19:16-17 A rich young man asked Jesus what he needed to do to obtain eternal life.730The text presents him as a rather typical obsessive compulsive personality who probably never knew when to stop working.
The term "eternal life"occurs here for the first time in Matthew's Gospel (cf. Dan. 12:2, LXX). However the concept of eternal life occurs in 7:14. Eternal life is life that continues forever in God's presence as opposed to eternal damnation apart from God's presence (7:13; cf. 25:46).
The young man's idea of how one obtains eternal life was far from what Jesus had been preaching and even recently illustrating (vv. 13-15). He demonstrated the antithesis of childlike faith and humility. He thought one had to perform some particular act of righteousness in addition to keeping the Mosaic Law (v. 20). He wanted Jesus to tell him what that act was. He was a performance oriented person.
Jesus' question in verse 17 did not imply that He was unable to answer the young man's question or that He was not good enough to give an answer.731It implied that His questioner had an improper understanding of goodness. Jesus went on to explain that only God is good enough to obtain eternal life by performing some good deed. No one else is good enough to gain it that way. Jesus did not discuss His own relationship to God here. However, Jesus implied that He was God The young man had asked Jesus questions about goodness that only God could adequately answer.
The last part of verse 17 does not mean that Jesus believed a person can earn eternal life by obeying God's commandments. Obedience to God's commandments is a good preparation for entering into life. However obedience alone will not do.
19:18-20 The rabbis had added so many commands to those in the Mosaic Law that the young man did not know which commandments Jesus meant. Jesus listed the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and fifth commandments, in that order, plus part of "the greatest commandment"(Lev. 19:18). The fact that the young man claimed to have kept all of them reveals the superficiality of his understanding of God's demands (cf. 5:20; Phil. 3:6). Moreover having lived an upright life he still had no assurance that he possessed eternal life. This is always the case when a person seeks to earn eternal life by his or her goodness. One can never be sure he or she has done enough. This young man may have been rich materially, but he was lacking what was more important, namely the assurance of his salvation.
19:21-22 By referring to being "complete"Jesus was referring to the young man's statement that he felt incomplete (v. 20; cf. v. 16), that he needed to do something more to assure his eternal life. Jesus did not mean that the young man had eternal life and just needed to do a little more, to put the icing on the cake (cf. 23:8-12). Earlier Jesus had told his disciples that perfection, the same Greek word translated "complete"here, came from following Him (5:48). He repeated the same thing here.
What this young man needed to do was to become a disciple of Jesus, to start following Him and learning from Him. God's will did not just involve keeping commandments. It also involved following Jesus. If he did that, he would learn how a person obtains eternal life, not by good deeds but by faith in Jesus. To follow Jesus this rich young man would need to sell his possessions. He could not accompany Jesus as he needed to without disposing of these things that would have distracted him (cf. 8:19-22). Such a material sacrifice to follow Jesus would gain a reward eventually (cf. v.29). Jesus was assuming the young man would become a believer after he became a disciple.
"So attached was he to his great wealth that he was unwilling to part with it. Such is the insidiousness of riches that, as Bengel notes, If the Lord had said, Thou art rich, and art too fond of thy riches, the young man would have denied it.' He had to be confronted with all the force of a radical alternative."732
The young man was not willing to part with his possessions to follow Jesus. He was willing to keep the whole Mosaic Law and even to do additional good works, but submitting to Jesus was something else. Jesus had put His finger on the crucial decision this young man had to make when He told him to dispose of his possessions. Would he value his possessions or following Jesus to learn more about eternal life more highly? His decision revealed his values (cf. 6:24).
"His real problem was lack of faith in Christ, whom he considered a good Teacher but who apparently was not to be regarded as one who had the right to demand that he give up all in order to follow Him."733
This passage does not teach that salvation is by works. Jesus did not tell the young man that he would obtain eternal life by doing some good thing, but neither did He rebuke him for the good things that he had done. He made it very clear that what he needed to do was to follow Jesus so he could come to faith in Jesus.
This passage does not teach that a person must surrender all to Jesus before he can obtain eternal life either. Jesus never made this a condition for salvation. He made giving away possessions here a condition for discipleship, not salvation. We have seen a consistent order in Matthew's Gospel that holds true in all the Gospels. First, Jesus called a person to follow Him, that is, to begin learning from Him as a disciple. Second, He called His disciples to believe on Him as the God-man. Third, He called His believing disciples to continue following Him and believing on Him because He had an important job for them to do.
