Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
The lawyer’s question
The question of the lawyer is the question of the human heart everywhere. You will find it asked and answered in all the world’s religions. The answers fall into two classes.
1. One set of replies thinks of the better life as a thing external to a man’s own being, procurable by something that a man can do, by bodily self-denial or suffering, or by religious rites or ceremonies.
2. The other class of answers amounts to this--that nothing that is merely outside a man or comes to him from without can ever meet his wants. The true ideal life of humanity is in its very essence a life; it is not doing, it is being. The orthodox doctrine in Christ’s time taught very definitely what was the pathway to eternal life. The religious teachers laid it down that the life God wants men to live was a life of obedience to the law of Moses. The preaching of Jesus Christ did not quite tally with the orthodox teaching of the time. The Pharisee and the penitent, the harlots and publicans, were distinctly conscious that Christ was preaching a new gospel. The gospel of the Pharisees was orthodox; therefore the gospel of Christ was heresy. They were bent upon getting a case against Him, and yet it was not easy. Be Himself fulfilled the law, conformed to all its requirements and statutes, and never spoke disrespectfully of it. How were they to catch Him? One day a crafty lawyer had a very happy thought. He determined to cross-question Christ, to force Him to declare His inner hostility to the creed of the Pharisees, His inner antagonism to the law of God: “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” A fair, honest question, and yet in the very wording of it the note of discord comes out. Jesus is confronted with a man whose notion of eternal life is utterly different from His. It is impossible to answer that man. Instead of answering, Jesus turns questioner. He must bring out the man’s own notions, and then, when He has got them, it may be possible to show him how threadbare, how poverty-stricken, how wrong they are. “What do you find in the law? How readest thou?” The lawyer, taken aback, gives the regulation reply. He could not repeat the whole law, but there was a summary of it, a standing condensed statement of it, and this he repeats to Jesus: “Thou shalt love … ’” Now, what have we to say to that answer? Is this the pathway to eternal life? What more could a man do to make the music of his life majestic, heavenly, splendid? Loving God utterly, and loving all men as you love yourself--no doubt that is life eternal. The scribe’s answer is the true answer; yet in the scribe’s mouth it was an utter lie, and a damning heresy, that was sending men’s souls to ruin. Christ could accept the definition of the lawyer. “Thou hast answered right.” But then the meaning that He felt in those words was a meaning utterly different from that of the Pharisee; and there you have the explanation of His preaching. He took the very same text that the scribes took, but what a different sermon He preached from it, and what a different application against theirs! He did not say
“Obey”; He said the word that must come before obey: He said “Love.” The least bit of love will do more to make you keep the commandments than any amount of studying them, or any amount of selfish resolve to make a good thing out of the commandments for yourself. The essence of the Pharisee’s gospel was selfishness. Save yourself by keeping on the right side, and not giving God a chance against you. What a God, and what a soul! I think that Jesus, as soon as the scribe had given his reply, looked him straight in the face. The look meant, “Dare you pretend that you do that?” and the man felt it, and therefore, we read, was eager-to justify himself. The man’s conscience was uneasy. He instantly said, “Yes, but who is my neighbour?” It is where the heart is cold that definitions come in. “Who is my neighbour? How many men can claim love from me?” said the scribe. Christ did not answer that, but He made a picture in order to ask the scribe this question, “Who is the man who plays the neighbour’s part?” He told of a man who started from Jerusalem to go to Jericho, and was attacked on the way by thieves, who certainly did not play the part of neighbour by him. There came on the road a priest and a Levite. Christ had not that foolish idea that the clergy should never be held up to rebuke or scorn when they deserve it. Do not misjudge the priest and the Levite. You say they did a heartless thing. They did not; they had not heart to do it. Their sin was not in not doing something, but in being heartless. That is the very point of the story. And if you had met these men after hearing of it, and had asked them how they could do such a thing, they would have assured you that they did not see any man like that. They would have told you that they saw a man who had been fighting, or who had got drunk, or who was an impostor. Or they would have told you they were going to a religious service at Jericho, and had not the time for it. All we can say of them is that they had not heart. And Christ paints the other side of it. There came along a Samaritan, a man of a different religion, a man who had been taught of the Jews that he owed them no kindness. He appeared to be a business man, and probably it would be more to him to lose his market than to the clergy to be late for the religious service. He saw the man, and he saw the first passer-by that had seen him; he saw the wretchedness of it--and he had a heart, and that is all. He did not say,” Is there anything in the Decalogue bearing on this?” And he certainly did not say, “Is that man a neighbour? He is a Jew. Where does he come from?” If he had begun going to the law, he would never have done it. And now, mark how the story has answered the question. As soon as it is finished Christ turns to the scribe, and asks, “Who played the neighbour’s part?” Not the priest, not the scribe, not his own fellow-countrymen. It was that Samaritan.
Nobody could deny it. Even the lawyer acknowledges it. That was a beautiful thing to do, and Christ drove it home with the rejoinder, “Go thou and do likswise”; and He sent that man away saying to himself, “No amount of reading the law would ever make me able to do that; more than that, my reading of the law must be all wrong.” Christ had made that man understand that what he wanted was the real love of the real, living, loving God, and the real, common human love to his fellow-men. Where have you and I to learn that love for God and love for man? I will tell you. At the feet of Christ, and by His side, in fellowship with Him, we shall learn to love God with all our heart, and soul, and mind, and strength, and our neigh-bout as ourself; and that is eternal life. (Professor Elmslie, M. A.)
Inheriting eternal life
1. You will observe that the man who asked this question was a lawyer, a man of education and of good standing; a man, therefore, from whom good behaviour and reverence of spirit might reasonably have been expected. You would think that when such a man spoke he would speak soberly, he would mean, under such circumstances, exactly what he said. You find, however, that the inquiry--the very greatest that can possibly engage human attention--was put in a spirit of temptation. The lawyer was not an earnest man. He asked a right question, but he asked it in a wrong spirit. See, then, the possibility of asking religious questions irreligiously. Learn the possibility of asking great questions in a merely controversial spirit, without any profoundly anxious desire to know the answer that God will return to such inquiries. God understands the irony of our attitude. The Living One knows whether we are hungering and thirsting for Him; He can see through our hypocrisies and concealments, and only into the broken heart and the contrite spirit will He come with redemption and life and helpfulness and grace. So that at the very beginning there is to be no mistake about this. We know the conditions upon which alone we receive the revelations of God--that we be quiet, self.renouncing, reverent, sober, anxious about the business; and wherever these conditions are forthcoming, some light will be flashed upon the life, and some healing word will be dropped into the sorrow of the heart.
2. Jesus Himself answered one question by asking another; and so He not unfrequently disappointed men who had undertaken to ensnare Him in His speech. They thought that if they did but put a case to Him He would instantly commit Himself, and they would entrap Him and take Him captive, and make a fool of Him. Here is a man probably accustomed to put questions, and to put questions again upon the answers that are given, and so to cross-examine those with whom he came in contact. Jesus undertakes to deal with him according to the spirit which he presents; and before He lets him go He will show what the man’s meaning is and his nature, and He will expose him as he never was exposed before. Thus quietly He begins: “What is written in the law? Thou art a lawyer, a man of reading, a man of many letters, and of much understanding probably--how readest thou?” God has never left the greatest questions of the human heart unanswered. The great answer to this question about eternal life was not given first of all by Jesus Christ as He appeared in the flesh. Jesus Himself referred to the oldest record; inferentially He said--That question has been answered from the beginning; go back to the very first revelation and testimony of God, and you Will find the answer there. Yet the question is put very significantly: “How readest thou?” There are two ways of reading. There is a way of reading the letter which never gets at the meaning of the spirit. There is a way of reading which merely looks at the letter for a partial purpose, or that a prejudice may be sustained or defended. And there is a way of reading which means, I want to know the truth; I want to see really how this case stands; I am determined to see it. He who reads so will find no end to his lesson, for truth expands and brightens as we study her revelations and her purposes. He who comes merely to the letter will get but a superficial answer in all probability. It was, therefore, of the highest importance that the lawyer should tell how he had been reading the law.
3. The lawyer, please to remember, knew the answer when he asked the question. He said, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” and all the time the answer was in his own recollection had he but known it. Alas I we do not always turn our knowledge into wisdom. We know the fact, and we hardly ever sublimate the fact into truth. We know the law, and we fail to see that under the law there is the beauty and there is the grace of the gospel.
4. “This do,” said Jesus, “and thou shalt live.” What had the lawyer to do? To love the Lord his God with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength and with all his mind. Love is life. Only he who loves lives. Only love can get out of a man the deepest secrets of his being and develop the latent energies of his nature and call him up to the highest possibility of his manhood. Criticism never can do it; theology never can do it; power of controversy never can do it. We are ourselves, in all the volume of our capacity, and in all the relations of our original creation, only when life becomes love and our whole nature burns with affection towards the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us look less at our knowledge and our intellectual capability and our training and our circumstances, and more at the degree of our religious love. The end of the commandment is charity; the summing up of all true law is love. Do we, then, know this mystery of religious love? or is ours a religion that hangs itself upon the outward letter and the ceremonial form? Then observe that the law goes still further than love to God, it includes love to one’s neighbour. Hear the exact expression of the text--“And thy neighbour as thyself.” Love of God means love of man. Religion is the Divine side of philanthropy; philanthropy is the practical side of religion. We must first be right with God or we never can be right with man.
5. Was the lawyer satisfied? Read: “But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neigbbour?” It was the question of a sharp man, but not the inquiry of an honest one. Such a question as this does not need to be answered in words. Every man knows in his own heart who his neighbour is; and only he who wishes to play a trick in words, to show how clever he is in verbal legerdemain, will stoop to ask such a question as this. Why did he ask the question? Because he was willing to justify himself. It is precisely there that every man has a great battle to fight, namely--at the point of self-justification. So long as there is any disposition in us to justify ourselves are we unprepared to receive the gospel. One of the first conditions required of us at the Cross is self-renunciation. Am I to suppose that any one is asking now, What shall I do to inherit eternal life? Do not misunderstand that word do. It may be so employed as to convey a wrong sense. The obtaining of eternal life does not come through any action or merit of our own. There is not a certain journey that is to taken, a labour which is to be performed, a specific duty that is to be discharged. What, then, is there to be? Consciousness of sin, conviction of guilt in the sight of God, self-despair, self-torment, such a knowledge of the nature and reality of sin as will pain the heart to agony; and then a turning of the eyes of faith to the bleeding Lamb of God, the one sacrifice, the complete atonement; a casting of the heart, the life, the hope, upon the broken body of Jesus, Son of God! Dost thou so believe? Thou hast eternal life! This eternal life is not a possession into which we come by and by. We have hold of it now; for to love the Son of God is to begin eternity, is to enter upon immortality I How is this life to be exhibited? In other words, how is it to prove its own existence and defend its own claim? By love. God is love. And if we be in God we shall be filled with love. Let us then retire, knowing that there is in our hearts and minds information enough upon these great questions, if so be we are minded to turn that information to account. Let no man say he will begin a better life when he knows more. Begin with the amount of your present knowledge. Let no man delude himself by saying that if he had a good opportunity of showing charity to a stranger he would show it. Show charity, show piety at home. Let no man say that if he was going down a thief-haunted road, and saw a poor man bleeding and dying there, he would certainly bind up his wounds. Do the thing that is next thee; bear the Cross that is lying at thy feet; start even upon the very smallest scale to love, and thou shalt grow in grace. (J. Parker, D. D.)