DEVOTIONAL

And behold, a man came up to him, saying, "Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?" And he said to him, "Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments."  He said to him, "Which ones?" And Jesus said, "You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself."  The young man said to him, "All these I have kept. What do I still lack?"  Jesus said to him, "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions." (Matthew 19:16-22)

Not too often do we hear people talking about eternal life outside the church but when we do, it probably has to do with what I need to do to obtain it.  The rich man in this passage has this question and Jesus tells him to "keep the commandments".  Seeming vague to the rich man, he pressed Jesus further to tell him specifically "which ones".  How often do we do this same sort of thing?  Instead of obeying God wholeheartedly, we ask how far we can go before we are "sinning".  Jesus answers his question by listing specific commandments:

• Don't murder [6th Commandment];
• Don't commit adultery [7th Commandment];
• Don't steal [8th Commandment];
• Don't be deceitful [9th Commandment];
• Honor your mother and father [5th Commandment]; and
• Love your neighbor as yourself [10th Commandment].

The rich man claims that he has kept all these commandments, but deep down he knew there was something else he was lacking in order to obtain eternal life and asked Jesus what it was. Jesus answered and told him to go and sell all he possessed and give it to the poor. But having great wealth, the rich man went away "sorrowful" because he was unable to give up all he had to follow Jesus. 

If we take a closer look at the command Jesus gave the rich man we see that it dealt with the first 4 of the 10 Commandments given to Moses. These first 4 Commandments deal with our relationship with God; the last 6 deal with our relationship with man. Most of the time it is easy to work on and perfect our relationship with others (at least in outside appearances) but it is much more difficult to perfect our relationship with God.  Elsewhere, Jesus commanded that His followers "...love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" (Matthew 22:37).  This is not an easy task at all because there is so much in this world that we have a vested interest in: our careers, our hobbies, our projects, etc.  These activities tend to creep into every aspect of our lives and cause us to lose our first love (Revelation 2:1-7).  As we see the day approaching of our Savior's retur, we need to continually be reminded that we need to store up our treasure in heaven (Matthew 6:19-20) and we do this by ultimately loving the Lord our God with all our heart soul and mind.