NOTES for Mat 19:13-30
The disciples’ horror is understandable: if it is so difficult for a rich person to be saved, what can be said of the poor, who often have no opportunity to fulfill the precepts of the Law? Christ confirms their intuitive realization: salvation—that is, passing into a new life with God and being delivered from hatred and unbelief—is altogether impossible. It is impossible for human beings; God alone can accomplish it. Those closest to salvation, therefore, are those who do not suppose from the outset that they are capable of drawing near to God by their own power. The young man, who had kept the chief commandments since childhood, was clearly a very good person. Yet his wealth—not money, but confidence in his ability to “be perfect”—leads him away from the Gospel message that “all things are possible with God.” He “goes away sorrowful,” thereby losing his “wealth of spirit” and gaining the possibility of entering the Kingdom together with the disciples, not by his own righteousness but through the almighty power of God’s love.