Transcript
Our subject this morning is an individual who has become known in church circles as the rich young ruler. And I think it would be well for us to read the text that applies to him.
Bearing in mind that this story is given in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and we want to read from Luke, but we will be referring from time to time to the other gospel accounts as well. And you will find it in Luke chapter 18.
Luke chapter 18 and verse 18:
Now a certain ruler asked Him, saying, Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
So Jesus said to him, Why do you call Me good? No one is good but one, that is, God. You know the commandments: Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and your mother.
And he said, All these I have kept from my youth.
So when Jesus heard these things, He said to him, You still lack one thing. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow Me.
But when he heard this, he became very sorrowful, for he was very rich.
And when Jesus saw that he became very sorrowful, He said, How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
And those who heard it said, Who then can be saved?
But He said, The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.
Then Peter said, See, we have left all and followed You.
So He said to them, Assuredly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or parents or brothers or wife or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who shall not receive many times more in this present time and in the age to come everlasting life.
Not very long ago I heard a well-known lordship preacher make this statement. He said the very best example of personal evangelism by Jesus that is recorded in the entire New Testament is the story of Jesus’ interview with the rich young ruler.
Now I do not want to say to you that I was shocked or surprised by this statement, because certainly that is not a novel idea as far as those who hold to lordship salvation are concerned. One needs only think of Walter J. Chantry’s little volume called Today’s Gospel: Authentic or Synthetic in which he basically expounds the doctrine of salvation from the story of the rich young ruler.
But when I heard this statement quite recently it struck me that yes, this is a story which in a very real sense divides the theologies that are competing in the biblical marketplace today. If there is any passage that perhaps seems to promote a lordship type of salvation the rich young ruler might be said to be that passage.
But as I listened to the statement I could not help but think to myself, so this is for the lordship salvation person the best example of personal evangelism in the New Testament? Well what in the world ever happened to our Lord’s interview with Nicodemus? What in the world ever happened to our Lord’s interview with the Samaritan woman at the well?
Is it not striking that a lordship preacher would pass over the interview with Nicodemus with this wonderful statement about you must be born again? With its incorporation of perhaps the most fruitful gospel verse that has ever been uttered: For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Is it not interesting that lordship theology tends to pass that interview by as well as the wonderful interview with the woman at the well? If thou knewest the gift of God and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of Him and He would have given thee living water.
How very striking indeed. How very representative it seems to me of the tremendous gulf that separates lordship salvation theology from the biblical offer of salvation by the free grace of God alone.
But what I want to consider this morning is the lordship treatment of this text. And I want to suggest to you that this text only seems to be a good text for lordship salvation theology because lordship expositors make errors about the text at two very vital levels.
The first error is made at the historical level. That is at the level of asking the question what was really happening in the story. Secondly the lordship exposition makes a mistake at the literary level. That is it makes a mistake at the level of what is the role of the story within the synoptic accounts. How is it included by Matthew, Mark, and Luke? What is the purpose? What is the lesson? What is the focus of the story from the standpoint of the composition of the synoptic gospels themselves?
And it is those two considerations that I want to build my discussion around this morning. The historical level: what is really going on here? The literary level: what is the role of this story within the framework of Matthew or Mark?
So let us begin then with the historical level. What was really going on?
Let me begin by making a very simple but a very basic point which in my judgment is the clue to correctly understanding this particular text. The basic point that I want to make is that the story of the interview with the rich young ruler is pre-evangelism and not evangelism. It is pre-evangelism, not evangelism.
I would contend that in this interview Jesus never states the gospel directly. And the reason He does not state it directly is because the ruler is not ready for it. And in that way the story stands in very sharp contrast to the way in which our Lord dealt with Nicodemus or the woman at the well.
There is no real need for Jesus to engage in pre-evangelism with Nicodemus because nobody can do these miracles that you are doing except God be with Him. And Jesus almost immediately confronts him with the gospel: unless the man is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.
Jesus knows His customer and He knows that the rabbi before Him is ready to hear the gospel in the form in which Jesus chooses to articulate it. I do not know what you think and the text is not explicit but given the data from the rest of the gospel it is my opinion that Nicodemus got saved on the rooftop or wherever it was he was conversing with Jesus. He did not confess Him until a considerable time later but I believe that he got saved at that point.
Even as it may be, Jesus passes by the issue of pre-evangelism and confronts him at once with the gospel. The same thing is true in John chapter 4. Here is this woman who comes out and Jesus says, Give me to drink. And she says, How does it happen that you, a Jew, are asking for a drink from me? I am a Samaritan woman.
And Jesus just passes everything by at that point and He says, If thou knewest the gift of God and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of Him and He would have given thee living water.
What is Jesus saying? He says you are really ready. All you need is a little information. If you would know what God wanted to give you, if you had known who I was, you would already have asked and I would already have given you living water.
No need for pre-evangelism with Nicodemus. No need for pre-evangelism with the woman at the well. But a lot of need for pre-evangelism with this man as we shall see. The ruler never gets the gospel explicitly spelled out to him but the ruler gets an awful lot to think about.
Let us examine the story therefore with this perspective in mind. Let us begin with the ruler’s question: Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
Now when we compare the three accounts of this story we discover that the question is given in a slightly variant form in Matthew where he says, What good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life? Whereas in Mark and Luke he says, What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?
Let me suggest that from the ruler’s perspective the two forms of the question are precisely identical. That the ruler is coming from the background of Jewish theology and that from the standpoint of Jewish theology eternal life was acquired in the future on the basis of merit. That is what his whole question implies.
I need to do something to have eternal life. I need to do something to inherit eternal life. As far as my reading goes the word inherit was frequently used by the rabbis in precisely this meritorious sense. You inherited because you had it coming to you. You inherited because you merited the thing.
And that is what obviously is on the rich young ruler’s mind. What can entitle me to eternal life in the future? is what he is asking Jesus.
Now let us stop right here with the question. That is the Jewish point of view. The Christian perspective is quite different. From the Christian perspective eternal life can be acquired here and now. But when it is acquired here and now it cannot be acquired meritoriously. It must always be acquired as a gift.
Secondly the Christian perspective is also that eternal life can be acquired in the future. But when it is acquired in the future it is always acquired as a reward. And I might go one step further. Nobody can ever get eternal life in the future as a reward who does not first get it in the present as a gift.
Remember the words of Jesus in John chapter 10 verse 10: I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly. And we make a mistake if we think eternal life is just a static and unchanging entity. Eternal life has within it the very capacities of the infinite God and those capacities can be developed over a period of human experience.
As Bob Wilkin was telling you this morning, by obedience to God we can enlarge our capacity for eternal life in the future. So that Paul is able to say in Galatians chapter 6 for example, He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.
Your good works, says Paul, are like seed that you are scattering in the field and if you do enough planting you are going to do an awful lot of reaping in the future.
So the Christian perspective is a change from the Jewish perspective. Jewish theology did not really have a place for the acquisition of eternal life right here and now much less the acquisition of that life on the basis of the free grace of God. For the Jew eternal life belonged to the future. You could only get it meritoriously.
And that is the way the rich young ruler is thinking about it.
Now it is striking the way in which Jesus initially responds to the rich young ruler’s question: Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And it is just as if Jesus has not heard the question at all and majors on a minor.
Did you just call Me good? Why did you do that? Why do you call Me good? No one is good but God.
May I suggest that this totally unexpected question is the real pivot of this story. The problem with the ruler is his concept of good. That is his problem. And this is a critical problem at two levels.
It is critical with regard to his view of Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ is no more than a rabbi, no more than a teacher, then the rich young ruler has been very careless and inappropriate in tagging Him with the title good in the ultimate sense. That would be inappropriate if Jesus is no more than a man.
But also the rich young ruler should not tag himself as good which in fact in the subsequent interview is precisely what he does. What the rich young ruler really needs is a radical reorientation to what the word good is all about when used in its ultimate and final sense. And that is the pivot of our Lord’s dealings with this man.
Do I need to tell you that this question, Why do you call Me good? There is none good but God, rings loudly with the echoes of Pauline theology? That is the wrong way to say it. Holy theology rings loudly with the echoes of the teaching of Jesus Christ. But we need only think of Romans 3:9-20.
There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good, no, not one.
There is none good but God. And if the rich young ruler thought that he was good he was wrong. And that is the pivot of the story.
But now notice that Jesus proceeds to utilize the law. He does not apparently wait for the rich young ruler to answer the question that He has raised. He is planting however respecting the rich young ruler’s mind: no one is good but God alone.
And then He proceeds to say, You know the commandments: Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother. And according to the gospel of Matthew He also adds, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
In fact in Matthew we have the exclusive statement made to the ruler by Jesus: If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.
We are reminded of a very similar statement made by Jesus in Luke chapter 10. You remember in the exchange with the lawyer that preceded the telling of the parable of the good Samaritan the lawyer says, What shall I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus says, What is written in the law? How readest thou?
The lawyer replied, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength and thy neighbor as thyself. And Jesus said, Thou hast answered right. This do and thou shalt live.
And then the lawyer wanted to justify himself because the convicting arrow had struck him. You see Jesus used the law in exactly the way that the apostle Paul taught us the law should be used. He used it as an instrument to convict of sin.
His intent in using the law with the rich young ruler as well as His intent in using it with the lawyer was to expose the inadequacy of a teeny salvation by the law. If man could have kept the law that would have been the way of salvation. Remember the words of Paul in Galatians 3:21: If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.
The law held eternal life out as a reward to people. It was there for the person who was obedient to it. Trouble was people were as far away from the offer as the people sitting in the back of this church are away from my hand. There was no way to reach it and therefore no way to be saved through the law.
Now Jesus therefore intends the recital of the commandments to reinforce this statement about none being good. That is what He intends it to do. But that is not what it does.
Notice the ruler’s response to the law. One of the most smug and overconfident statements ever made in the Bible: All these things have I kept from my youth. A ridiculous claim.
Okay maybe he had not committed adultery. Maybe he had not murdered. But honor his father and mother? Even if we say that his responsibility to this came at the normal Jewish age of twelve I have yet to meet a twelve-year-old boy or girl who can say when they reach manhood that they have consistently honored their father and their mother. Such a person does not exist.
Some real good kids exist but just to disabuse any of you loving parents of the notion no perfect kids exist. And the home is one of the places where you find this out the most quickly.
And then of course Jesus added the statement that is added in Matthew: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I have done that too is what the rich young ruler said. Nonsense. He had not.
And the subsequent offer and challenge that Jesus gives him to unload all of his wealth and give it to the poor is a dramatic exposure of the fact that he had not loved his neighbor as himself. If he loved his neighbor as himself it would not have mattered whether his neighbor had his money or he had it. But he loved himself a little bit more than his neighbor.
Notice therefore that the law does not have its intended effect upon the young ruler. Like so many before him and so many after him he thinks he has done a good job of keeping it. How many people have we met who said, I think I will make it to heaven. I keep the Ten Commandments?
They are mistaken as was the rich young ruler. And precisely because he is not convicted in his heart of being inadequate at this point he is thus not ready for the gospel. He has in Pauline terms not learned the lesson of the pedagogue. The law was intended to lead men to the experience of Christ. For the rich young ruler it has not yet done this.
It is very striking I think that in the gospel of Matthew and in the gospel of Matthew alone we have the rich young ruler saying, All these have I kept. What lack I yet? An interesting combination of ideas. I have done everything. What is wrong with me?
May I suggest that unconvicted though he is by the commandments of the law he senses that not everything is right as it ought to be. That is why he has come to Jesus. If he was quite confident that he was keeping the law as the Jewish rabbis taught that you should keep the law why should he have to come to Jesus with the question, What good thing shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?
There must be something more here. Because deep down underneath apparently there is a vague disquietude in the rich young ruler. So we have here it seems to me a case of spiritual exercise that has not quite developed into a full-blown case of conviction of sin. A man who thought he was good but had a feeling that something was missing. What do I still lack?
That leads to a response from Jesus: You still lack one thing. If I were to ask you the question what did the rich young ruler lack? Do not answer this out there you exegetes out there particularly. I will ask you the question: what did the rich young ruler lack? What would be your answer?
It seems to me that this is precisely where many expositors completely jump the track. And that leads me to a brief parenthesis. Jesus used many effective teaching techniques and one of these techniques for want of a better phrase can be called the pre-understanding.
Now that sounds like something you get from a theology teacher or right seminary teacher. I apologize. I had to invent something that had two p’s in it. Okay?
What I mean by that is sometimes Jesus made statements that He knew were going to be misconstrued up front. But He knew His hearers would misunderstand in a certain way and He did it deliberately because He was undertaking to stretch the consciousness of the individuals He was teaching.
Let me give you some examples. On one occasion Jesus was standing in the temple precincts apparently and He said, Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. And everybody leaped to the very logical conclusion in that context that He meant the physical temple over there.
And the Jews said it took forty and six years to build this temple and you are going to destroy it and rebuild it in three days? And that misunderstood understanding of Jesus’ words hung on all the way through His ministry and was actually part of the charges leveled against Him at His trial.
But as the gospel of John explains He was speaking about the temple of His body. When Nicodemus comes to Him He says, You must be born again. We can forgive Nicodemus for asking can a man enter the second time into his mother’s womb? That is a logical pre-understanding of that statement.
But it was long before Jesus expands His consciousness immediately. If you had known the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you give me to drink you would have asked and He would have given you living water. But the woman in Semitic speech the word for living meant running water. Nothing surprising about the woman replying to Him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with and the well is deep. From whence then hast thou that living water?
And Jesus proceeds to expand her consciousness. Jesus says to His disciples, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth. Great say the disciples he is going to get well. But Jesus was not talking about John says the taking was sleep and slumber. He was talking about the death of Lazarus.
He expands their consciousness and this very well may be the first Christian usage of the term sleep in reference to death. Jesus is in the boat with the disciples and He says, Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Herodians. And the disciples looked at each other and said it is because we have not brought any bread.
Jesus knew they were going to misunderstand it that way and He explains He is not talking about the leaven of bread but about the doctrine of the Pharisees and Herodians.
Now notice what Jesus does here. He says, You still lack one thing. Go sell everything that you have. Give to the poor and come follow Me and you will have treasure in heaven.
It would have been easy for the rich young ruler to leap to the conclusion that the thing he lacked was giving up everything and following Jesus. And of course I am sure that Jesus intended him to get that initial misapprehension and then to struggle with that thought.
Let me suggest that as the ruler goes away from Jesus he is now in a position to engage in this train of thought. I do not really want to give everything I have away. What if I already want to? And if that is the one thing that I lack I have to admit I prefer my riches to eternal life.
But if I prefer money to God’s kingdom does not that suggest that maybe I am a little greedy? But if I am greedy I am not really a real good man. Hey wait a minute. That is what Jesus said. There is none good but one that is God.
But if nobody is good how does anybody make it? What is it that I really lack? What did Jesus really mean when He said one thing? You are still lacking one thing.
Well folks exegetes theologians what did He really mean? It seems to me that the biblical answer is faith in Christ. Or as Paul might say he lacked the righteousness that is imputed to faith. He is not good. He never will be good by attempting to measure up to any level of commandments.
And he is back at square one. He needs a righteousness that comes from some other source besides himself. Romans 3:5 to him that worketh not but believeth in Him who justifieth the ungodly his faith is counted for righteousness.
I contend that in the context of New Testament doctrine the one thing he lacked was faith in Jesus Christ. Or to put another way the faith that brings acceptance and rightness before God.
But notice that after saying one thing you lack Jesus challenges him with the words, Go sell what you have. Give to the poor. Come follow Me and you will have treasure in heaven. On the surface this is a call to discipleship and reward.
But obviously Jesus knew that this challenge to discipleship would be refused by the rich young ruler. To put it very simply the rich young ruler lacked sufficient faith in Jesus to pick up a challenge like that.
Think of the boldness of this challenge. Here is a Jewish rabbi and He says to this man go out and get rid of all your money. All of it. Give it all away. And you have My word for it that you will have treasure in heaven. What an astounding thing. What an astounding claim.
You can get rid of everything that you depend on and you can take Me at My word and I will guarantee your future. Now the ruler is in a position to engage in this kind of thinking. Who does this man think He is? Does He think that I will give up everything I have got just on His word alone?
How can any rabbi expect me to put that kind of confidence in Him? Well the only person that I would trust that much is God Himself. Wait a minute. Did not Jesus say to me why do you call Me good? There is none good but God.
Could Jesus have been implying that He is God? And depending on how much messianic theology this man had you might say of course Messiah will be God’s Son. Could Jesus be implying that that is who He is? Can this man be claiming to be the Messiah?
Now I suggest this. Jesus has given this man so much to think about and I have no way of guaranteeing that he thought about it very long or very hard but He has given him plenty to think about. And if the ruler will think about the things that Jesus has said to him he will be ready for the gospel.
What is the sequel to this? We will have to wait till heaven to find out. But let me give you one possible scenario. After a week or so of getting the full impact of Jesus’ words the ruler decides I am going back to Him. I am going to ask Him a different kind of question this time.
Teacher I think I figured out what you are trying to get across to me. That I am not good right? You think I love my money too much right? Teacher I am wondering. I am wondering if your words to me also imply that you are someone more than a teacher. For instance Messiah.
Remember the woman at the well. I have heard that Messiah comes and when He comes He will tell us all things. And the interview ends with the words of Jesus, I who speak to you am He.
I submit to you that if the rich young ruler went back with better questions he would have gotten clearer answers and that our Lord’s masterful piece of pre-evangelism would have had its wonderful and eternal effect.
And after trusting Christ as the Messiah and Savior the rich young ruler could then dispense with his belongings and follow Him and earn treasure in heaven. Did it happen? I do not know but I am hopeful.
We are told in Mark 10:21 that Jesus looking upon him loved him. An almost unique statement in the New Testament. May I suggest that the interview between Jesus and the rich young ruler is in reality an interview between Jesus and a man Jesus loved in a personal way at a personal level.
And I have to feel that that love was effectual. And if I were a betting man which I am not and I thought I could collect on bets in heaven which I do not think I can I would lay money that the rich young ruler will be there.
But if he is there he will not be there because he finally decided to give up everything that he had. He will be there the same way that you and I and everybody else will be there. Simple faith and through the grace of God alone.
Now before concluding this I want to say just very quickly a word or two about the other level at which it seems to me this story is mistakenly treated by those who are in the lordship salvation movement. And this is the literary level or in other words the level of the story’s role in the synoptics themselves.
One of the issues that in my judgment is not adequately faced by those who are teaching a non-free-grace form of the gospel is a very obvious fact of the New Testament. That is that we have four gospel books but three of them are very similar and one of them is extremely different.
Nobody can read the synoptic gospels and read the gospel of John and think they have not moved into different terrain altogether. Now I also point out to you that the gospel of John is the only New Testament book which directly professes to be written to bring men to personal faith in Christ.
These are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God and believing you might have life through His name. So it is in my judgment the gospel of John that presents the gospel in all of its pristine purity and clarity because this is a core evangelistic document.
But the synoptics I submit were written to Christian audiences for whom the issues of eternal salvation were already settled and for whom the really battle issue was discipleship to Jesus Christ. It seems to me that in this exchange with the rich young ruler we have precisely that kind of war filled by the story.
Let me quickly move you through the sequel to this as found in verses 24 to 30 of the passage we read. Jesus begins by saying it is hard for a rich man to be saved. It is hard for Him to get into the kingdom of God.
The disciples are dumbfounded by this and according to the other gospels it is those who say, Who then can be saved? And let us not be too hard on the disciples. They were not at this point in their experience the highly perceptive theologians that they later became.
And they sort of knocked off their theological feet by this. Yes they have believed in Jesus and received from Him the free gift of eternal life. But they also probably held the Jewish perspective that if a Jewish man is rich that is an indication of the blessing of God. And if he is very rich God is really blessing him.
And when Jesus says rich people have an awful hard time getting into the kingdom as a woman if people that God blesses so greatly have a hard time getting saved how about other people?
Jesus explains what He means however. It is interesting that in Mark 10:24 and 25 according to the majority text at least Jesus repeats Himself and He says, How difficult it is for those who trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God.
And even in the gospel accounts that do not contain this precise phrase this is the understanding I am sure that we ought to have of our Lord’s words. A rich man is too big to trust another person totally. He is like a monstrous being a camel trying to crawl his way through a tiny tiny little hole in the eye of a needle.
He is too big to become literally not remember Jesus said except you be converted and become as little children you shall no wise enter into the kingdom of God. So why is it that so many children respond to the gospel? They do not have all the hang-ups that grown-ups have.
They hear that God has provided salvation. Wants to give it to him. Yeah let me have it. I will trust for it. The grown-up says is that all there is to it? Where is the catch? Where is the fine print? Okay what good thing must I do to have eternal life?
So the rich man thought you know maybe He asked me to give ten percent of my earnings or something. He never thought of one hundred percent. But ten he thought he could hack it. As a rich man and he could not.
So the disciples said you know who can get saved? The rich man has trouble getting saved. Jesus said do not worry about it. It may be impossible with men but with God all things are possible.
Or to put it another way it is a miracle. But with the whole New Testament in our hand we would say not only a miracle that rich people get saved. It is a miracle that anybody gets saved. And in fact the experience of salvation is miraculous from more than one point of view.
Second Corinthians 4:6: God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
In the same way that God commanded light to shine in the creation He commands light to shine in the soul. And then Jesus says to Nicodemus we are not talking about getting into your mother’s womb again. We are talking about a work of the Holy Spirit. We are talking about the miracle of being born of the Spirit.
Do not worry about this. This Jesus yeah a man cannot pull it off. But then it is impossible. But with God all things are possible.
Okay says Peter I got you. But here is what is bugging me. We have done what this rich man refused to do. We have left everything and followed You. Is that a good deal? What will we have in the future?
And Jesus said yes it is a very good deal. There is anybody that has left everything for Me who will not get one hundred more in this life and in the world to come as a reward eternal life. The enrichment the enlargement the expansion the deepening of the experience of eternal life which is ours initially through faith in Christ.
And this it seems to me is the bottom line for Luke. And I would submit to you that an informed Christian reader reading this text would be able to say this. Please note that I am talking about an informed Christian reader of the first century for whom the terms of the gospel are quite clear.
So he knows that selling everything that you have and giving to the poor is not the way of salvation. Okay this informed Christian reader says you know this rich young ruler’s love for money kept him even from salvation and it also kept him from following Christ and winning treasure in heaven.
He is a materialistic person and he chooses his material things over Jesus Christ. And the informed Christian reader says even though I am saved I have to watch the same pitfall myself. I must not allow my material possessions to prevent my discipleship to Jesus Christ. I must not allow my earthly things to deprive me of heavenly treasure.
I must learn the lesson that is in the story for me.
Let me summarize and then I am through. Historically what is going on in the story it seems to me is a case of pre-evangelism in which Jesus employs a call to discipleship in order to get behind the ruler’s facade of self-righteousness.
It is pre-evangelism but Jesus using a call to discipleship to break through the rich young ruler’s facade of self-righteousness. Literarily it is a warning. A warning as timely in 1988 as it was in the first century when it was penned by Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
So if we read the story this way we can rejoice in the grace of God and we can profit from the pointed and timely lessons of the story itself.