I AM THE RICH MAN: THE RICH YOUNG RULER'S PROPHETIC CALL TO A MODERN AGE.

by Philip Mull

While engaging with Scripture, I felt the Lord illuminating to me how much I, and the church that I know, look so much like the Rich Young Ruler – even though we are called by God to walk in a very different way.

We amass wealth, acquire power, and attempt to transcend the struggles of the physical world. Our ultimate target? Eternal life in paradise. Yet Jesus calls us to more than this. He calls us to participate in a kingdom that is redeeming the world. He calls us to sell all we have to buy the field.

I can remember being in a church that went through a Dave Ramsey class for finances and how to become wealthy; I’ve heard sermons preached by famous pastors about the influence they have with governing officials and how they have helped make big policy changes; I’ve heard calls for renewed religious fervor in our following of God’s commands. Time and time again I have heard leaders and influencers both prominent and obscure talk about God calling each person to something BIG. Big ministry, big impact, change the city, change the nation, change the world, and by golly the Rich Young Ruler looked like he was on his way there. He had the money, he had social influence, he had the name and reputation, he had the religious discipline, and he was even a part of God’s chosen people. So what went wrong? Why did he walk away sad? What happened to him that led to him saying no to the call to follow Jesus?

Jesus turns everything around by saying that there is no good thing but God alone, and he leaves it there. In saying this, he puts God in a place of singular desire. Jesus removes all the good/bad rankings and just leaves God as the one true good to be desired.

We desire the security of knowing that our afterlife will be in heaven, or that God is on our side and that we have his blessing.

From the beginning, you were probably presented with the gospel in this way: everyone has sinned and is deserving of Hell. If you would like to not go to Hell, then trust Jesus to save you and pray this prayer. Many have been presented with the Gospel of eternal life and not the gospel of Jesus Christ. In this interaction, Jesus pushes the pursuit of eternal life to the side and holds out that God himself is the only thing worth our pursuit.

It doesn't take riches to have a love of money, and it doesn’t take position to have a lust for power.

Not only are we American Christians wealthy, but we also have a strong affinity for power and influence. We engage in culture wars in an attempt to shape cultural norms and restore a Christian essence to our nation.

We love it when the Bible justifies our current existence, and we ignore it when it challenges it.

we appeal to the gates of heaven like a legal system which we approach like lawyers, attempting to sort through all of the fine print to discover why our lives are this way or that way. We do so to feel some semblance of control over our situations and in an attempt to find levers which we can pull to change our situation. We desire to eliminate all unknowns from our lives, and how we will spend eternity is quite the unknown.

We are called to be truthful about the doubts we experience amidst our obedience. We are called to reveal the true state of our hearts to the Lord.

What would your life look like without fear and with an assurance that the Kingdom of God was in fact the best thing for all of mankind? Would you be quicker to give your resources to others without fearing there won’t be enough for yourself? Would you be able to ruffle feathers to advocate for those who are oppressed, even if it gets you judged? Would you be able to make yourself undignified before the Lord without worrying what others are thinking about you?

What would life look like if we were not afraid?

We would be quicker to accept those who are different from us into that same kingdom because there are not limited seats, and the kingdom doesn’t practice overbooking. None would fear rejection or excommunication because at the very least, the God of all creation would accept us with open arms and comfort us in our pain. We wouldn’t have leaders who are driven by insecurity that causes them to hurt and dominate others. We wouldn’t have systems that benefit only a few while using others as though they were a resource. We would be quick to encourage, and we would not feel the overwhelming need to justify ourselves in everything we do. We would look out for the needs of others. No man would be overlooked for the purpose of progress and no one would be burnt out on the altar of ministry. I think we would Sabbath again, I think we would pray, I think we would experience the fullness of life which God desires for humanity.

We are so much less than God, so much less than any of our ideals, and so far from perfection; yet that does not mean we are bad. It means we are like children, still in need of growth, and still in need of instruction.

We hear that call and believe that God has called us as individuals to rule and subdue the earth, rather than see it as the collective role of humanity to do so.

We so often see God's calls to humanity and groups of people as calls to us individually, but in reality, we as humanity are called to rule and subdue the earth. We are not called to rule and subdue each other. We are called to humbly serve one another in love (Galatians 5:13-14).

Why does the church in America again and again promote these leaders? Because our hearts are still attracted to power and influence. We want to be associated with a church that is growing, with a leader that is strong, and with a religion that is winning.

How many of us are proud to say we are doing our very best to follow the example of a God who was sent to earth as a man and died the humiliating death of a slave? A God who did not associate himself with the powerful but with the powerless. Who again and again associated with the poor, the oppressed, the fatherless, the widow, the foreigner, the downtrodden, the afflicted, the leper, the harlot, and the Samaritan. Jesus never sought power; he sought out the powerless. He sought to serve those around him as if they were more important than himself, and we are called to do likewise.

I would say God is and shows love perfectly, yet while reading through the description of love in 1 Corinthians 13, I discovered through personal reflection that I believed God was self-seeking, which would not be a perfect showing of love. I aligned with that vein of thought because I believed God wants glory all to himself and he shares it with no one. He seemed to actively seek for his glory to be known by all humanity. More than that, I saw God as acting in ways that only furthered his purposes and agenda and did not allow others to make the agenda as well.

Did you know that God is not afraid of your questions? That He is not opposed to them? I have known many believers and have experienced myself the feeling that questioning God or having questions about the faith is a bad thing, shameful even. We feel as though any internal questioning means that we are not a "fully committed Christian," or maybe that we are perhaps not even truly saved. Yet even here in this book, we see Habakkuk, one of the prophets, questioning the character of God and wrestling over how it all makes sense.

What would it be like to bring your questions and doubts to God and find that He is patient, loving, and delighted to walk with you through those questions and doubts?

Others avoid them because if God is not exactly as they think he is, then their whole sense of truth falls apart. After all, as Francis Bacon put it, "knowledge is power," and to admit that you don't have knowledge is to be powerless. We are so interested in controlling our environments that we cannot stand to not know.

If he sold it all, he would have been poor, a wandering disciple. If we were honest with ourselves, would we be willing to follow Jesus if that is what he asked of us? Or would we have to say that following Jesus is actually not worth selling it all to buy the treasure?

The American evangelical church often values things like experiences, numerical growth, or doctrinal rigor. Yet we see in the scripture that Jesus valued things like devotion to the Lord, justice for the vulnerable, and a vibrant yet hidden relationship with the Father.

In much of the modern American church, we have narrowly defined what it means to be a Christian. With a Christian culture focused so much on the saving of souls, overturning Roe v. Wade, and not being gay, there is so little focus on things like forgiving as we have been forgiven, confessing our sins, and caring for the least of these. Our faith has been reduced to fitting ourselves into “right” and “wrong,” and has lost the call to reach out to disciple and redeem the world around us.

The Kingdom of God consists of all that God has authority over to influence, command, and rule. You might say that it includes everything because of how powerful God is, yet the kingdom of God is held out as being voluntary in nature. Jesus never forced anyone to follow him; rather, he gave them each a choice to willingly follow him and adopt his values.

God desired to establish a nation in which there would be no poor present because of the care and generosity of its people.

25, Jesus spoke of His return to the earth and how He will judge between people. He didn’t say that they will receive a written or verbal test where they must be at least 75% correct in their theological beliefs, nor did He say that you must have prayed the sinner's prayer or have been to church enough. The Rich Young Ruler may have had all of his religious and theological ducks in a row by the standards of the world around him, yet he missed the kingdom. Instead, Jesus said He will separate people based on how they care for the least of these: those who were hungry and thirsty, strangers, those who were naked, sick, and in prison. We are called to be advocates of justice for the oppressed and powerless.

the nation was not blatantly in open rebellion and rejection of God and His laws. Instead, they were selective in the way they sought and followed God. They adhered to laws and traditions that did not inconvenience them too much while ignoring the ones that would have prevented them from amassing wealth. It's as though they displayed personal worship, reverence, and devotion to God without any thought or care for the communal aspect of their heavenly calling.

In the Lord’s Prayer, we are taught to pray that God’s kingdom would come and His will would be done here as it is already done there. So, are we doing His will? Does this prayer require our participation more than our recitation?