The Rich and the Kingdom of Heaven

We don’t realize how blessed we are to be living in America and we are accountable to God for what we do with our wealth.

The rich young ruler wanted to know “what good thing must I do to inherit eternal life”?

Jesus told him to keep the commandments.

Does keeping the 10 Commandments save us?

If not, why did Jesus say this?

1) Being a “good” person does not mean you’ll go to heaven

2) God’s standard is perfection

3) Grace is found in surrender

We are saved by grace through faith alone because we’re not capable of living a perfect life and being “good”. Only God can be truly good. Therefore, we depend on Christ to be “good” for us. Jesus was bringing the rich young ruler to this conclusion by talking about the commandments.

Then Jesus pointed to the thing that mattered most to the Rich Young ruler; his money. He was not willing to surrender his money, proving he had not truly kept all of the commandments. His wealth was an idol. We need to surrender to God whatever it is that we hold dear and would stand in the way of us accepting Him as our savior.

Being a good person does not get us into heaven; perfection is the standard. Only Jesus was perfect. We have to accept His perfect sacrifice to pay for our sins in order to be saved.