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Sharing [Lu 3:11] + The Rich Young Man [Mt 19 & Mk 10]
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Yes. I'd like to ask a question about Luke 3:11 and also the passage that talks about the rich young ruler whom Christ told to sell everything and to follow Him. How can we relate this to today's life? How should we as Christians relate it to our lives today?
HC: All right. Fine. Thank you.
The question is raised concerning Luke 3:11. There we read, "He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none. And he who has food, let him do likewise." This is John the Baptist who is speaking to the people who are coming to him as he preaches the gospel of repentance. And he is saying that they are to start loving their neighbors. They are to start sharing.
Jesus said in another place that we must "love our neighbor as ourself." Now God has put within our being a self-love, which is part of God's program, so that we will preserve ourselves. We're always a little extra careful that we aren't going to get hurt, if we're doing something. We're always careful to make sure that all is going to go well with us. And God wants us to have an equal concern for others.
And here it is put in the language, "If you have two coats and you meet with someone who has none, then share with him what you have," because if he does not have a coat, then he is in real trouble. He can't meet the cold. Now ultimately there's a deeper meaning here. The fact is, God has lavished the Gospel upon us. And we have been clothed with the robe of Christ's righteousness. And now we meet someone who is unsaved. He stands spiritually naked before God. And we are to be ready to share this marvelous Gospel that God has lavished upon us. We are to share with him, so that he too might become saved, so that he too, if he is exercised by it, might be clothed by the robe of Christ's righteousness.
And notice the second phrase: "And he who has food, let him do likewise." And when we are saved, we have come into an abundant harvest of food, as we feed on the Lord Jesus Christ. The Word of God is the Bread of Life. And we meet someone who is unsaved. They are spiritually famished. They are dying of malnutrition, because they have no spiritual food to eat. And we very generously are to share this. In a real sense this is getting right to the responsibility of the believer to be available to share the Gospel, to make all that he has available to share the Gospel.
Now this gets us into this matter of the rich young ruler. The rich young ruler was a young man who really thought that he was rich in his good works. He was rich physically, too. But he was also rich in his good works. When Jesus asked him what he had to do to have eternal life, he said that one has to keep the commandments. And he answered, "I've kept all of these from my youth."
In other words, he was very satisfied that he was worthy before God. Probably he was seeking a commendation from Christ, looking upon Christ only as a Rabbi, where Christ as a Rabbi would say, "My, you 're a fine young man. And certainly God ought to be grateful to have you in the Kingdom. You are rich in your good works, even as you are rich in your money."
But Christ, of course, has come with a different kind of salvation. We are not saved by our good works. We are not saved by our personal worthiness. The Bible teaches that even our best works are "as filthy rags." If we have committed even just one sin, we stand guilty of hell. And the only way we can ever get into Heaven would be, first of all, to spend an eternity in hell. And since eternity is forever, we would never make it into Heaven.
And so anyone at all who thinks that he's rich in good works, who thinks that he's really worthy before God, is in deep and terrible trouble. And so Christ has to show this young man hat he is in trouble, that he is not qualified at this point, in any way, to go into Heaven.
And so He says, "Sell all that you have and give to the poor, and come and follow Me." Now there's a two-pronged implication here. First of all, Christ is talking about physical riches. In another place, in Luke's Gospel, we find the same kind of a statement to all of us. It's bad enough when we read it about the rich young ruler, but actually God is giving this command to all of us.
In verse 32 of Luke 12: "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. Sell your possessions and give alms (that is, give to those who are poor). Provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
In other words, Christ is effectively saying, "Make your possessions available to the spiritually poor." He's not talking about the physically poor. He's talking about the spiritually poor, because these are the ones to whom we bring the Gospel. We are stewards of God, ambassadors of God, to get the Gospel out. And we are to make everything that we have as available as possible to bring the Gospel.
And so there is this physical sense, therefore, that we must understand when Christ replied to the rich young ruler that he was to sell his possessions and give to the poor. He was to make himself a disciple of Christ by this obedience, that is, by placing his trust in Christ. And he was to make himself totally available, that all that he had might be ready to be of service to God in bringing the Gospel to others.
But there was another sense that God had in view here. "Sell all that you have and give to the poor, and come and follow Me." In other words, your riches are not going to get you into Heaven, your rich deeds, your good works. That isn't going to get you anywhere, except to hell. You strip yourself of all of this. You come as a spiritually bankrupt sinner before God. None of these good works are meaningful at all. Christ did not come to call the righteous, that is, the self-righteous. He came to call sinners to repentance. And when you have become spiritually stripped of anything that you think is good or worthy, then you're going to be ready to follow Me. Then you're going to be ready to understand the salvation which I have to offer.
And the young man went away "exceedingly sorrowful, because he had great possessions." On both counts he was still trusting in his good works. He liked his physical riches too much. He was not ready to surrender his will to Christ as King and Lord of his life.
Now if we're going to he born again, we must be ready to obey Him. We must count the cost of discipleship. The cost of discipleship means that we have to turn our back on the world. Our security no longer is in the things of this world. Our security is no longer in the pursuit of pleasure and all of these things that are so attractive to unsaved men. Our security is going to be in Christ. We're going to find that we're to live as strangers and pilgrims here. We're just passing through.
But we also are going to find that we have a real task, a real mandate. We are to be stewards of all that Christ has given us, so that we might share that Gospel with others to the very highest possible degree.
And if we're not ready to face this kind of life, it means that we're not ready to belong to Christ. We have not really understood what it means to call upon God for mercy and to repent of our sins and trust in Christ only.