The Man Who Went Away Sad: Mark 10:17-31

He came running—a man of wealth and position, yet running like a child to catch Jesus before he left. He fell on his knees in the dust of the road, his fine robes pooling around him.

"Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

Jesus probed the word: "Why do you call me good? No one is good—except God alone."

Then the commandments: no murder, no adultery, no stealing, no false testimony, no fraud, honor your parents. The man's face brightened:

"Teacher, all these I have kept since I was a boy."

He had done everything right. Moral since childhood. Obedient to the letter. Surely he had earned what he sought.

Mark records something remarkable: Jesus looked at him and loved him.

Loved him. Not just evaluated him, not just tested him—loved him. With that love, Jesus said the words that would break the man's heart:

"One thing you lack. Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

The man's face fell. The word Mark uses suggests something collapsing inward, a darkening like clouds covering the sun. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.

Jesus watched him go—the one who had everything except the one thing that mattered.

"How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!"

The disciples were amazed. In their world, wealth was blessing, proof of God's favor. If the rich couldn't enter, who could?

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

They were even more amazed. "Who then can be saved?"

Jesus looked at them. "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God."

Peter, perhaps thinking of his own abandoned nets, said: "We have left everything to follow you!"

"Truly I tell you," Jesus replied, "no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life."

A hundred times as much—with persecutions. The fine print in the promise. The cost included in the reward.

"But many who are first will be last, and the last first."

Somewhere, the rich young man was walking home to his possessions, the eternal life he sought slipping through his fingers with every step.