Matthew 19:16-22 And, behold, one came and said to him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?… Very likely the question involved a mass of confusions. The young man thought, perhaps, that heaven was to be won by external actions and quantitative merit. He did not understand that we must enter into heaven by being, not by doing. He held perhaps the vulgar notion that eternal only means endless, so that eternity becomes the infinitude of time instead of its antithesis. He very likely did not know that every holy soul has entered already into eternal life; that to all who are in Christ it is now as the invisible bright air they breathe. He certainly did not realize that "this is life eternal, to know Thee, the only God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." But yet, because the question was sincere and noble, and did not spring from Pharisaism — the one thing which the Lord detested most — but from the Divine dissatisfaction of a struggling soul which God alone can fill, Christ answered it. (F. W. Farrar, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? |
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