Sermon Bible Commentary
Mark 10:21
The text teaches:
I. How important one thing may be. It not unfrequently happens that the want of one thing vitiates and makes void the presence of all things else. Lacking its main-spring which is but one thing a watch with its jewels, wheels, pinions and beautiful mechanism, the finest watch that was ever made, is of no more use than a dead stone. A ship may be built of the stoutest oak, and manned by the ablest officers and stoutest crew, but I sail not in her if she lacks one thing, that trembling needle which a child might mistake for a toy, but on which, insignificant as it seems, the safety of all depends lacking that one thing the ship shall be their coffin, and the deep sea their grave. It is thus with true piety, living faith that one thing wanting, the greatest works, the costliest sacrifices and the purest life, are of no value in the sight of God, are null and void.
II. That we may be amiable without being truly religious. It is sad to find the grace of God associated in some people with an unkindly, uncharitable, sour, severe, stern, sullen temper. It should not be so. It is a most incongruous conjunction. On the other hand, let it not be forgotten that natural graces have adorned many who were entire strangers to the grace of God. They are not to be confounded with one another; nor is it to be imagined that natural graces ever can compensate for the grace that is to salvation. There may be much that is beautiful in us, without anything holy presenting circumstances more or less analogous to those in nature. Uncultivated wilds have beautiful flowers, and our unsanctified nature has beautiful specimens of humanity.
III. There may be much moral correctness without true religion. Much of our morality of that unblemished character and decent life in which many trust, who say to some poor guilty thing, "Stand aside, I am holier than thou," and plume themselves on this, that they have not sinned as others have done is due, not to their superior virtue, but more favourable circumstances. Therefore let us be clothed with humility, and ever praying, "Lead us not into temptation"; "let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall."
IV. We may feel some interest and anxiety about good things without true religion. I look upon this as one of the most alarming cases in the sacred record. It calls on the best of men to try the foundations on which their hopes are resting. If this man did not get to heaven, how are they to get there? If the righteous, the really righteous, those who have been washed in the blood of the Son, and sanctified by the Spirit of God, are scarcely saved, where shall the wicked and the ungodly appear? If a man, clinging to the world, will stay in it, he shall go down with it, sink with the sinking ship. But accept the offer Christ makes of peace by the blood of His Cross, and you are saved saved in spite of your riches as well as of your sins.
T. Guthrie, Family Treasury,July, 1861.
The Power of Life.
Few can have lived long without feeling that solemn blank which is left at times by one whom, perchance, they little thought filled so large a space, in so powerful a way, by his or her great goodness; what a great emptiness there can be when the presence is no more the presence which, when it is gone, seems to have been everywhere about us in its silent strength. So living is the power of life.
I. And this is true of Christ's life. It is the truth of truths, whether we speak of His life as narrated in the Gospels, or of His life as it may be seen working in the world now. Jesus Christ came with nothing but His life into the world. He came into the midst of the greatest empire that the earth had ever known, into the midst of its force, its armies, its wealth, its learning, its splendour, and brought with Him nothing, nothing but His life. And He left behind Him as a man nothing but the record of that life, written by others, and as God His Holy Spirit working in the world. Jesus Christ brought His own life as His only power, and we are to follow Him. Life alone deals with life. Life alone unlocks the secrets of life.
II. Everywhere Jesus made His own life go in amongst the living men, walking on crowded highways, living in public, in the midst of the people, with multitudes pressing on Him, sought out by publicans and sinners, known in cottages and poor men's homes. There is nothing second-hand in Christ's work. He gave Himself, He Himself and His own life act are all in all. The Incarnation itself is nothing else but this Immanuel, God with us. Christ on earth is nothing else but a continual putting of Divine life into human life. To follow Christ then in any true sense must be the doing this, whatever else it may be. No man follows Christ who leads a separate life. No worker from above, no giver of gifts from above, no sender down of bounty follows Christ. Mind, power, rank, writing, however freely showered down, are mere machine-work, dead, and not the following of Christ, not life moving amongst the living, learning to feel with them and being felt by them as one who can feel, because one of themselves. Christ moved amongst men in this way, life to life, and none follow Him who do not do so likewise.
E. Thring, Christian World Pulpit,vol. i., p. 137.
The dawn of manhood.
I. The facts which form the historical setting of the text are, the birth of hope and the guarantee of a large expectation of success, since they prove that Jesus has a kind and throbbing interest in, and a quick enduring sympathy with, men in the dawning of their manhood. "Jesus, looking upon the young man, lovedhim." That graphic touch of the artist biographer is a revelation. Jesus loves this young man. It was likely that He should. (1) He Himself is young; in the very fulness and freshness of His force, rejoicing in the unimpaired vigour of His life. Young souls are always social, averse to solitude, fresh in their sympathies, and intense in their zest of life. Christ and young manhood are as magnet and steel. They come together like drops of water that touch and hasten to coalesce. (2) Again, a common conflict knits heart to heart, quickens mutual interest and fosters brotherhood amongst the young. Our Master was in all points tempted as young men are. (3) His purpose and methods, too, fed His interest in, and increased His regard for young men. Jesus Christ came to create a new world, and therefore, as soon as He had given Himself to His transcendent task in that baptismal act in the river Jordan, He drew young men to Him by the magnetism of His own nature and sympathies, made them the recipients of His spirit, the exponents of His thoughts, and the messengers of His redeeming Gospel to the world.
II. Jesus demonstrates the old-world fact that a manhood, self-centred and self-contented, is a poor, withered, shrunken, and miserable thing. It is this patent fact that imparts such pungency to the direction Christ gives to this wealthy young ruler.
III. The Lord Jesus reveals the fact that the one infallible requisite for making the right start for a true manhood is the definite and thorough acceptance of the one perfect ideal of the manly life. "One thing thou lackest." What is the one lacking thing is revealed in the words, "follow Me." The supreme need of the soul is the Christ of God.
J. Clifford, The Dawn of Manhood,p. 1.
This young man presented some of the best and some of the. worst aspects of human nature; he may be regarded, therefore, as a representative man. (1) He displayed a degree of moral earnestness; (2) he employed the language of veneration; (3) he was well-instructed in Biblical ethics; (4) he was inordinately attached to worldly possessions. Christ's conduct in the case showed, (1) that He compels men to look at the logical consequences of their own admissions. (2) That personal regard may be entertained where full moral approbation cannot be expressed. Looked at as a whole the text shows:
I. The necessary limitations of the most careful religious training. The young man was no barbarian; the voices of the lawgivers and the prophets had resounded in his hearing, and he was familiar with the harp of the holy minstrels who had turned duty and sorrow, victory and defeat, into music; with practical theology, as pronounced in statutes and commandments, he was perfectly familiar, and even to practical religion in the life he declared himself no stranger. "All these have I observed from my youth." There may be the most careful training of the memory and most jealous watchfulness over the conduct among men, and yet the heart may not be the temple of God.
II. That the final attainment of education is the conquest of the heart. The young man knew enough; he was not perishing for lack of knowledge; light shone upon his intelligence; but his affections were self-enclosed and self-encoiled. There was one cross he could not lift, one surrender he could not make. Only one, but that was all. The conditions which Christ thus imposed show: (1) that Christ-following involves self-abnegation. Men cannot have a little of Christ and a little of self in other words, true men cannot combine public profession and private self-gratification. (2) That Christ-following must be the expression of the soul's supreme love. Men are not permitted to make a mere convenience of Christ. The young man loved his possessions more than Christ's word. There are men who are prepared to observe any number of commandments provided they can also hoard wealth and indulge passion. (3) That Christ-following means self-giving. Christ was the Giver, and men are like Him in proportion as they give. Giving is not yet understood as a test of discipleship. Giving is understood as a patronage, but not as a self-sacrifice.
III. That lack of one thing may be lack of everything. Conduct may be regulated in two ways: (1) by the brain; (2) by the heart. As with a watch so with the life. The face of the watch may be made to represent the truth by simply altering the hands, or it may be corrected by touching the interior works. So it is with human life: many seek to correct it by the outside; they seek for models, they inquire for footprints; but they neglect the life and spring within, and consequently never get beyond the affectation and artificialism, or the stiffness of Pharisaic conceit. These reflections may serve to show the tremendous danger of the fallacy, that if a man is right in the main he will be admitted into heaven.
IV. That the sincerity of men must be tested according to their peculiar circumstances. The young man had great possessions; consequently the test had relation to the worldliness of his spirit. What is a test to one man may be no test to another; hence the difficulty of one man appreciating the "cross" of another, and expressing intelligent sympathy. No other test would have met the peculiarity of this young man's case; he might have fasted long and prayed much, or even given liberally to the poor, but to sell all that he had was a test that shook his soul. The personal cross must be determined by the personal constitution. To one man it is no cross whatever to address a thousand hearers, yet to that very man it may be a heavy cross to speak a word for Christ to oneindividual. He is not, then, taking up a cross in addressing a multitude; his cross lies in another direction, and Christ points him to it.
Parker, Pulpit Analyst,vol. i., p. 181.
References: Mark 10:21. J. Keble, Sermons from Septuagesima to Ash Wednesday,pp. 293, 303; E. Thring, Christian World Pulpit,vol. i., p. 137; H. Burrows, Church of England Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 353; Homilist,vol. vi., p. 333; Spurgeon, Evening by Evening,p. 54; Homiletic Magazine,vol. xiii., p. 341; New Manual of Sunday School Addresses,p. 181; J. Vaughan, Sermons,10th series, p. 69.