Mark 10:19

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

Jesus began by putting before him something of the standards God required of man. The requirements outlined follow the second part of the ten commandments, the part that could be actually demonstrated before men. ‘Do not defraud' may well have been intended as a warning against covetousness, thus making up the last six commandments. But here, interpreted in the way in which the young man interpreted them, they were all things that a respectably brought up, wealthy Jewish young man of authority would on the surface feel that he had refrained from, unless he had been put to extreme temptation or had read the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), and that was precisely what he was. Matthew tells us that Jesus added, ‘and you shall love your neighbour as yourself ' and there is no reason why it should not have been included by Jesus for it was a favourite requirement of His (Mark 12:31; Matthew 19:19; Matthew 22:39; Luke 10:27), and got to the heart of all these commandments.

Perhaps had the young man considered the words further he might have hesitated in his claim to goodness, especially if he had heard the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:29), but he was young and constrained by the standards he knew, and perhaps a little self-righteous, and so he thought that he had not failed as regards the commandments. And yet in spite of that he knew that he lacked something, although he was not sure what. It was in fact because in his heart he did fail, because he had a failing which controlled him without his realising it, the deceitfulness of riches.

It is interesting that Jesus did not directly cite the commandment that had so struck Paul (Romans 7:7), “You shall not covet”. He stated it as “do not defraud”. For as will be seen the equivalent of covetousness for a rich man was in fact the young man's weak point, and possibly Jesus did not want to bring its impact home too early. It was not that the young man coveted what others had, he owned too much for that, but that he loved what he had to such an extent that it gripped his life and prevented him from being totally outgoing towards God. And that was what Jesus was building up to.