Matthew 19:26

These words follow straight on from the rich young man (Matthew 19:16–22). He came asking what good thing he should do to have eternal life. Jesus told him to keep the commandments, and he answered that he had kept them. Then Jesus told him to sell what he had, give to the poor and follow him, and “he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.” Jesus turns to his disciples and speaks about what they have just watched, a man who wanted eternal life and held on to his riches when the choice came.

The disciples heard this against a belief common in their day, that wealth was a mark of God’s blessing and favour and a sign that a man was righteous. The law had linked obedience with plenty, for the LORD promised to bless an obedient Israel (Deuteronomy 28:1–14). By the same reasoning, poverty could be taken as a sign of God’s displeasure. A rich man looked like the person most plainly blessed by God, with the most to give to the poor and to the duties of religion. If anyone was on the way into the kingdom, surely it was he. Jesus overturns that expectation here, as his teaching does again and again, and measures blessing and security by God’s own standard.

Jesus says this to “his disciples”, the men already following him, so it is a lesson about what following him means. He opens with “Verily I say unto you.” “Verily” stands for the Greek amen, and with it Jesus marks what follows as certain and weighty, and calls for their full attention.

The word “hardly” is dyskólōs, “with difficulty” or “impracticably”. It describes something extremely hard to do. The rich man is ploúsios, rich or wealthy, a word that can also mean abounding in something, and whose parent noun speaks of wealth as fulness. “Enter” is eisérchomai, to go in or into, used here with eis, “into”. To enter the kingdom is to come in under God’s rule, and the disciples’ question in verse 25 shows that they heard it as being saved.

The kingdom, basileía, comes from basileús, “king”, and means royalty, rule or realm. Here it is God’s reign, present now and still to come in its fulness. “Heaven” is ouranós, the word for both the sky and heaven. In verse 23 Jesus says “the kingdom of heaven”, and in verse 24, saying the same thing again, he says “the kingdom of God”, with the same word for kingdom. In Matthew the two names mean one kingdom.

Riches make entry hard because of what they do to the heart that holds them. They offer security, so a man trusts them. They give him his sense of who he is. They make him feel self-sufficient, when the kingdom is entered in humility, dependence on God and obedience. In the end they take God’s place and become an idol. Jesus had already said, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24), and the young man showed the truth of it when he chose his possessions.

“And again I say unto you” joins the second saying to the first with dé, “and”, and pálin, “again”. Jesus repeats his point and makes it sharper, moving from hard to impossible.

“Easier” is eukopṓteros, a comparative whose sense is “better for toil” or “more facile”, that is, less work. The camel, kámēlos, was the large pack animal familiar in Judaea and the biggest animal his hearers knew. The needle, rhaphís, from a root meaning to sew, is an ordinary sewing needle, and its eye, trýpēma, is the little hole the thread passes through. Put the two together and the picture is absurd, almost comical: the largest beast trying to pass through the smallest opening.

This is hyperbole, a deliberate exaggeration, and a camel through a needle’s eye was a common Jewish way of describing something utterly impossible. Jesus uses it to shock his hearers and to show that a rich man’s entry into “the kingdom of God”, by his own power, is harder still. Here the kingdom is named after theós, God. Mark and Luke record the same saying (Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25).

The word for disciple, mathētḗs, means a learner or pupil. These were the men who had sat under Jesus’ teaching longest, and even they are shaken. “Amazed” is ekplḗssō, to strike with astonishment, from ek, “out of”, and a verb meaning to strike. Matthew adds sphódra, “exceedingly”. Jesus’ words had overturned what they took for granted about wealth and God’s favour.

Their question follows from what they believed. If the rich, whom God had plainly blessed, could hardly enter, then who could? “Saved” is sṓzō, to save, deliver or protect, and also to heal, preserve and make whole. They speak of being saved where Jesus spoke of entering the kingdom, and both mean the eternal life the young man had asked about. The question comes from dismay and confusion, and Luke records it too, with Jesus’ answer (Luke 18:26–27).

The disciples had reached a true conclusion. If entering the kingdom depended on a man’s own means, his wealth, his standing or his good works, the way would be shut to everyone, because even the man who looked most blessed of all would fail. Their question lays bare the condition of every person, and it opens the way for Jesus to tell them where salvation comes from.

“But Jesus beheld them.” The verb is emblépō, to look at or look straight at. Jesus looks directly at his bewildered disciples and answers them.

“With men this is impossible.” “This” is being saved, entering the kingdom. Adýnatos is dynatós with a negative prefix, and it means “unable”, “impotent” or “that which cannot be done”. By human strength, wealth, wisdom or merit, salvation is out of reach for the rich man and for everyone else, because the distance between man’s sin and God’s holiness is beyond his power to close.

“But with God all things are possible.” Dynatós means strong, mighty or able, and in the neuter, as here, possible. Scripture uses it of God and of people alike, and here Jesus sets the two side by side: what is adýnatos with men is dynatós with God. Theós means a deity, and especially, with the article, the supreme God. The power to save belongs to him, the Creator of all.

The Old Testament had already said this of God. “Is any thing too hard for the LORD?” (Genesis 18:14). “Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?” (Jeremiah 32:27). And the angel Gabriel told Mary, “For with God nothing shall be impossible” (Luke 1:37).

So God saves the rich man in the same way he saves anyone. He changes the heart, loosens its grip on riches, and gives repentance and faith, so that a man who would have clung to his possessions comes to Christ. Jesus’ answer moves the whole question from what man can do to what God can do, and so it gives hope to the very disciples who were in despair.

God has done what is impossible with men through his Son. The Word was made flesh (John 1:14), and he is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8), and he died for our sins, was buried and rose again the third day (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). Through his death God has reconciled to himself people who were once alienated from him and enemies in their minds (Colossians 1:21–22). The question “Who then can be saved?” has its answer in him. Anyone who gives up hope in his own means and trusts Christ is saved, for “by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9). Paul’s “saved” there is the same verb, sṓzō, that the disciples used.

Christ is the one way in. He is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), and “there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). He says, “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved” (John 10:9), and that door stands open to rich and poor alike.

He also lived the freedom from riches he asked of the young man. “Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). On earth “the Son of man hath not where to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20), and he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:5–8). In the parables of the treasure hid in a field and the pearl of great price, a man sells all that he has to gain the one thing of real worth (Matthew 13:44–46). The young man held on to his great possessions and walked away from that treasure, which is Christ himself and his kingdom, the true wealth for which everything else may gladly be left.

This passage shows us who God is. He is the God with whom all things are possible, who saves people powerless to save themselves, and who gives his kingdom as a gift. The disciples’ despair was the right place to begin, because it is where his answer meets us.

It also tells the truth about riches. Money is a resource God entrusts to us to use for his purposes, and it becomes a snare when we trust it for security or find our worth in it. The warning reaches every one of us, because a person with little can covet wealth or rest his hopes on money he means to have, as surely as a rich man can rest on what he has. The young man went away sorrowful, holding his great possessions.

And it answers the disciples’ question with good news. Salvation is God’s work from first to last, so it rests on his power, and his power is boundless. The rich man who clings, the poor man who covets and the disciple who despairs all stand in the same need, and the same God is able to save each of them through Christ. The one who knows he is unable to enter by himself is the very one to whom the door stands open.