An exclusive extract from Dane Ortlund’s new book, Surprised By Jesus: Subversive Grace in the Four Gospels
‘Guilt is not the obstacle to grace, as moralism supposes. On the contrary, it is the repression of guilt, self-justification, genuine self-righteousness and smugness which is the obstacle,’ writes French psychologist Paul Tournier in Guilt and Grace: A Psychological Study (1962).
The deepest distinction among human beings is not between the bad and the good, but between those who know they are bad and those who do not. Yet, strangely, it is not the blatantly wicked who have the greatest difficulty seeing this, but the carefully obedient.
The strange key to participation in the joys of God’s kingdom is not qualifying ourselves for it, but frankly acknowledging our disqualification – a disqualification that manifests itself not only in rule-breaking, but also in rule-keeping. Keeping the rules no more extinguishes the sin in our hearts than buckets of gasoline extinguish the flames in our fireplace.
Heaven is not won with obedience. It is given. Let’s consider an encounter a rich, young man has with Jesus…
‘Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?’ (Matt. 19:16).
Here is a man who has been able to pay for everything in life with money – can’t he also pay his way into eternal life with obedience?
Yet it’s hard to get the right answer when you ask the wrong question. For right from the start we notice that this young man has not yet learned what Tournier has reminded us of: the question is not ‘Who will make the cut and be righteous?’ but ‘Who will admit that he can never make the cut?’ A high-school freshman [first-year student] doesn’t ask what blood type he is required to have in order to qualify for the football team; there is no right answer because the very question betrays a misunderstanding of what it takes in order to be on the team. Blood type is important, but irrelevant to gaining access to the football team. Obedience is important, but irrelevant to gaining access to eternal life.
Still, Jesus plays along and He said to him: ‘Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.’ He said to him, ‘Which ones?’ And Jesus said: ‘You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honour your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbour as yourself ’ (Matt. 19:17-19).
Upon close scrutiny, we see that Jesus has omitted the Tenth Commandment. Why would Jesus leave this one off the list?
Jesus has bypassed this commandment for the same reason that it is the sole commandment mentioned by Paul in Romans 7 as having aroused sin within him: it is the one commandment that addresses the heart. Murder, adultery, theft, and the others, are all observable sins. Coveting is a sin of the heart. It is internal, invisible.
Jesus has put before the rich young man all the commandments that are, at first glance, externally manageable.
Exposing our idols
Consequently, the young man replies with confidence: ‘All these I have kept.’ He checks off each in turn. Yet the question remains: ‘What do I still lack?’ Even upon such brazen moral optimism, the young man knows something is not right.
Jesus said to him: ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.’ When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions (Matt. 19:21-22).
With Jesus’ climactic exhortation to renounce all in order to follow Him, he was not dangling the carrot of law-keeping in front of this young man, egging him on in his self-justifying law-observance. Instead Jesus has lovingly set up the young man to show him his idolatry. Jesus has slipped in the First Commandment (‘You shall have no other gods before me’, Exodus 20:3) without the young man noticing. He exposes the man’s sin not by showing him that he needed to give away his material possessions to follow God, but that his material possessions were his god. And as Martin Luther has pointed out in A Treatise on Good Works, there is no breaking of commandments numbers two to ten without first breaking commandment number one.
In view of how seriously this young man took his morality, it is safe to assume that he paid the appropriate Jewish tithes. But Jesus calls him to give away all that he owned because mere tithing allows a materialist to keep his idol basically intact. Jesus goes straight to the core of the young man’s deepest affection: his financial security. His heart is exposed. And, sadly, like a child suffering from an irritating rash who prefers scratching to a healing steroid, the young man prefers the idol – and goes away sorrowful.
The eye of a needle
Why are the disciples so troubled by the metaphor Jesus uses as his summary? It’s puzzling at first to modern readers why they should be so flabbergasted. If it’s hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of God, then isn’t the solution simply to avoid wealth? Why don’t the disciples simply resolve to live in either the lower or middle class of society?
The reason is that this was not how life worked for the first-century Jew. Financial gain was seen as a direct sign of God’s approval. It was axiomatic that ‘The blessing of the Lord makes rich’ (Prov. 10:22). Material blessing was viewed as linked to spiritual blessing (Deut. 28:1-6, 8, 11-12). When the disciples ask, ‘Who then can be saved?’ they are saying, ‘If those at the top of the social stratosphere, upon whom God has so clearly smiled, can’t get in, what hope is there for the rest of us, who don’t have that kind of obvious divine favour?’
Jesus responds enigmatically, affirming their dismay before rebuilding hope on the proper foundation: ‘But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible’’ (Matt. 19:26). ‘It’s worse than you think,’ says Jesus – ‘and so much better.’ According to your intuitive, natural, moralising, domesticated, get-what-you-work-for understanding of the way you think God relates to people, yes, this is impossible. But with God – according to the wild, lavish, all out of proportion, get-far-more-than-you-asked-for-as-long-as-you-don’t-try-to-pay-for-it understanding of the way God relates to His people, all things are possible.
