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Question: I disagree with what you have said concerning the rich young ruler. “The issue was not the young man’s salvation but rather service to Christ.” In fact, salvation is in view and not service, for this ruler asked, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

Response: Yes, the young ruler did ask what he should do to inherit eternal life. But there was nothing he could do! Having already broken the law, his keeping it perfectly in the future (even if that could be done) would not pay for past sin or justify him. And so it is with all mankind.

Though he claimed that he had kept the law perfectly, that wasn’t true, for “all have sinned.” Nor was Christ giving him conditions for salvation, for “by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight…” (Romans 3:19-23).

If “selling all and giving to the poor” is essential to salvation, then none of us are saved. It was Christ’s means of revealing to the young man his love of riches, and that he didn’t, as he claimed, love his neighbor as himself. Certainly, Christ was not telling him that if he sold all he had and gave to the poor he would be saved. That act would merely be the means of his starting to follow Christ.

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