The Old Testament prioritizes lineage, family, children, liturgy, feast days, priests, rituals, buildings, and land. The New Testament does not abolish these things. On the one hand, it actually further emphasizes their importance; the realities are more plainly manifested and understood. On the other, they are shown to be penultimate realities, for the telos is Christ Jesus. All of these wonderful things find their end in Him. How else could they matter? And how else could they matter more?

The Church’s encounter with Marcion in the 2nd century taught her many things. When this innovative heretic-to-be suggested that Christianity existed in opposition to the Jewish Scriptures and the Jewish God, the Church quickly showed him the door. In this process, above all, she learned that her identity and the identity of the Gospel which she was given is dependent upon the Jewish Scriptures, this Old Testament (or, “OT”). This, of course, goes back to the words of the Apostle Paul himself. When narrating to the Corinthian Christians the matters of “first importance,” he roots his statements in the testimony of the “Scriptures,” i.e., the OT (1 Corinthians 15:3 ESV). That “Christ died for our sins” is “in accordance with the Scriptures”; so also the fact “that he was buried” and “that he was raised on the third day” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). When Marcion suggested that the Church of Christ cut the umbilical cord to those Jewish texts which, in his view, chained her to their religious immaturity, the Church noted, aptly, that the scissors were not aimed at any cord, but at her legs.
The Old Testament, then, is here to stay. To the extent that it vanishes, so do the people of God whose name is written in its language. Removing the Old Testament from Christianity would be like removing color from a sunset; it makes up the base material by which such a glorious sight is constructed. Anyone who misses this has yet to put the Synoptic Gospels and 1-2 Kings side by side, or perhaps has ignored all the miniature footnotes in his Bible when reading the book of Revelation. Birdwatchers have tuned their ears to distinguish the calls of a vast array of species amidst what most people (including myself) hear only as a cacophony. Reading the books of the Old Testament tunes the Christian’s ears to hear the Lord Jesus, to recognize nuances of sound and harmonic allusions.
Approaching the Old Testament, therefore, is no mean task. Quite the opposite: the way one approaches this body of texts will determine his slant on many issues of Christian theology. So often, the hermeneutical lens with which the OT is read ends up, whether intentionally or not, sifting various texts into categories of “Use” or “Do Not Use” for the purposes of the Christian Church. This twofold systematization is built upon a certain dualistic reading of the Hebrew Scriptures.
This primary dualism—the one dualism to rule them all—is a physical/spiritual dichotomy. We must discuss this in detail, because matter matters, and so matters about matter matter. This dualistic principle, in general, states that the OT contained physical promises, physical worship, and physical rituals which have now been surpassed and superseded by a truer and more spiritual version of all these things. There is certainly some truth to this. When asked if worship should take place on the mountain of Jerusalem or of Gerizim, our Lord stated that true worship would exceed the worship in Jerusalem (which heretofore was the correct answer), and that God’s people would worship Him “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23). In this way, Jesus relativizes the specificity of worship. In the Old Testament, God ordained that worship would occur in Jerusalem. In the New, He has restructured the liturgical system such that Jerusalem is no longer central. This example is crucial, but this principle could be extended to other themes (e.g., inheriting Canaan to inheriting the whole earth, sacrificial system to the sacrifice of Christ, etc.)
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We must look to a baby born not with fanfare, pomp, and circumstance, but to poor parents in desperate times. Joseph and Mary, and the Baby Jesus for that matter, were real historical figures. But in a way, Joseph and Mary extend beyond themselves, beyond their particular place and time. They represent all of us. We are all poor and living in desperate times. Some of us are better than others at camouflaging it. Nevertheless, we are all poor and desperate, so we all need the promise bound up in that baby.

One of the most remarkable stories of Christmas comes from one of the darkest moments of modern history. World War I ravaged a continent, leaving destruction and debris in its wake. The human cost, well in the millions, staggers us. But from the midst of this dark conflict comes the story of the Christmas Truce of 1914. The Western Front, only a few months into the war, was a deplorable scene of devastation. Perhaps as if to give the combatants one day to breathe again, a truce was called from Christmas Eve through Christmas Day.
As darkness settled over the front like a blanket, the sound of exploding shells and the rat-tat-tat of gunfire faded. Faint carols, in French or English voices on one side and in German voices on the other, rose to fill the silence of the night.
By morning, soldiers, at first hesitantly, began filing out of the maze of trenches into the dreaded and parched soil of No Man’s Land. There was more singing. Gifts of rations and cigarettes were exchanged. Family photos were passed around. Soccer balls appeared. Up and down the Western Front, soldiers, who only hours before had been locked in deathly combat, now faced off in soccer games.
For one brief but entirely remarkable day, there was peace on earth. Some have called the Christmas Truce of 1914 “the Miracle on the Western Front.”
Anxious to print some good news, The Times of London reported on the events of the Christmas Truce. Soldiers recorded the day in letters home and in diaries. Some of those lines made it to newspapers, while others remained unknown until later brought to light. Here’s one such line from the diary of a German infantryman: “The English brought a soccer ball from the trenches, and pretty soon a lively game ensued. How marvelously wonderful, yet how strange it was. The English officers felt the same way about it. Thus Christmas, the celebration of Love, managed to bring mortal enemies together as friends for a time.”
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Such is the kingdom of God. It is for the little children and all who would become like them. It is for those who hold their possessions as if they had none, who do not trust in the fleeting hope of riches, who know that if the Lord has given He may also take away and His name will still be blessed. As we come to the Table of our King, may we come like poor and needy children to our good and loving Father. Let us forsake any self-righteousness within our souls, and cling only to Christ, for grace, for mercy, for compassion, for comfort, for discipline. Let us hold only to our Savior, knowing that we cannot be saved apart from Him and that in His arms we are held fast as dearly loved children.

And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.” Peter began to say to him, “See, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
Mark 10:17-31 ESV

“Have you noticed,” asks Tim Keller, “that some of Jesus’s sayings are like hard candy? They’re not like chocolate, which you can let melt in your mouth, swallow, and it’s gone–a momentary pleasure. With a hard candy, if you try to take it in too fast, you’re likely headed for the dentist’s chair or the Heimlich Maneuver. Many of Jesus’s sayings are like that. You work on them, you work into them, and you work through them, and only then are you rewarded with layer after layer of increasing sweetness.”[1]
In the passage before us, we encounter a number of such sayings from Jesus, sayings that challenge our default presuppositions. Here we are challenged to rethink how we understand goodness, righteousness, wealth, and salvation. May the Spirit give light to the eyes of our heart as we study this text.
You Lack One Thing// Verses 17-22
The verses before us can easily be divided into two main sections: Jesus’ encounter with the rich, young ruler and Jesus’ lesson for His disciples. The man whom we often call the rich, young ruler (from the paralleling accounts of Matthew and Luke) ran up to Jesus as He was setting out for His journey. The reverence that this man had for Jesus is immediately displayed, first, through his willingness to run, which was considered undignified at that time, and by his kneeling before Jesus. Right from the beginning, then, we know that this is not one of the antagonistic encounters that will become so normal for us to read in chapters 11-12. Here is a man with a genuine desire to speak with Jesus.
“Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Here is the question that has been haunting the young man’s mind. We might rephrase it today as, “What must I do to be saved?” We can easily imagine him being in the spiritual place that so many are today in the West, living lives of relative comfort and success yet feeling the constant pull toward something more, something eternal. Believing themselves to be good and moral people, yet still lacking something.
Jesus’ response would fail a seminary class on evangelism because even though a sincere seeker of eternal life had literally run to Him and knelt down before Him asking how to be saved, He did not give the man a presentation of the gospel. Instead, Jesus pushed back against the man’s basic understanding of what goodness is: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.”
This response, of course, has been highjacked by secular scholars as evidence that Jesus did not consider Himself to be divine. Yet we would do well to notice that Jesus did not say that the man was wrong to call Him good. Indeed, the man was much more correct than he knew. Rather, Jesus was giving a subtle prod at the man’s broken notion of goodness. The man did not think that Jesus was God, only a spiritual guru, a miracle man. Thus, the man thought that goodness could be achieved, that men could become good, just as Jesus Himself had apparently done.
R. C. Sproul notes that such a definition of goodness is inherently relative; it is goodness in comparison to everyone else.[2] Biblically, however, goodness is an attribute of God, meaning that it is not some ethereal force that God meets. No, God Himself is goodness, its standard and source. Therefore, only God truly is good, and whatever we might call good is only properly good in relation to Him.
Yet knowing that the man considers himself to be good, Jesus gave him an answer similar to what he likely expected to hear: “You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And sure enough the man answered as expected, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.”
Here again I believe that we should read the man’s answer with the utmost sincerity. We know from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount that he has not, in fact, kept them. He certainly never murdered anyone, but we can be sure that he did so in his heart because we all have done likewise. Even from the Old Testament, the man should have known that outward obedience is not enough to please the holiness of God. Notice, of course, that Jesus cited Commandments 5-9, not mentioning those that govern our worship of God nor the 10th Commandment, which is explicitly a heart-level law.
Yet the man had not been taught the true ways of God. Here is fruit of the Pharisees’ legalism: a man who both thought he had done enough to merit God’s favor and knew at same time that righteousness eluded him.
In verse 21, we read that Jesus loved this man. He had compassion on him, for he was truly lost, a sheep without a shepherd. This love led Jesus to issue a remarkable challenge to the man: “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”
Let us pause to note that while our world considers affirmation to be highest form of love Jesus displayed His love for the man precisely by not affirming him. Jesus offered no pat on the back to assuage the man’s lingering sense of insufficiency. He did not say, “I can clearly see that you are trying your best, and that’s what God really looks at. Go in peace.” Such a word would have doomed the man. It would have been as comforting as a doctor neglecting to tell a patient about their cancer, heart defect, or other such life-threatening condition.
Instead, Jesus confirmed what the young man always knew deep in his heart. The perpetual question of the legalist is: “Have I done enough?” And the answer is ever and always: “No.” The nagging voice that haunted him at night was affirmed. After all of his religious obedience something was still missing. He lacked one thing. And true love does not shy away from pointing out such lack. True love does not heal a wound lightly, as Jeremiah accused the false prophets of his day of doing.
Of course, we see this today with the transgender ideologues, whose answer to a hurting person who feels like the opposite sex is to sign on the dotted line, start taking some hormones, and get a plastic surgery scheduled to make them look somewhat like how they feel.
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