He says to him, Which? And Jesus said, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness,
The young man had asked which commandments he must keep. The Lord answers with a short list. What He names — and what He leaves out — is the whole point.
The man came asking what he could do, and the Lord answers him in those terms.
He had not learned the first lesson a Christian knows — that he is lost. The young man had no sense of sin. He regarded eternal life as the result of a man's doing good. The Lord at first simply deals with him on his own ground: "If you want to enter life, keep the commandments." The Lord quotes the commands that relate to human duties — the second table of the law, as it is called.
The Lord names five commandments and leaves five out. He passes over the four about duty to God, and He passes over the tenth. That last gap decides everything that follows.
When the rich young ruler approached the Lord with his question about eternal life, Jesus tested him with five of the ten commandments. He did not quote the first four, which deal with what is due to God, and He did not mention the tenth. The young man could say he had kept the five the Lord mentioned. No doubt he had, if only the forbidden acts counted. But the tenth would have condemned him beyond hope.
That missing commandment does not stay missing. The Lord withholds it in words and then applies it in a demand.
The Lord takes him up on the ground of the law. The law was the revealed measure of what God required, if man wanted to stand before Him on the ground of good in man. In quoting what was required of him toward his fellow man, the Lord leaves out the last commandment — the only one that touched what man is. He applies its principle another way. He tells him that if he wants to be perfect he should give his possessions to the poor, with a view to treasure in the heavens and the path of a rejected Christ on earth. But his possessions linked him with the earth.
Every command on the list forbids an act, and the man had never broken one of them. But each command carries more than the act it forbids.
He knew the letter of these commands, and he had obeyed them to the letter. But the spirit of them reached much further — their real, vital, spiritual meaning, their moral weight. Carried through to the end, they affected more than outward conduct. They touched the springs of the heart. They said, "You shall not steal" — but they meant "You shall love."
The Lord does not accuse him of lying when he claims to have kept these. The exposure comes from a different direction.
The Lord did not tell the young man that he had not kept the law. But when Paul took the principle of it — "You shall not covet," that is, do not lust — it was all over with him. He was a man, and he did lust.
The second table of the law comes down to one command. Measured by that, the man's record collapses.
The other table of the law is, "You shall love your neighbour as yourself." Had he loved his neighbour as himself? He had not committed adultery. He had not murdered, stolen, borne false witness, or defrauded anyone. And he had honoured his father and his mother. He was a most respectable man. But did he love his neighbour as himself? Certainly not. Why? Because he was wealthy. If he had loved his neighbour as himself, he could not have been wealthy.
Commentators differ on how far to press this. For the writer above, the man's wealth is itself the proof he failed. Others point out that the Lord never denied his claim. Instead He exposed the man by the demand that came next.
- Ground. The man asked what to do, so the Lord answered with law. Law is the measure for anyone who wants to stand before God on the ground of good in himself.
- Selection. Of ten commandments, the Lord quotes five. He passes over the four about duty to God and the tenth about desire.
- Omission. The unmentioned tenth is the one that reaches past actions to what a person is. Left out in words, it returns as a demand: sell your possessions and give to the poor.
- Letter. Every command named forbids an act. Kept only in letter, "You shall not steal" leaves the heart untouched. Carried through, it means "You shall love."
- Exposure. The Lord never says he broke the law. He shows instead that a blameless record and a heart tied to earth can live in the same man.
Honour thy father and thy mother, and Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
A young man asked Jesus what good thing he must do to gain eternal life. The Lord answered with a list of commandments, ending with the two in this verse. The list looks ordinary. But the commands He chose, and the one He left out, were deliberate.
The Lord does not open with God's claims. He picks the commands about how we treat other people. He meets the man where the man had placed himself.
At first the Lord deals with him on his own ground: "If you want to enter life, keep the commandments." The man asks which ones. The Lord quotes the commands that relate to human duties — the second table of the law, as people call it.
The command about parents stands out among the ten. It alone came with something attached to it.
The specific command was, "Honor your father and your mother" (Ex. 20:12; Deut. 5:16). This was one of the "ten words," and is called the "first commandment with promise" (Eph. 6:2). Jehovah marked this command out with a promise: those who obeyed it would have prosperity and long life.
The promise is not all. One writer ties the other commands to this one:
If everyone kept this command faithfully, people would hardly ever break the other five commandments.
Something is missing from the Lord's list. The tenth commandment, against coveting, never appears — and this was not an oversight.
When the Lord quotes what the law required of him toward his fellow-man, He leaves out the last commandment. It was the only one that touched what man is. He applies its principle another way. He tells him that if he wants to be perfect, he should give his possessions to the poor, with treasure in the heavens in view, and the path of a rejected Christ on earth. But his possessions linked him with the earth, and he turned away from heaven in sorrow.
So the missing command arrives disguised as an invitation. When it lands, the man's real condition is out in the open.
There is much that is naturally beautiful and lovely in human nature. But there is nothing in it that tends to God, no will to please God in it, no righteousness in it... Jesus had now touched the thing the young man's heart was set on, and proved him to be an idolater and covetous. His riches were the treasure on which his heart was set.
Take the phrase at its word and it becomes a test. Writers apply that test to a man who claimed he had kept it.
So the demand to sell everything was not an extra condition. It was this verse taken at its word.
People ask, how could the Lord make that the condition of eternal life for him? But the law had already required the very thing that would have made this easy — that he should love his neighbor as himself. And he had declared that he did. So why not sell what he had and give to the poor? Giving to the neighbor he loved as himself would be no more than giving it back to himself.
The standard in this verse is self. Writers contrast that measure with the measure Christ set.
Law taught me to love my neighbor as myself. It made my love for self the measure of my duty to my neighbor. Christianity looks for having no self at all, but for giving ourselves up for our neighbor... Some treat the mutual love of self and neighbor as the same thing as the complete self-devotion of Christ. That is an abuse of words. The only thing the two share is the word love.
- Ground — The man chose the ground of doing. The Lord met him there, quoting the commands about duty to people, not duty to God.
- Promise — Honoring father and mother is the one command with a promise attached. Where homes keep it, people rarely break the rest.
- Omission — The Lord left out the one command that reaches what a man is, not just what he does. Then He applied it by telling him to sell everything.
- Exposure — Loving your neighbor as yourself, taken at its word, would have emptied his hands. He kept his riches, and that proved him covetous.
- Measure — The law makes self the measure of love. Christ gave self up completely, and that is the higher measure.