Jesus Never Asked Him to Stop Being Rich

One day a man ran up to Jesus and asked Him the biggest question a person can ask.

"Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Mark 10:17).

You know how this story ends. Jesus tells him to sell everything and the man's face falls as he walks away grieving because he owned a lot.

We've often preached this as the story of the man Jesus asked to be poor. We've preached it as a warning to people with money, then we’ve spent the next ten minutes reassuring everyone in the room that Jesus didn't mean them.

Now look at the sentence Jesus said:

"Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me" (Mark 10:21).

You will have treasure.

The man walked up wealthy, and the plan Jesus laid out had him wealthy at the end of it. Same man. Same fortune. Different vault.

Jesus never asked him to stop being rich.

Let's step back a moment to the initial greeting.

"Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone." (v.18)

That's an odd place to stop a conversation, unless goodness is the conversation. The man showed up with a category in his head (good people), and he wanted to hear he was one of them. Jesus empties the category before they've even started.

Aside: I love this verse because it requires the person to take a moment to follow this logic:

Jesus is saying, By calling me good, since only God is good, you do realize that makes Me God?

Then He lists commandments: murder, adultery, theft, false witness, fraud, honor your father and mother.

"Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth."

I believe him. And Jesus doesn't argue the point either.

But look at which commandments made that list. Every one of them can be checked by a neighbor. There are no bodies buried in the backyard, his parents have been cared for, and his books are clean.

Two were left out: "You shall have no other gods before me," and "you shall not covet." Those two live where a neighbor is unable to audit them.

The man aced the six that can be verified. Then Jesus reached for the two you can't.

"You lack one thing."

Mark tucks a detail in right here that Matthew and Luke leave out.

"Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him..." (v.21)

Whatever Jesus says next is what the love said. It was the most loving sentence available for this particular man.

So, we must read this as an offer.

Jesus had already taught the mechanics on a hillside in Galilee. Stockpile treasure on earth and moths eat it, rust takes it, thieves dig through the wall for it. But stockpile it in heaven and none of that can reach it.

Then the line we all know: "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matthew 6:21).

We tend to run that verse backwards. We assume the heart moves first and the money trails along behind it, so we wait to feel generous before we give. Jesus put them in the opposite order.

Treasure leads. Heart follows.

Which makes "sell it, give it to the poor, and you'll have treasure in heaven" a relocation plan for the man's heart. Move the treasure and the heart goes with it. Jesus was offering to get his heart into heaven ahead of him.

That was the one thing he lacked. His heart was parked with his stuff, in a place where everything eventually gets eaten, rusted, or stolen.

Notice what the man asked for, and what he was handed.

He asked about life. Jesus answered in two clauses, and they pay out differently. The selling gets him treasure. The life is in the last three words.

"Come, follow me."

Eternal life was standing in the road in front of him, taking questions. The estate sale was there to clear the road so he could walk it.

The man wanted eternal life and his possessions. Jesus offered him eternal life and the only kind of possessions that can make the trip.

"Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions." (v.22)

Sorrowful. Mark could've written angry, or offended, and instead he wrote sorrowful. The man's heart was exactly where his treasure was, and he'd just been asked to leave without it. That's grief.

He grieved over an upgrade.

If you clicked on this title hoping Jesus is fine with your portfolio, this paragraph is yours.

Heaven's bank takes one kind of deposit. You make it by letting go of something here, into the hands of someone who can't pay you back. The money had to leave the man's house to arrive in his name. There's no version of the transfer where the balance stays put.

And if you're holding Mark 10:30 as a counteroffer (the hundredfold "now in this time"), finish the verse. Houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, lands, "with persecutions." That's a family, lands, and a fight.

Paul hands Timothy the same instructions for the wealthy people in his church, 30 years later. Be "rich in good works, generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life" (1 Timothy 6:18-19).

Same exchange. Same currency. Same rate.

Now, you.

You're probably reading this as someone who already said, ‘Yes’ to, "Follow me." Good. Then the man's question is settled for you. Your life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). It's His life, you have it because you have Him, and nothing you sell this week adds a day to it.

Which leaves the other clause. The treasure clause is still open, and it has your name on it.

Jesus said it to His own disciples, the ones who'd already left the boats. "Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail" (Luke 12:33). The very next verse is the line about your heart.

We've gotten comfortable with a certain accounting. We tend to think, ‘I'm saved, so the rich man's story is about somebody else. It's about an unbeliever and his idol, and I dealt with mine at an altar many years ago.’

Did you?

There's a test and it only takes a few seconds: open your banking app and scroll back two months. Every line is a deposit somewhere. Count the ones that landed anywhere a moth can't get to.

Your statement is a map of where your heart lives. Jesus said so.

Paul warned the Corinthians that whatever gets built on the foundation of Christ will be run through fire, and that some people's work will burn all the way down. "He himself will be saved, but only as through fire" (1 Corinthians 3:15).

Saved. Smelling like smoke. Empty-handed.

That's a real category: alive forever, and showing up broke.

One chapter after Luke tells this story, Jesus meets another rich man. A short guy, tax collector, sitting in a tree.

Zacchaeus gets no command to sell anything. Jesus simply invites Himself over, and somewhere between the front door and the table, the man stands up and gives half of what he owns to the poor. Then he offers to pay back four times anything he's stolen (Luke 19:8).

Two rich men, one chapter apart. One kept every coin and walked off grieving. The other gave away half before lunch was over and heard, "Today salvation has come to this house."

Guess which one was still rich a hundred years later.

So, do what the first man could not. Pick something this week you'd grieve to lose, and send it on ahead. Put it in the hands of someone who can't return the favor.

Then pay attention to where your heart goes looking for it.

You'll still be rich. Jesus promised.

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot