing will work. Otherwise there is an eternal attachment to a likeness of life that will endlessly exhaust our soul and our body. And no freedom. Therefore no Kingdom either.

Jesus' words "no one is good except God alone" sometimes cause bewilderment: do they mean that He Himself bears witness to the absence in Him of any divinity, that He...

Jesus' words "no one is good except God alone" sometimes cause bewilderment: do they mean that He Himself bears witness to the absence in Him of any divinity, that He separates Himself from God to the same degree as every human being is separated from Him, and moreover a sinful human being? At first glance, that is how it is, and many historians of religion have based themselves on these words of His when they asserted that the divinity of the Savior is a late idea, and that originally, in the properly Jewish environment, it did not exist. Meanwhile Jesus' answer to the man who ran up to Him was quite understandable in the context of the question itself. The man who addressed Him, of course, did not suspect any divinity in the One to whom he was speaking. He was seeking precisely a teacher, the kind of teacher who would allow him to partake of God's goodness because he himself had partaken of it.

Such a view of teachers and spiritual guides was not rare in the Judaism of the Second Temple period: the path of the inner Torah, about which everyone knew then, although not everyone walked this path, as well as the ideal of the "living Torah," which the one walking the path of the inner Torah was to become at the end of his path, made people suppose at least the possibility of sharing in that very goodness of God with which the world was full before the fall, when, according to the word of the biblical Poem of Creation, it was "very good." The one who reached the end, the transformation into the "living Torah," was to become such a "very good" person. Such a teacher can bring his students into that "goodness" as well - and the man who came up to Jesus was sure he had found the one who could help him in this.

It remained only to learn from him what had to be done in order to achieve the result. Jesus, meanwhile, offers no special paths except the commandments, the same inner Torah. It is as if He says: go by the path you know. The answer came immediately: I am going; "all these I have kept from my youth," but there is no result. What else can be done to reach what is desired? That is when the words sound that recall spiritual poverty. Precisely spiritual poverty - otherwise the disciples, who had left everything, would not have asked in confusion, "Then who can be saved?"

The goal of the path is not achieved through some special ascetic or prayer techniques; it is attainable only through the complete surrender of oneself to God's will - and this is the hardest thing for a fallen human being. Hard, but absolutely necessary - and sooner or later Jesus places each of His disciples before this necessity, and then each one chooses his own: the path into the Kingdom or remaining in his own wealth.

FAQ

I wonder: the Gospel of Luke 18:18-27 says, "How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!" Why? Why must one be poor to enter? In general, what is the Bible's attitude toward commerce and money?

In the Gospels, the words "how hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God" are also repeated in the Gospel of Mark in the form "how hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter the kingdom of God." This is an important addition that helps us understand the mind of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is nothing inherently bad about money in and of itself; what is bad is that we so easily become slaves to it. We begin to think about how to acquire more and more, which easily becomes a passion, a kind of obsession. And then a person lives only for themselves and their money, which is far too little for a fulfilling life. Furthermore, earning money gradually consumes all of one's time and strength, leaving none for God, for love, for people, or for anything else... Moreover, a person imperceptibly begins to focus entirely on what they can do for themselves with their wealth: I will buy this, and then another... However, you cannot take any of this to the grave. In several places, the Gospel tells us that money is good as a means to do good works, and not only for oneself. In short, having enough money to live a dignified life and to do good for others is not bad at all. But it is important that money does not become the meaning and ultimate goal of life. As a means, however, why not?

It is understandable that if one has very little money, such spiritual problems, if they arise at all, do so on a much smaller scale. We must admit that one can be destitute and yet think only about money (this is often complicated by murmuring: "I am so good, yet I have been deprived of what I deserve"). This, obviously, is no better. Happiness is not found in money (nor in its quantity), but in being generous without murmuring. Perhaps generosity is precisely the key word in defining the Christian attitude toward wealth. Generosity sanctifies the one who has money, while greed defiles even the poor.

Poverty that is not fixated on itself and its meager resources has, perhaps, one significant advantage: one can truly and firmly put their hope in God. In prosperity, this hope gives way to gratitude to God for giving you the strength and ability to earn a living. Gratitude to God ("bundled," so to speak, with generosity) also strips wealth of the taint of sin. And to be grateful in poverty is a mark of true spiritual maturity.

Undoubtedly, poverty is a heavy burden. And every hardship in life can be an opportunity for a person to draw closer to Christ, who voluntarily impoverished Himself for our sake and became a poor man.

Finally, for a Christian, any condition in life is valuable only when God Himself calls them to it. Some (and they are the majority) He calls to be poor and to bear all the burdens of life with gratitude and generosity (even with small means). To others, the Lord directly says: "sell all that you have, and follow Me." And a third group is called to earn much money, and to help the first and the second... It is crucial to find your place and to answer your specific calling. Otherwise, neither poverty nor wealth will bring any spiritual benefit.

As for commerce... The Word of God looks favorably upon any honest human endeavor that is not coupled with sin, that brings benefit to others, and that causes no harm to anyone. Thus, the circle of forbidden occupations is quite limited: banditry, prostitution... Of course, commerce, like politics, can struggle to be entirely honest (especially in certain "exotic" countries, such as ours). But difficult does not mean impossible. I have even encountered honest and believing traffic police officers (admittedly, in the remote provinces and a long time ago, but the roads there were wonderful).

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