Luke 18:20

“You know the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour your father and mother.”

Jesus then takes up the question with what was probably a stock reply, so that he can search out the man's thinking. He cites the main part of the covenant of Sinai that applies to attitude towards others (Exodus 20:1), omitting those which refer to God. Perhaps He acknowledges thereby that no man can determine whether he is treating God rightly. He can only test it by considering his behaviour towards men and women. Or perhaps He could see what this man's god was, and was waiting to apply that later. But He certainly does intend the man to see His words in the context of the whole Law, and in the light of His own teaching on the matter (se Matthew 5).

Outwardly the commandments mentioned would not be difficult for a man in the ruler's position to keep if they were just taken as they were stated. What would be more difficult would be keeping the underlying implications as later expounded by Moses, and as expanded by Himself in Matthew 5, implications relating to thoughts and desires. But He must also have been aware that the ruler would not be contented with this reply. It was a deliberately standard reply that anyone could have given him This was not why he had sought out a prophet. It really did not solve his dilemma. The point was that he knew that his life was not satisfactory.

Perhaps Jesus' aim was also to make the ruler ask himself, ‘Why has He not told me that I must worship only God', ‘why has He not said that I must not covet? (The commandments that He has omitted) For Jesus already knew what the young man really worshipped, and that he coveted, and He would shortly be coming on to it.

Note On The Order In Which Luke Cites The Commandments.

The order of the commandments as given by Luke differs from that in Exodus 20 in the Hebrew text, but it may well have been a recognised order in use in 1st century AD (compare Romans 13:9; James 2:11), and is found in some LXX texts of Deuteronomy 5. Or it may simply be the order in which Luke's source remembered them, or even Luke's preferred order, with the one he wanted to stress put first. Perhaps he felt that adultery was the sin that the ruler (or his readers) might be most likely to have committed of the two primary commandments. Matthew and Mark both have it slightly differently, following the normal order. But the basic ideas are the same. All of them put ‘Honour your father and your mother' after the primary list, probably because they saw the other commandments as all going together.

But whereas Luke only selects out what are actual commandments in the texts he knows, Mark adds ‘You shall not defraud', and Matthew adds, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' We may see it as probable that Jesus gave a longer list than any of them record, but that Luke omitted what he did not see as actual commandments (he chose to do so, for he had Mark in front of him). We do know that ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself' is cited by Jesus (and Luke 10:27) at another time, and that Luke often seeks to prevent repetition. But the basic idea is clear in all, that he should keep the commandments and obey the Law.

End of note.