Articles
A Tale of Two Rich Men
Luke presents an interesting contrast of two rich men who came to Jesus.
In Luke 18, a rich ruler came asking what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. Luke does not say what kind of ruler he was. Elsewhere he uses this same word to refer to a ruler of a synagogue (8:41), a judge (12:58), and members of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish high court (23:13, 35).
Some rulers are self-serving tyrants. Not this man. He assured Jesus that he kept God’s commandments, including those that prohibited lying and stealing. This was a man in an influential position who lived honorably. Doubtless he was well respected.
In Luke 19, a rich tax collector named Zaccheus came to Jesus. The crowds viewed him quite differently. When Jesus invited himself to Zaccheus’s house, “they all began to grumble, saying, ‘He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner’” (v. 7).
These two interviews with Jesus ended quite differently. The ruler refused to do what Jesus required of him: sell what you have, distribute it to the poor, and come follow Me (18:22). He left “very sad.” Zaccheus, on the other hand, committed to giving half of what he had to the poor and paying back four times as much to anyone he may have defrauded (19:8). He received Jesus “gladly.”
Jesus said of Zaccheus, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” (19:9-10). With regard to the ruler, the Lord could only caution, “How hard it is for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God!” (18:24).
In the end, the man whom society respected was lost and the man whom society rejected was saved. God said centuries earlier, “For God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7b).
The point of this contrast is that our hearts, not our circumstances, determine our response to Jesus, and that determines our salvation. Jesus’ caution, of course, must be heeded. Wealth does indeed tend to fill our hearts and lead them away from God. That being the case, it is another illustration of something that society often wrongly values.
What is your response to Jesus?
