Spiritually Seeking the Father

A ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus asked him. “No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: Do not commit adultery; do not murder; do not steal; do not bear false witness; honor your father and mother.”

“I have kept all these from my youth,” he said.

When Jesus heard this, he told him, “You still lack one thing: Sell all you have and distribute it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

After he heard this, he became extremely sad, because he was very rich.

Seeing that he became sad, Jesus said, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”

Those who heard this asked, “Then who can be saved?”

He replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”

Then Peter said, “Look, we have left what we had and followed you.”

So he said to them, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left a house, wife or brothers or sisters, parents or children because of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more at this time, and eternal life in the age to come.” Luke 18:18-30 (CSB)

One amazing thing about this walk of Jesus’ is the sheer number of people who come up to ask him questions along the way. Granted, he was a traveling Rabbi, but I’ve been to many of the same places he walked, and very few people asked me anything except whether I wanted to buy something. 

They’re asking for two reasons: Partially to test, and partially to seek. And this rich young ruler was obviously seeking. The characteristics of a seeker are obvious, as they have a voracious desire to find God. It’s a characteristic lauded by Jesus, who says, 

“Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” Matthew 7:7-8 (CSB)

Seekers ask those who exude the characteristics that they desire. There’s a phrase for it in some circles of the church, “Spirit attracts Spirit.” And this deeply spiritually seeking man — one who clearly wants to know the way, finds himself before the Lord.

We’ve talked about Jesus’ answer to his question, before. If you want eternal life, you have to be like God. To express this, he uses the ten commandments, or at least, the second half of the commandments which represent the moral summation of the law. The young man is pleased, because he has been a moral person all of his life, Jesus continues, but you still lack one thing: Sacrifice the thing that stands between you and God, and come follow me. Of course, commentators, and sermons everywhere point out that effectively Jesus summarizes the first half of the ten commandments — the spiritual elements of the law, as abandoning all else and following after him. This is shown later when he praises his disciples for what they have left behind for him. The clear indication is that following Jesus completes the spiritual necessities of the law. Paul will point this out later when it comes to the spirit. 

But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Galatians 5:18

Jesus is saying, it’s not enough to be perfectly moral, you must be perfectly spiritual as well. And no one is that without him (or his Spirit). And the Spirit cannot (or will not) complete us, if we continue to hold things of more value than it. 

My own belief is that this becoming like God is itself an eternal process of ever-becoming. Like C.S. Lewis expresses so vividly in the conclusion to his Narnia Series, this perfection cycle is never accomplished but is eternity itself — to become more and more like God and to know him more is eternal life. It’s at the very heart of the Trinity, which preexists all time. Ever becoming, ever loving.

It’s something His Spirit is doing within us, drawing us into that nature. Whenever we run into anything that hinders, or when we allow a block to rise up within us because of hardened hearts, the process is interrupted until we allow the Spirit to overcome it. We must surrender our idols to become perfect.

So, Jesus tells the young man, there is no Eternal life without God, and there is no Eternal life, without allowing him to make you complete. To settle for anything else is not Glory.