QUESTIONS and ANSWERS – Viewpoint
Why did Jesus tell the rich
young ruler in Mark
If we are to take this literally, we have
to conclude that Jesus was saying that He was not good. This would conflict
totally with what we are told in Hebrews 7:26, that our Lord Jesus was “holy, harmless and undefiled;” and in
Hebrews
Jesus, often used exaggerated form to make His point crystal
clear, i.e., “if your hand offend you,
cut it off!” We would all agree, we are not to take that literally. In this passage Jesus was doing what He
always did…pointing away from Himself and to His Father, the source of all
goodness and eternal life. It was by the
goodness of God and His planned purpose that eternal life came into existence.
This is
not the only time that Jesus put the focus on His Heavenly Father. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the grave, He prefaced it with these
words, “Did I not
tell you that if you believed, you would
see the glory of God?” So, they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up
and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I knew that You
always hear Me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here,
that they may believe that You sent Me.” When He had said this, Jesus called in
a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” (John
11:40-43).
There is a lesson in all this. Jesus
wanted the praise and glory to be given to the source of all Goodness, His
Father. Thus, anyone who has the privilege of being a teacher or preacher of
the Scriptures should not be calling attention to himself. If he does, he is
stealing it away from God. On a wider scale, today in Christianity you will see
many ministries named after its well-known leader. The focus upon Jesus and
God, take second place. This is also true of many churches. They call attention
to their denomination on the signs in front of their buildings. Again, the primary
focus is what they believe as contrasted to what other churches teach. Isn’t
this in itself what Paul found fault with in 1 Corinthians 1, where he
condemned divisions in the church?
As one of our hymns say, “To God be the glory,
great things He has done.”
E. Weeks