CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mark 10:24. See R.V. text and margin.
Mark 10:25. It is easier for a camel.—This is (as Dr. J. Morison aptly remarks) a fine, bold, hieroglyphic, hyperbolical way of speaking, that need impose on no one with a spark of poetry in his soul. The key to its import is hung at the girdle of common sense. Southey caught its spirit:—
“I would ride the camel,
Yea, leap him flying, through the needle’s eye,
As easily as such a pampered soul
Could pass the narrow gate.”
“The text,” he says, “is gospel-wisdom.” The Saviour intended to represent vividly and memorably the extraordinary difficulty of discharging the responsibilities and overcoming the temptations of riches.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Mark 10:23-27
(PARALLELS: Matthew 19:23-26; Luke 18:24-27.)
Mundane trust a barrier.—Men are ever astonished when taken out of their own little grooves. Enlarge a man’s world and wonderment is the result. Jesus never wondered at His own sayings: it is impossible that He should have so done; and when, as here, He uses the word “impossible,” He simply accommodates Himself to the finite capacity of His auditory. There is no such word as “impossible” in heaven’s vocabulary. The interpretation often given to this passage is too limited in its application; because—
I. Sometimes it is regarded as a reflexion by Jesus Christ upon worldly wealth.—The rich, the poor, the high, the low, the old, the young, were all alike to Him. He looked not to condition, but to character. Jesus is not here talking against wealth, but against trust in riches, a thing altogether different.
II. Jesus is often regarded as referring here only to very rich men.—This is one reason why all men pass the text on to their more wealthy neighbours, as being more applicable to them than to themselves. They forget that wealth is relative—forget that it is as possible to be purse-proud of five pounds as of fifty, and of fifty as of fifty thousand. Trustfulness in riches is a question of disposition and not of length of purse.
III. Jesus Christ is sometimes thought to be referring here only to the realm of the objective.—No doubt the text was suggested to the mind of our Lord by His conversation with the rich young man, the weak point in whose character was love of money. But we should be careful not to mistake parts for wholes—careful lest we conclude that the sayings of Jesus contain no more than what lies upon their surface. So that between the lines we may thus read: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, How hardly shall they that have learning, or physical strength, or intellectual power, or are socially high, or outwardly circumspect, enter into the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for those who place their chief trust in these things to enter into the kingdom of God.”—J. S. Swan.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mark 10:23-25. Money.—The subject of “money” is largely dealt with in the Bible—as much so in the New Testament as in the Old; and no unprejudiced mind will easily escape from the following conclusions about it:
1. That all moneys belong to God, as their Creator and Proprietor (Haggai 2:8; Psalms 50:10; 1 Corinthians 10:26; 1 Corinthians 10:28).
2. That He has consequently the right to every penny we may think our own, and considers Himself robbed if we do not honour Him with our substance (Malachi 3:8).
3. That we are in danger of putting money in God’s place, and thereby becoming idolatrous (Exodus 32:31). We are all prone to the same sin.
4. That, as a counteractive, God commands us to give it away to Him; or, what is equivalent, to good and charitable objects. Thus the Jews were from the very beginning habituated to pay tithes; and Christians are under similar orders to give liberally of their means for the support and extension of the gospel (2 Corinthians 8:7; 2 Corinthians 9:7).
5. That covetousness is a great evil, and leads to many others (1 Timothy 6:10; Proverbs 11:28).
6. That to be rich is to be in great spiritual difficulties. The young man became sad when Christ bade him sell off and give to the poor.
7. That, in this view of it, it is surely better to be poor.
8. That under the Christian dispensation the amount to be given is left to conscience. It is a duty, however, that those to whom God has given most should give Him most.
9. That to give liberally to God entails no loss—not even loss in kind. Given from proper motives, many a subscription of one pound sterling has filled a man’s barns or brought him a hundred per cent. It does not follow that you have really saved your money though you have withheld it (2 Corinthians 9:6; Proverbs 11:24).
10. That the miser may live and die in poverty. Judas hanged himself. Many a rich but illiberal man has died a pauper; and many a poor but liberal man has lived to be opulent and a blessing. I admired the reply that I once got from a liberal lady to a remark that she was too generous with her means. “No, no,” she said; “I am generous only to myself. I wish to keep my money; therefore I clip its wings, lest it fly away; for you know it is written, ‘Riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.’ ”
11. That to be rich in grace is far better than to be rich in gold. Devils shall knock in vain at heaven’s gate, but Lazarus enters.
12. That the Lord Jesus Christ is the only one to whom money can be safely entrusted. “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive riches.”—John Macfarlane, LL.D.
Mark 10:23. Riches a hindrance.—Christ plainly says—because the world needed to be plainly told—that they who have riches (literally, “things they can make use of”) with difficulty enter into the kingdom of God. He says not a syllable about “excess” of riches. He says nothing about “the life to come.” There is nothing said about its being impossible for the man with riches to enter, but there is the definite statement that those who have affairs, businesses, and the results which come from such, shall find it hard to enter. This applies quite as much to the poor as to the well-to-do, and it is concerned with the life that now is. “The kingdom of God” means those over whom God reigns with undivided rule, where His laws are His subjects’ law, His will their will, His ways their ways. With all of us—whatever our riches may be, whether the weekly wage which just provides the things honest, or the wealth of some merchant prince—it is “with difficulty” that we keep ourselves from being “of the world”; it is “hardly” that we enter into the kingdom of God; it is with difficulty that we subserve its advance.—J. W. Owen.
Mark 10:24. Disentangled from possessions.—The poor are sooner astonished at these words than the rich are so much as moved by them: the reason is, because men see the danger of others better than their own. It is much easier for a man to be contented without those things which he has not than to disengage himself from those which he possesses and not to trust in them. The poor may find a sufficient ground of trust and confidence in their poverty, since the kingdom of God is theirs; but the rich have reason to tremble in the midst of their riches. Whoever finds in them his rest, his joy, and his happiness, never thinks of seeking for these things in God. And there lies the greatest misery.—P. Quesnel.
Mark 10:25. Camel and needle’s eye.—The illustration is drawn from one of the common, popular stories in the East, which would be recognised by all. There were far-spread tales and legends of some enchanted city, with a gate of entrance which was a needle’s eye. Among the applicants for admission was a rich merchant, riding on a camel, with its long neck and humped back, packed with precious wares. The rich man, who trusts in riches, fares like the merchant of the story. He cannot pass through the magic gate into the radiant city without the Divine spell which makes him free of the land of the spirit.—Bishop Wm. Alexander.
Mark 10:27. Salvation in the hands of God.—It is the comfort of the humble that their salvation is in the hands of God; and it is the blindness of the proud that they would have theirs in their own. A true Christian is not at all alarmed to find here that without grace his salvation is impossible, because he knows that God can do everything for him, and that he himself can do all things in God through Jesus Christ.—P. Quesnel.
“With God all things are possible.”—Thus God saved Zaccheus, and in this our day some rich and noble men seem to abound in every Christian grace; but though it be possible with God, we may be sure that the Lord did not intend by these words to cancel the warnings He had just uttered. Does the Lord here mean that all things are equally easy to God? By no means. All things may be equally easy to Him as looked at from the side of mere power—mere physical force; but God does not deal with intelligent creatures in the way of overwhelming power. So far as their will is concerned He deals with them, then, after such sort that they should co-operate with Him and yield willingly to Him; and the Lord, if He teaches us anything by the whole matter, teaches us this, that it requires more spiritual effort on God’s part to deliver a man from the love of the world when the man’s wealth enables him to enjoy all that the world has to offer.—M. F. Sadler.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 10
Mark 10:23-27. The peril of property.—No wonder that Anthony, the father of monasticism in Egypt, went out from the church in Thebes where this passage had been read, to give away his ancestral estates, to put his sister into the fellowship and care of pious virgins, and to go himself poor and alone into the solitude of the cliffs! No wonder that in the early centuries the vow of poverty became the threshold article of every Christian life, and, with its twin principle of celibacy, became the foundation of the great monastic orders in the Church! But surely a rich man can be a Christian, and a poor man may be a sinner! For a ragged coat and a diamond ring have no moral quality or spiritual character in themselves. Ah, no! It is not money, but the love of it, that keeps men out of the Father’s house. And so, as we strike the bell or fire the gun to arouse the sleeping village, or dash cold water in the face of the fainting, the Son of God would bestir men to the possibilities of peril which lurk in the possession of property.
Covetous to the last.—We read not long ago the experience of an English clergyman called to the death-bed of a wealthy parishioner. As he kneeled at his bedside, his pastor twice requested him to take his hand as he prayed for his upholding in that solemn hour; but the dying man declined to give it. After the end had come, and they had turned down the coverlet, his rigid hands were found holding the safe-key in their death-grip. No hand of fellowship for his minister, because he could not loose his hold upon the key to the safe-vault! The power of hands which hold in their palms such possibilities of help and service is beyond our arithmetic to compute. The peril, here and hereafter, which waits upon the misuse of such a power is infinite.
Impedimenta.—Lord Bacon, who was a prince of modern worldly philosophers, and who never spoke merely from a spiritual plane in his treatment of practical themes of thought, says emphatically: “I cannot call riches better than the baggage of virtue. The Roman word is better, impedimenta; for as the baggage is to an army, so is riches to virtue: it cannot be spared, nor left behind, but it hindereth the march; yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory.” Then, in commenting on the suggestion that riches will enable men to purchase themselves successes, Bacon adds that “certainly great riches have sold more men than they have bought out.”
The weight of riches.—An opulent merchant having received a sum of money, was putting the ducats one by one into a pair of scales, in order to ascertain that they were not too light. “For my part,” said Gotthold, who was present, “I should be more afraid of their being too heavy.” “How so?” inquired the merchant. “Do you not think,” rejoined Gotthold, “that money is too heavy when bedewed with the blood of the poor, the sweat of the laborious, and the tears of the widow and the orphan, or when loaded with the curses of those who, by fraud or violence, have been robbed of it. I will hope, however, that there are no pieces of this description in that heap of yours, or rather I will not fear that there are any. Suffer me, however, without offence, to express the wish that you will always make your conscience your scales, and weigh in it your dollars and ducats to ascertain that they are of proper weight, and have been honestly acquired. Many a man never learns, until he is struggling with death, how difficult, or rather impossible, it is to force a soul burdened with unrighteous gain through the strait gate which leadeth unto life. Take heed, then, that no such gain ever burdens yours. The more he carries, the more the pilgrim sweats and pants as he climbs the steep; and the more the conscience is oppressed with dishonesty and fraud, the harder will the struggle of a death-bed be.”
Mark 10:23. The giver of wealth forgotten.—Among the legends of Hindostan is one that illustrates these words of our Saviour. One Rawana, a Brahmin, was offered by his god anything that he might name. Rawana prayed his god to bestow upon him the government of the world. His god immediately granted his wish. Then he prayed for ten heads, with which to see and rule the world. After Rawana had well fortified himself, and was surrounded by riches, honours, and praise, he forgot his god Ixora, and bade all the people worship him, an act which greatly angered the god Ixora, and he destroyed Rawana. How true to human nature was the course of Rawana! And how many we find to-day that have forgotten the God that gave them all they possess!
Mark 10:24. Peril of riches.—When Alexander the Great sent a rich present to Phocian the Athenian, the latter asked why he had been the object of so splendid a gift. On hearing that it was because the king considered him the most virtuous man in Athens, he replied, “If he wishes me to preserve my virtue, let him keep his riches,” and forthwith sent back the present to Alexander.
Hard to leave.—When Garrick shewed Dr. Johnson his fine house, gardens, statues, pictures, etc., at Hampton Court, what ideas did they awaken in the mind of that great man? Instead of a flattering compliment, which was expected, “Ah! David, David,” said the doctor, “these are the things which make a death-bed terrible!”
Mark 10:25. Rich men like camels.—It were no bad comparison to liken mere rich men to camels and mules; for they often pursue their devious way over hills and mountains, laden with Indian purple, with gems, aromas, and generous wines upon their backs, attended, too, by a long line of servants as a safeguard on their way. Soon, however, they come to their evening halting-place, and forthwith their precious burdens are taken from their backs; and they, now wearied and stripped of their lading and their retinue of slaves, shew nothing but livid marks of stripes. So, also, those who glitter in gold and purple raiment, when the evening of life comes rushing on them, have naught to shew but marks and wounds of sin impressed upon them by their evil use of riches.—St. Augustine.
Mark 10:27. All things possible to God.—I was pacing to and fro, awaiting a train within a railway station. There were others in the great room, and it was singular none of them had observed it before—a sparrow imprisoned within the sliding window sashes. He had thought he saw a way, but it was a glass wall. He had beaten his wings to tatters, and his fair plumage into rags. The glass was opaque with the stains of his denuded cuticle, and streaked with blood. He may have been in this crystal dungeon for hours, and fighting till he sank into quiet from exhaustion, from which reviving again to fight as when I first heard him. Could I be denied it, as I sprang to that heavy frame and sent it with a bang to the ceiling, letting the oppressed go free? Does not Christ, the Sent to open prison doors, feel a grander propulsion to liberate unhappy men, who thought they saw a way, but found themselves in dreadful bonds of poverty, or pain, or dishonour, or conscious sin? Suppose the sparrow had piped out to me, in shrill treble, that he wanted no mercy, but justice; that he could conduct his own life; that he scorned to be beholden unto any one. It is an analogue of many human souls, who are whipping their wings to shreds against the impossible, while to God all things are possible, even their setting free.—E. J. Haynes.