Thou knowest the commandments: Do not commit adultery; do not kill; do not steal, do not bear false witness; honour thy father and thy mother. And he said, All these have I kept from my youth up. Luke 18:20,21
What a commendable young man! Here in our text, he can declare, with perfect sincerity, that he has been a careful observer of the law. He can think of no instances when he has broken these commandments. As far as he can remember, back into his childhood, he can recall that he has been honest and decent, a good citizen of his community. He has done the best that he could, and has done so with great diligence. People like him make a positive difference in our world, and we could learn from him how to conduct ourselves. But something is missing; this is the reason he has approached the Lord Jesus. He asks what he needs to do to inherit eternal life. This shows that he is aware that he does not have eternal life through his good living, or at least he is not sure that his good living has obtained eternal life. When Jesus recites the commandments to him, he is pleased that he can relate positively to them. But Jesus did not recite all of the commandments. It was the ones that he withheld that would condemn the man.
The commandments do not begin with our responsibility to our fellow men but to God. To keep these commandments, we must observe perfect devotion and love to God and to display fully all of the attributes of God’s holy character. If Jesus had recited these commandments, the young ruler would have had to hang his head in shame. If he were to understand these commandments perfectly, he would also understand that he had totally messed up all of the other ones as well. One of the great realizations of every person who has ever been saved is that we are guilty of the whole law, and are not deserving of eternal life. The reciting of the law condemns us, even if we are as honest and upright as the young ruler who came to the Lord Jesus. It is this condemnation that causes us to abandon our own hopes for eternal life, and to trust the finished work of our Saviour at Calvary.
The man in our text was undoubtedly sincere in his claim to have met the demands of the law. But he was sincerely wrong. He ought to have examined the life of the One to Whom he was speaking. As Jesus recited the commandments, He was reciting a description of His own character. In fact, if He had recited the other commandments, too, He would still be describing Himself. The commandments outline all that God requires of us to meet His standard of righteousness and holiness. In the first Adam and in all of his descendents, God has been disappointed. But in the last Adam, the Lord Jesus, God was not disappointed. Because the young ruler failed to grasp the holiness of God, he failed to see that he had not kept the commandments from his youth up. But the Lord Jesus did!
Like the young ruler, we would be mistaken to think we could keep the commandments ourselves. Unlike the young ruler, we place our trust in the One who could, and did, keep the commandments perfectly. -Jim MacIntosh