It’s easy for respectable folks to identify with this rich young ruler. After all, we tend to think we’re pretty good people – just need a little cleaning up around the edges, right? It’s so easy to feel good about yourself when your only point of reference is other people – and they do all sorts of terrible things, don’t they?

Yes, we might be tempted to think we’re pretty good people when we start through the second half of the Ten Commandments, the ones Jesus mentions in verse 20. After all, we respectable types aren’t murderers or thieves. We know to say “Yes ma’am,” and “No sir,” to our elders. Most of us don’t bribe coaches to get our kids into college or lie to the police about being beaten up.

But Jesus doesn’t ask us to be better than anyone else. He simply says, “Follow Me,” which means “Do what I do and live as I live.” In other words, He must be our only point of reference, the One against Whom we must measure ourselves.

And of course, the problem with that is what we find in verse 19 – no one is good except God alone. And that becomes clear when we look at some of the other commandments that Jesus left out of verse 20. How many of us engage in coveting, desiring what other people have? And how many of us have no other gods in our lives? Is there really nothing or no one else to which we look for meaning and purpose and fulfillment and happiness?

In the case of the rich ruler, he was putting his faith in his material possessions, and many of us fall into that same trap. Others might look to their families or their friends or their jobs. But if we’re looking anywhere except at God, if we’re following anyone or anything else, we’re not following Jesus. Because Jesus is God.

But the good news is that if we’ll turn to Him, He can save us and make us the kind of people we were created to be. He can help us get our focus in the right place – on the glory of God and the good of others. Instead of putting our things first in our lives as this rich ruler did, we’ll live lives of love.

No, we can’t make this sort of radical change on our own – it’s impossible for us. But it’s not impossible for Jesus. Let’s trust in Him today. And let’s follow Him.

Luke 18:18-30

18 And a ruler asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
19 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.
20 You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.'”
21 And he said, “All these I have kept from my youth.”
22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”
23 But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich.
24 Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!
25 For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”
26 Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?”
27 But he said, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”
28 And Peter said, “See, we have left our homes and followed you.”
29 And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God,
30 who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.”