Matthew 19:18-19

‘He says too him, “Which?” And Jesus said, “You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness. Honour your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” '

The young man is delighted with the answer that he must keep the commandments. This is what he is looking for. So the question now is as to which commandment will enable him to do the one good thing that will surmount all the other good things that he has done. How can he achieve the pinnacle that he is seeking?

Jesus replies, with what can only be seen as a brief summary of Matthew 5:21, by citing the commandments which relate to behaviour towards men, and includes within them Leviticus 19:18, that he must love his neighbour as himself. This was especially pertinent when considering the action and attitude of heart of a wealthy young man. It summarised all the other commandments. In a sense it was the pinnacle of all manward commandments (Matthew 22:39).

Note that Jesus is doing here the same thing that He has commanded His disciples to do. He is teaching men to obey all God's commandments to their fullest extent (compare Matthew 5:17). That is what, in the end, salvation is all about. It is to bring us holy, unblameable and unreproveable into His sight (Colossians 1:22) through the imparting of His own mighty righteousness (Matthew 5:6). It is that we be made like Him (1 John 3:2). Nothing less than this will do. Never listen to anyone who says that you can be saved without wanting to be righteous, for the one will result in the other.

The order in which He pronounces the commandments is logical. First He pronounces four of the last five commandments in order, and then He personalises the whole in terms of parents and ‘neighbours', thus covering all aspects of social life. No sphere remains untouched.

(Matthew is probably here summarising a wider description of what was required. Comparison with Mark and Luke reminds us that each writer gives us the pith of what was said without pretending to record the whole. It is giving us the truth of what was said. They could not record whole conversations, any more than newspaper reports do, otherwise the writers would soon have run out of space).