Luke 18:18-25 - Homiletics

The ruler who refused the crown.

It is a certain ruler, a young man, who accosts our Lord. And the question which he asks represents one of the deepest cravings of the human breast. Is it only in the Gospels that we find this question? It is written into all the religions, into the best of all the philosophies, the poetries, the guesses at truth, which have commanded the thought of the ages, It is as old as human nature, as manifold in its complexion as the human experience, as abiding in its persistence as the human need. It is our question—one compared with which the hundred things which claim our attention are only as strivings after wind. Let us listen. The eternal life: what is it? and how is it realized?

I. WHAT DID THE YOUNG MAN MEAN when he came running and kneeling and asked, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" The answer may indicate the essential features of the desire that has haunted the breast. Clearly he meant three things:

1 . A real, personal existence —one implying distinct consciousness and activity. He is too prosaic, too selfishly in earnest, to mean less than this.

2 . An existence removed from the imperfections of the present time. His notions of immortality may have been crude; but he certainly desired a life which, as contrasted with the changeful and limited, is an eternal life.

3 . A life in relation to a moral or spiritual system. He has possessions. Sirens are ever luring him to the fateful shores of pleasure. Against them "the categorical imperative" of conscience is ever dominant. It says, "Root thy conduct in the everlastingly true. The eternal life is not mere endlessness. It is endless goodness, truth. And to be in harmony with this is to live eternally." Now, such being the contents of his thought, the burden which he brings to the Master is—how it comes that, although the harmony of his conduct with this system is complete, he is still unsatisfied; nay, that the more he seems to approach the ideal the more conscious he is that it is far ahead of him. " Explain it to me" is the passionate entreaty; and who does not love him for this sublime passion? "What is the missing quantity? What is the plus yet to be possessed that I may have eternal life?"

II. Turning to THE ANSWER OF CHRIST , and connecting it with words elsewhere, WHAT IS CHRIST 'S EXPOSITION OF THE ETERNAL LIFE ? The question is, "What shall I do?" And to this the specific reply is, "Be free. Your ]ire does not consist in the abundance of your possessions. Can you part with them, that you may the more unreservedly obey the vision which has dawned on you?" ( Luke 18:22 ). Thus the truth probed him. He might not have been called actually to sell his estate, any more than Abraham was called to offer up Isaac. But the trial of his will was made; and, in the trial, he was found wanting ( Luke 18:23 ). Do we blame him?—we whom the truth is proving every day, only to find that we are caught up by all kinds of vanities! He turned away; and, alas! what of us? But the demand of the Lord reminds us of the requirement essential to the eternal life. Life, we are told by scientists, consists in an adaptation of organism to surrounding. When the adaptation is complete, and the surrounding nourishes the organism, there is health. When it is impaired, there is sickness; when it is broken, there is death. Human life has both a spiritual and a material environment. As the ruler rightly supposed, the eternal life implies correspondence to the spiritual environment.-Where there is no such correspondence, where, in Scripture phrase, the life is "without God," there is death. Where the correspondence has been formed, and the inner life is nourished by the system which surrounds it, there is spiritual, eternal life. But are not the phrases, "systems," "environments," too vague and abstract? Do we not need something more concrete, something nearer us, than such abstractions? This is more concrete, this is nearer us, "Take up the cross; come, follow me" ( Luke 18:22 ). A perfect Man has walked this earth—One in whom the correspondence with the heavenly environment was complete, who lived in and with a Father in heaven, and whose meat was to do his will. His existence, in its details, we cannot copy; but his life, in its principles, inspirations, in all that gave it its beauty and glory, we can realize, under varying conditions. To be joined to him; to live in his light; to be the manner of person that he was; to be affianced to him as the Lord and Friend and Brother of our perfect choice; and have his flesh as meat indeed, and his blood as drink indeed;—this is the way to the eternal life. But what is this life whose way is thus defined? It must be kept always in view that eternal is not merely another name for endless. Endless time would not be eternity. The eternal is the timeless. Everlasting existence may be involved; but this is because the life is what it is—Divine, and therefore imperishable. Christ has supplied many unfoldings of this Divine life (see John 3:1-13 ; John 6:32-53 ; John 17:3 ). May the guidance of the Holy Spirit illumine this teaching! and may we all realize the secret of St. John: "He that hath the Son hath the life!"

III. THIS RULER INTERESTS US . The narrative concerning him suggests reflections which may be dwelt on with profit.

1 . The difficulty, the hindrance, to salvation that is interposed by riches. (Verses 24, 25.) Great possessions, Christ declares, increase the risk of losing the true spiritual health, are apt to stand in the way of the eternal life. It is not the riches themselves that are evil; it is, as one of the evangelists explains, the trust in them, the sensation of them, that is the evil. And may there not be a trust in riches, even when they are not actually possessed? We may have very little, and yet have such a craving for more as proves that the ungotten wealth stands for our best. More than this, with little there may be as much of earthliness and love of the world as when there is much. It is a wretched slavery which one often sees, and the feeling of which one often detects in one's own breast. Persons are miserably ruled over by the sense of wealth. Neither do they get the good, nor does the world get the full good, of what they have. On the other hand, the poor cannot rise to the real dignity of their being because they set possessions on the height which they regard as the summum bonum. Social life is honeycombed by that trust in riches. "How hard it is," says Christ, "for those that have riches to enter into the kingdom of God!" (verse 24).

2. A crown is refused. Who the ruler was we cannot tell. On a sudden he appears, on a sudden he disappears. Is he wrecked, like a ship with full sail, at the harbour-bar? It is noticeable that Jesus "loved him;" in this distinction he is bracketed, in the Gospels, with Martha and Mary and Lazarus. For a moment the crown hangs over his head. Did he finally reject it? But he waves it aside. Oh, not the last who has missed the flood-tide—the blessing offered to the man, and the man turning from it! Young men, all, reflect!