Question: I believe that eternal life is not earned by good works but is a gift from the grace of God through Jesus. Because of this, I have a hard time understanding the meaning of Jesus’ response to the man in Mark 10 when the man asked what he must do to inherit everlasting life. Could you clarify the meaning of verses 17-31 in Mark 10?

Don

Answer: Dear Don,

The man who came to Jesus was seeking eternal life. He asked Jesus, "What must I DO?" He is thinking in terms of deeds and meritorious works that will earn eternal life. He is thinking of actions, of credits that he can amass with God.

Jesus answers him on his own terms – trying to show him how foolish, unrealistic and impossible his line of thinking is. We cannot earn eternal life. Nothing any sinful, imperfect human can do in a thousand lifetimes could ever pay for all of our sins, let alone credit our account with enough "points" so that God would be obligated to give us eternal life – in return for our good works.

That is precisely why Jesus introduces the commandments – for no one had ever kept them perfectly, and no one ever will – with the exception of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh. Every other human has and will fail – for the commandments cannot be kept perfectly by any human. The commandments are not the measurement of eternal life – they help us identify our sin, and in so doing might help lead us to the cross of Christ, the only "place" that we might find eternal life.

Of course, the man claimed to have kept the law – which many have done since, and many still do today. But Jesus’ point is that such claims are ludicrous. When we look into the spiritual mirror, as he often counseled the Pharisees to do, we find an honest reflection of who and what we are and who and what we are not. We are not perfect law keepers. No one is.

This story illustrates the great overarching truth of the gospel – that eternal life is not gained by a careful keeping of the commandments – eternal life is given by grace, it is free – not gained by our performance, but given by the riches of God’s grace because of the perfect and worthy sacrifice of our Lord and Savior. A life characterized by God’s grace is a life based on an attitude of loving and giving to others (hence, "sell what you have and give to the poor") – rather than an obsessive score-keeping relationship with God, a credit balance that we try, in vain, to amass as a result of our rule-keeping and performance-based lives.

We are given eternal life when we trust in Christ’s sufficient work on our behalf, when we surrender to him and what he has done for us, when we believe in him completely, when we, as verse 21 says, follow Christ.

In Christ,

Greg Albrecht