{"id":5045,"date":"2014-02-17T00:05:31","date_gmt":"2014-02-17T08:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=5045"},"modified":"2014-02-16T15:55:49","modified_gmt":"2014-02-16T23:55:49","slug":"immortality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2014\/02\/17\/immortality\/","title":{"rendered":"Immortality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Someone came up and asked [Jesus], \u201cTeacher, what good must I do to have eternal life?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do you ask Me about what is good?\u201d He said to him. \u201cThere is only One who is good. If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhich ones?\u201d he asked Him.<\/p>\n

Jesus answered,<\/p>\n

Do not murder; immortality
\ndo not commit adultery;
\ndo not steal;
\ndo not bear false witness;
\nhonor your father and your mother;
\nand love your neighbor as yourself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have kept all these,\u201d the young man told Him. \u201cWhat do I still lack?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to be perfect,\u201d Jesus said to him, \u201cgo, sell your belongings and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the young man heard that command, he went away grieving, because he had many possessions. (Matthew 19:16-22)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\tWhat do you really want? There are differences between Matthew\u2019s telling of the story of the rich young ruler and what we saw in Mark\u2019s telling of the incident. The list of commandments differs slightly. Matthew also makes explicit what Mark only implies: that if the young man wanted to live forever, then to do so he needed to keep the ten commandments. The list that Jesus gave was in response to the young man\u2019s question about which ones. The young man believed he had done all of them, but he realized he still lacked something. So Jesus told him what that was. It was something that made the young man walk away in tears.<\/p>\n

\tThe young man walked away because of his skewed priorities. He rejected the reality Jesus revealed. He thought that Jesus\u2019 request to give up all his wealth was a sacrifice. He could only see what he would lose. He forgot all about what he had wanted to gain: eternal life.<\/p>\n

\tIf you really could live forever, and it only cost every cent you had, wouldn\u2019t that be a bargain? But perhaps the young man didn\u2019t really want to live forever. That, perhaps, may be the saddest implication of the story. Since the kingdom of God is of infinite worth, we give up nothing in comparison to that. Do we understand that what we gain from God outweighs what we think we\u2019re losing? In reality, we lose nothing. Paul understood that all he lost in gaining Jesus was worthless garbage (Philippians 3:8).<\/p>\n

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Someone came up and asked [Jesus], \u201cTeacher, what good must I do to have eternal life?\u201d \u201cWhy do you ask Me about what is good?\u201d He said to him. \u201cThere is only One who is good. If you want to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5045"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5045"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5047,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5045\/revisions\/5047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}