Perspective: The Cost of a Free Gift

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

The Cost of a Free Gift

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:3 (NRSV)

But I need You to love me, and I...

I won't keep my heart from You this time

And I'll stop this pretending that I can

Somehow deserve what I already have

From "I Need You to Love Me" by BarlowGirl

One day, a rich man, commonly remembered by Christians as "the Rich Young Ruler," asks Jesus, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"  Jesus rattles off a number of the Ten Commandments, to which the Rich Young Ruler replies, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth."

Jesus then says, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow Me."  The Rich Young Ruler walks away disturbed and disheartened.  Jesus then says, to the surprise of His closest followers, "How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God...  It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."¹

I know of very few Christians who have actually done what Jesus tells the Rich Young Ruler to do.

God knows I haven't.

Let's take a look at the Rich Young Ruler's question: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"

The Greek phrase which is translated into English as "eternal life" is zoe aioneos, a phrase that leading New Testament scholar N.T. Wright suggests might be better translated "life of the age to come."  According to Wright,
When the rich young ruler asks Jesus "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" he isn't asking how to go to heaven when he dies.  He is asking about the new world that God is going to usher in, the new era of justice, peace and freedom God has promised his people.  And he is asking, in particular, how he can be sure that when God does all this, he will be a part of those who inherit the new world, who share it's life.²

The Rich Young Ruler is fully aware of the messianic age of peace long foretold by the Jewish prophets, an age when people will "beat their swords into plowshares," an age when "the wolf shall live with the lamb."³  Like other people of his day, he believes that Jesus might be the one who will usher in this age of peace.  St. John describes the coming of this age at the very end of the Bible.  Amid his beautiful description of a time of peace and healing when God wipes all tears from our eyes, he notes that "the first things have passed away."⁴

Some things will persist into this new age, while other things will cease to exist.  The Rich Young Ruler wants to make sure that his life persists into the new age when "the first things have passed away."

Maybe another way to ask the Rich Young Ruler's question is, "What must I do to be saved?"

When Jesus says, "Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor... then come, follow Me," is He telling us the requirement to participate in the age to come?  Most of us Christians living in the First World hope that He isn't.

St. Paul writes that "by grace you have been saved through faith."⁵  God is in the business of grace, not merit; therefore, the coming age of peace and the invitation to participate in it are gifts of God and not things to be earned.

I think that the story of the Rich Young Ruler reminds us that grace is free but not cheap.

If that sounds nonsensical, please allow me to try to illustrate what that means.

Imagine that you are walking home from the grocery store, carrying a large bag of groceries in your arms.  Now imagine that one of your friends approaches you carrying a large gift-wrapped box with a big bow on top and yells out, "Happy Birthday!"  You cannot carry both the birthday present and the bag of groceries, and you and your friend are traveling in different directions.  To take the birthday present home with you, you would have to leave behind the bag of groceries.  The birthday gift was given to you free of charge, but it still cost your groceries.  You had to give up something good to take hold of something better.

We can't do anything to earn what God has for us, because it's offered to us free of charge.  Still, If we truly want to take hold of everything God offers us, we might need to let go of something.  If the Rich Young Ruler truly wants to take hold of the life of love and generosity Christ wants for all of us, then he will have to let go of his materialism, which I suspect won't be a part of the age to come.

Well, that's what I would normally tell you.⁶

But I'm beginning to think that there might be yet another dimension to this story.

Let's take another look at the Rich Young Ruler's question: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"

Notice that he begins his question with, "What must I do?"

For eleven years of my life, I was immersed in a religious environment that stressed the importance of "getting saved."  I would hear someone begin his testimony, saying, "I got saved when I was five years old."  The sentence, "I got saved," is starting to sound more and more ridiculous to me.  The problem is that verb got is active, making the subject I the operative agent.  In other words, if I said that "I got saved," then I would be implying that I did something to save myself.

I prayed the prayer.

I believed.

I asked Christ into my heart.

I went forward during the altar call.

I got baptized.

St. Paul writes, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God - not the result of works, so that no one may boast."⁷

We do not "get saved."

God saves us.

We don't do the work; God does.

This is an important distinction that we often overlook.  Things like prayer and baptism might be the means by which we experience God's grace, but they are not the means by which we earn God's grace.  If something must be earned, then it isn't grace.

In our society we value things like independence, self-reliance, "earning our keep," "pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps," and "making it on our own."  I wouldn't say that these are necessarily bad things, but they have absolutely nothing to do with grace.  In fact, these values might actually make it more difficult for a person to accept grace.  Grace is a free gift.  It is freely given and freely received.  It can't be earned, and it can't be repaid.

Maybe the Rich Young Ruler wasn't born into money: maybe he earned every penny he had.  Maybe he thought God's favor was something he should earn as well.  Maybe he even thought he was on the verge of earning it.  He was a good man according to the standards of his religion, and he knew it.  After all, he had been following all of the religious rules Jesus listed.

The Rich Young Ruler asks what he can do to obtain eternal life, and Jesus asks him to do the one thing that is too hard for him to do.  He walks away, head hung low, with that "I-can't-do-it" feeling we probably all experience at some point.  His encounter with Jesus forces him to experience something he has never known before - spiritual poverty.  After the disturbing encounter, the Disciples ask, "Who can be saved?"  Jesus replies, "For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible."⁸  The Rich Young Ruler couldn't do anything to secure salvation for himself: he had to depend fully on the grace of God.

Jesus said that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."  He also said that crooks and prostitutes - the spiritually "poor" - were entering the Kingdom of God ahead of the religious people - the spiritually "rich."⁹

I find it troubling when Christians are unwilling accept a free gift from someone.  If they're too proud to accept grace from another human being whom they can see, then could they possibly accept grace from God whom they can't see?  Some people have trouble accepting a free gift.  Others, who are painfully aware of their own poverty, spiritual or otherwise, realize that they don't have much of a choice.

The Bible tells us that the early Christians sold all they had, held everything in common, and made sure that everybody in their community had what they needed.¹⁰  They weren't self-sufficient: they depended on each other to survive.  I wonder if this might actually be a vision of the future when the Kingdom of God is fully realized here on earth.  I wonder if independence might be another of the "old things" that will pass away in the age to come.

I think that one reason humility is stressed throughout the Bible is that, in some way, we are all spiritually poor.  Accepting a free gift costs us our pride.  It costs us our independence.  It costs us the right to say, "I did it all on my own."  If we're too proud to accept a free gift, then we run the risk of missing out on the blessings God has for us.


Notes:

1. Mark 10:17-25 (NRSV)
2. N.T. Wright.  "Going to Heaven?"  Published in The Love Wins Companion.  2011, HarperOne.  pp. 33-35
3. See Isaiah 2:2-4 and Isaiah 11:6-9.
4. See Revelation 21-22.
5. Ephesians 2:8 (NRSV)
6. I believe I said something similar in my perspective "All That Remains."
7. Ephesians 2:8-9 (NRSV)
8. Mark 10:26-27 (NRSV)
9. Matthew 21:31
10. Acts 2:44-45

The painting featured in this perspective was painted by Heinrich Hofmann in 1889.