NOTES for Mat 19:24

The dialogue between Christ and the rich young man stirs strong emotions in most of us, because we are instantly frightened that such a call may be addressed to us as well, and that fulfilling it will be as hard for us as it was for this young man. No logic works at that moment. It is pointless to explain that this call is not addressed to everyone, for then there would simply be no one to buy the possessions being sold. It is pointless to recall that the Lord Himself says that the one who walks this path gains incomparably more than he loses. The fear of parting with what we have acquired seizes us to our fingertips: we stubbornly see property as the source of our being and dignity...

This is exactly what the people of Israel experienced after leaving Egypt. Slavery provided a "subsistence minimum," and therefore it became more desirable than such difficult freedom. We too remember sausage for 2.20, those of us who still caught that time, not because it was good, for it was exceptionally vile, but because it served as a phantom of reliability, when one could quietly vegetate in a tiny burrow and not labor to trust God.

This is precisely why this call of Christ is so important for us. Even if He does not at this moment demand personally of you that you sell your property, these words are addressed to you as well. A slave differs from a free person in that he cannot part with his enslaver: if you are unable to part with the phantom of security, with the possession of property, then you are merely its slave, and nothing more. It turns out that the demand to give away property is only one manifestation of the great call to freedom in Christ that runs through the whole Gospel.