And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.
Ver. 17. Why callest thou me good?] And if I be not good, much less art thou, what good conceits soever thou hast of thyself. Here, then, our Saviour teaches this younker humility and self-annihilation. Phocion was surnamed Bonus Good, but what was his goodness more than a silver sin? Lacones neminem bonum fieri publicis literis columna incisis sanxerunt. Plut. in Quest. Graecis.
There is none good but one, that is God] He both is good originally (others are good by participation only), and doth good abundantly, freely, constantly: "For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive," saith David, Psalms 86:5; Psalms 119:68; "And let the power of my Lord be great," saith Moses, "in pardoning this rebellious people." In the original there is a letter greater than ordinary in the word jigdal (be great), to show, say the Hebrew doctors, that though the people should have tempted God, or murmured against him, ten times more than they did, yet their perverseness should not interrupt the course of his ever-flowing, over-flowing goodness, Numbers 14:17. יגדל Hebrew Text Note Magnum iod quod valet decem, &c. Buxtorf. See Trapp on " Num 14:17 "
If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments] That is, saith Luther, Morere, die out of hand; for there is no man lives that sins not. It is said of Charles IV, King of France, that being one time affected with the sense of his many and great sins, he fetched a deep sigh, and said to his wife, Now, by the help of God, I will so carry myself all my life long, that I will never offend him more; which word he had no sooner uttered, but he presently fell down and died. It is not our Saviour's intent here to teach that heaven may be had or earned by keeping the law; for Adam in his innocence, if he had so continued, could not have merited heaven, neither do the angels, nor could Christ himself, had he been no more than a man. None but a proud Luciferian would have said, as Vega, the Popish perfectionary, did, Coelum gratis non accipiam, I will not go to heaven for nought, or on free cost. But our Saviour here shapes this young Pharisee an answer according to his question. He would needs be saved by doing, Christ sets him that to do which no man living can do, and so shows him his error. He sets him to school to the law, that hard schoolmaster, that sets us such lessons as we are never able to learn (unless Christ our elder brother teach us, and do our exercise for us), yea, bring us forth to God, as that schoolmaster in Livy did all his scholars (the flower of the Roman nobility) to Hannibal; who, if he had not been more merciful than otherwise, they had all perished.