Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”“Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”“Which ones?” he inquired. Jesus replied, “‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”“All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?” Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth. Matthew 19:16-22

If we’ve read the Bible for any length of time we will be familiar with this passage – “The Rich Young ruler.” I’ve taught and heard it taught many times but I noticed a part at the beginning of this exchange in Matthew’s retelling which l had never seen before.

Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?

The man asks Jesus a doing question for a future life. He presumes that an action is what is required in order to acquire eternal life. That is such a common thought for us today. We think it we do good things we can redeem the ‘bad’ things we do. Unfortunately the reality is that the balance is way more out of kilter than we realise. I try to do the right things and treat people well but the reality is if I was to list every insecure, jealous, revengeful, dishonouring, lustful, selfish, anxious, small minded, discriminatory thought I had (before I listed the not good things I’ve actually done) and tried to stack them up against my good stuff it wouldn’t look great!

Its interesting to hear Jesus’ response.

“Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”

I wonder it Jesus was emphasing the ‘what’ and the ‘who’ here? We can’t say for sure obviously but Jesus does come back to his doing question for a future lite with a being answer for a present life. Its like Jesus is telling him not to focus on tasks that will guarantee his eternity but instead is asking him to focus on being someone who enters into a godly life today. Jesus follows up by talking about the commandments so it isn’t that He is saying you can act anyway that you want but the source, and the focus, must be more than behaviour.

As a culture we still believe that behaviour is the way to gain approval for everything and we naturally extend that understanding to the spiritual. It’s why we still have people who wrestle with the question – why if I’m a good person is that not enough to get me into heaven? We can get frustrated at that question or we can take responsibility for the fact that we have displayed a gospel that has made behaviour the number one goal, and we also need to take responsibility for the fact that we made the goal getting into heaven rather than laying down our life to follow Jesus in our everyday.

Thousands of years on and we aren’t much better than the rich young ruler. We’ve got to get serious about being the who rather than focusing on doing the what.