What Jesus Said to the Rich Young Ruler About Money

Most of us have a thing we would struggle to let go of. A savings account we keep topped up just in case. A reputation we protect without thinking. A routine we cannot imagine changing. It sits in the background of our lives, and we rarely think about it, until someone asks the one question we typically want to avoid.

So, what is the thing you could not give up?

This week at Crowd, Mike Harris walked us through a story where a wealthy young man asks Jesus a question and gets an answer he definitely did not expect. Sure, it's a story about money, but it is also a story about where we put our trust, whether anything has taken the place that was meant for God, and about the things we can not give up.

A Man Who Had It All Running to Jesus

Elon Musk is reportedly the world's first trillionaire. If your household earned an average income and never spent a single penny, it would take you around 11 million years to match what he currently owns. The number is almost impossible to picture, and that is the point.

Couple that with the story found in Mark 10 (and also in Matthew and Luke) about another wealthy guy who runs up to Jesus, kneels down, and asks, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

He is young, rich, powerful, and respected. He has everything the world says you should want. And yet he comes running, because he knows something is missing in his life.

Jesus answers in a way that must have caught the man off guard because he asks, "why do you call me good? Only God is truly good."

As Mike put it, the man came to Jesus believing he himself was good (his wealth proved it, right?), and Jesus wanted him to know, before he reeled off his list of achievements, that no one is actually good.

The One Thing He Lacked

Jesus then lists some of the commandments. You must not murder, steal, lie, or cheat. Honour your father and mother. The man replies that he has kept all of these since he was young.

Mike explained how the commandments of God are often grouped into two sets. The first set is about our relationship with God. The second set is about how we treat the people around us. The man had kept the second set faithfully. His life, on paper, was decent and moral.

And in his mind, that was why he was wealthy. God had blessed him. He was righteous since birth.

Until Jesus points to the one thing he had not done.

There is still one thing you haven't done. Go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.

• Mark 10:21

The writer Tim Keller describes this moment as Jesus going back to the very first commandment, love God with everything you have, and gently asking the man to start there instead. Because what Jesus could see was an idol. Not a statue, but something in the man's life that was taking up more of his heart, his time, his dreaming and planning, than God was. That something was his wealth.

Love That Won't Leave You Where You Are

And just before Jesus asks the hardest thing, Mark tells us that Jesus looked at the man and "felt genuine love for him."

This was not a test designed to trip the man up. Mike compared it to how you might help someone caught in addiction. If your life is controlled by something, half measures do not set you free. You have to deal with it fully. Jesus was not against the man having money. He was against money having the man.

And this is the only person in the whole Bible Jesus says this to. It was specific to him, because Jesus could see exactly what had a grip on his heart.

Jesus loved this man, and he loved him so much that he wasn't prepared to leave him the way he was.

• Mike Harris

If there is something in your life you feel you could never give up, Mike had a word for you. Jesus looks at you, with that exact thing still in your hands, and He loves you. With it or without it. He will not leave you there, and He will not stop pursuing your heart, because He knows the freedom waiting on the other side.

A Radical Idea About Generosity

Mike then turned to a letter Paul wrote to a church in Corinth, and a way of thinking about generosity that is hard to think about in the modern west.

Usually, when we give, we give out of our spare. We meet a need from our surplus. Paul pushes further than that. In 2 Corinthians 8, he talks about giving until there is equality, giving so that the person who has little and the person who has plenty end up on more level ground.

It is a confronting idea. But Mike was quick to point out that Jesus went further still. Jesus did not aim for equality. He gave up everything He had so that we, who had nothing to offer, could share in everything He deserved. That is the pattern we are invited to grow into, not by trying harder, but by looking at what Jesus has already done for us and letting it slowly reshape how we hold our own stuff.

Conversation Street

Isn't the rich person always someone else?

Ellis made a point in the comments that reframed the whole thing. It is easy to assume the "rich" people are always the ones with more than us, that it is their job to give things up, not ours. But as Ellis put it, compared to most of the world, "I'm the rich one."

We love to ask what the super-wealthy should do with their money, because it takes the heat off us. The more useful question is not what should they do, but what is my response. Not "what should you give", but "what can I give towards this need in front of me."

What is the real danger of having plenty?

The more you have, the more you can get by on your own, and the easier it becomes to feel completely self-sufficient. We drift towards doing everything ourselves and push God to the edge of our lives.

Ade also talked about how the rich young ruler treated salvation like a product he could buy, something to be earned by ticking boxes. He kept the rules, but he missed grace entirely. Being right with God is not a transaction. It is a gift you receive, not a purchase you make.

How does Job help us here?

Job starts out wealthy and faithful, then loses everything, and ends up face to face with how big God really is. By the end, Job is wealthy again, but something has changed. He now knows that everything he has is a gift, not a reward he earned.

God is not against us being rich, but when we are rich, he wants to know that this is a gift from him.

• Mike Harris

Matt shared his own version of this shift, from a younger self driven to make money, to seeing everything he has as something given rather than earned. When you hold your life as a gift, it becomes far easier to open your hands.

Everything You Have Is a Gift

The conversation also looked at the "prosperity gospel", the idea that God exists to make you wealthy. Now, God does promise to meet all our needs, but that doesn't mean every want. The focus of the Christian life is not on how much God will give us, but on what we do in response to the fact that He has already given us everything.

Mike was once given an expensive bike by a friend. He still treats it as his, but because it was a gift, he would hand it on far more readily than things he bought himself. That is the heart shift. When you know it was given to you in the first place, your grip loosens.

And then there is Psalm 118:8, often described as the middle verse of the Bible. "It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to put your trust in man."

Mike put it simply. Where do you run when life gets frightening? To your bank balance, or to God? You cannot give away your God, so if money has become your god, you will find you cannot give it away either.

Where Is God Leading You to Give

None of this is a call to empty your bank account, and it is absolutely not a nudge to give your money to Crowd. It is far simpler and more personal than that.

Mike offered one practical challenge, just about money, as a starting point. Think about the percentage of your income you give away. Over the years, is that percentage going up, or going down? One honest way to grow is to let a trusted friend ask you that question once a year.

Jesus could see exactly what had a hold on the young man's heart. As Ade reminded us, what Jesus asks of you will look different from what He asks of anyone else, because He can see your heart and knows precisely what will set you free.

So here is the question for this week. Where is God leading you to be generous? Not what should other people do with what they have, but what is your response to the gift you have already been given.

Before the creation of the world, God looked at you with all of your faults and all of your strengths, and He chose you because He wanted to, and choosing you gave Him great pleasure.

That is the ground this invitation stands on. You are already loved, completely, before you give a thing. The giving is not how you earn it. It is how you start to live free.