King’s Cross 11

Western Christians, and surely not just in the West but surely in the West, have a seemingly honest awareness of what Jesus said about wealth and possessions and, at the very same time, a seeming incapability of surrendering wealth and possessions to Jesus and the kingdom. In chp 11 of Tim Keller’s newest book, King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus, the famous conversation Jesus had with the rich young ruler is discussed.

The chp is vintage Keller.

He begins with an observation that Christianity is always moving its center, unlike other religions, and moves from Jerusalem to Rome to northern Europe and then to the USA and then now to the South and Africa … and then claims it moves because it is giving and surrendering and this ties to the cross. That discussion of Christianity on the move is then dropped.

Rich young ruler now. Wealth in the disciples’ world was seen as a blessing from God; poverty as a curse from God. Jesus made strong comments about how impossible it is for the rich to enter in the kingdom.

He pushes then into the conversation with Jesus, and focuses on the man’s performance — and here is one of Keller’s themes that derives from his Augustinian anthropology and Reformation lens of soteriology.  “Anyone who counts on what they are doing to get eternal life will find that … there’s an emptiness, an insecurity, a doubt” (129). I’d like to ask: Didn’t Jesus end this conversation by asking him to do one more thing, or one other thing, and I would ask how it is that that demand differs from the other demands?

He sees the problem in the rich man’s use of good things — his things, his money, his wealth.

Then he sees Jesus pushing the man from seeing God as his boss (from the laws) to God as Savior, and he compels the man to imagine his own life without money. “All you have is me. Can you live like that?” (131). If you want God as savior, you have to get rid of your money as your savior. The issue is the man’s “moral worth” (132). “It’s our moral worth that keeps us from understanding the economy of the cross” (133). Which leads him to Mark 12, and the famous Jesus Creed passage on loving God and loving others.

Now Keller comes back to the rich man, and begins to probe the call to abandon his wealth to follow Jesus, and he makes observations that reveal how you can discern where money is with you. You have problems if… “You can’t give large amounts away … you get scared if you might have less than you’re accustomed to having… you see people doing better … and it gets under your skin… it’s the scorecard” (136).

In the end, Keller sees a radical challenge to money and possessions in Jesus, but he gets there through finding God as more than boss (performance idea) and seeing God as Savior. That’s true.

I’ll give you my take: I think Jesus showed the man that he didn’t follow the second table of the Ten Commandments because Jesus adds Lev 19:18, love your neighbor, as the way to read the second table, and Jesus reveals to the man that he really doesn’t love others because true love for neighbor is to surrender possessions for the poor. I see here a radical kingdom vision wherein Jesus is Lord (where I see the gravity of this passage), where fellowship with others (all) shapes what we do with what we have, and wherein Jesus as Lord (the cross-shaped life to be sure) means we undertake to live what he calls us to do.