You may already be familiar with the story about the rich young man as described by Matthew in the nineteenth chapter of his gospel account.   A rich young man approached Jesus and asked Him what he must do to live forever.  This story’s presentation is a bit misleading because it occurs so matter-of-factly, without a great deal of fanfare.  But the issue presented-  mortality versus immortality- is undoubtedly the most important issue any human can face.  

What, if anything, happens after we die?  Do we simply die and that’s the end of it?  Or is there something else that happens after death?  It’s so easy to get so caught up in our daily lives that we tend to forget about it.  Or perhaps we simply avoid it.  If you think about it for any length of time, it’s bound to make you uncomfortable.   If your conclusion is that this life is it and that there is nothing after, it gets pretty depressing.  But if you believe that there is something after death, and that you can affect the outcome by your actions while here on Earth, then the stakes escalate.  For example, if you believe in a Heaven, then you will likely want to do whatever is necessary to get there.   On the other hand, if you believe in Hell, you will probably want to do whatever is necessary to avoid it.

I know there are all kinds of potential variations on this theme.  Some people believe in Heaven, but don’t believe in Hell.  But even among the people who believe in Heaven, there are differences as to exactly what Heaven is like- everything from pearly gates, to gold-paved streets; variations on the theme, if you will.  Some people believe in reincarnation-  you keep coming back to Earth after you die, in a form that is roughly related to your performance in the previous life. 

In the young man’s case, he believed that there was at least the possibility that there was life after death.   A lot of people followed Jesus because they thought he was a wise teacher.  Perhaps the rich young man admired and respected Jesus.  Presumably, the young man was well-educated.  Perhaps he enjoyed lofty spiritual debate.  It’s hard to tell from the dialogue.  But he thought enough of Jesus to ask Him what it would take to live forever.

Jesus’s response was simple.  He told the young man that he should obey God’s commands.  Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it?  Do what God wants you to do and you will live forever.  Of course, the execution of it becomes infinitely more difficult. 

This is why the rich young man asked the next question.  He asked, “Which commands?”  He intuitively knew that there was no way that he could obey every single command.  It isn’t humanly possible.  In a way, he was challenging Jesus’ advice.  He was, in effect, saying “Come on Jesus, you and I both know that it isn’t possible.  Get real.  Tell me which commands are really important.”

But here’s the thing.  Jesus knew it was possible to live a completely sinless life; He was living proof of it.  Nonetheless, He went with the question.  He said that if the young man just obeyed what were in essence the Ten Commandments, he would live forever.   

But the rich young man was pretty fired up at this point.  He was, after all, intelligent and rich. That should amount for something, shouldn’t it?  He quickly responded “I’ve always obeyed these commandments.”  I imagine he thought the discussion was over at that point.  He had gotten Jesus to agree that he was going to Heaven.  He had lived a good life.  He had passed the test. 

But, like most of us who feel pretty good about our lives, the rich young man couldn’t stop there.  He decided to go for an A plus.  He asked Jesus “What else do I need to do?”  Something tells me that Jesus knew, before the conversation even started, that the young man would eventually get to this point.

And then Jesus got to the point.  He told the rich young man that if he wanted to get to Heaven, he would need to give up everything and follow Him.

I remember as a kid, seeing funny picture book of monkeys.  The monkeys were dressed up as people, and put into people situations.  Three monkeys were playing cards, smoking cigars and drinking scotch.  On another page, a “husband” monkey and a “wife” monkey were having a spat.  And there was a picture of a monkey “family” picnic- a “mom” monkey and a “dad” monkey, with “brother” monkey and “sister” monkey eating sandwiches and drinking lemonade.  The book was funny because the monkeys had been dressed up and put into human situations.

But here’s the thing.  As cute as the pictures were, the monkeys were still monkeys.  Off camera, they probably messed up the props and sets.  They fought.  Their handlers were careful, and didn’t for one minute get fooled into thinking that the monkeys wouldn’t bite them if agitated.  A monkey, no matter how you dress it up, is a monkey.  The same applies to humans. 

Deep down inside, if we really think about it, we understand that we can never earn our way into Heaven.  No matter how hard we want to, or how hard we try, we are going to fail.  It’s just not humanly possible for an imperfect human to earn his way into a perfect place.   In my own case, I can assure you that my thoughts and actions typically diverge from God’s will within five minutes of awakening each day.  The cares and worries of this world quickly take over.  Before I know it, and despite my best intentions, I take a path that is different from the one God wants me to take.  Certainly, I do my best to correct my path to conform to His will.  But no matter how hard I try, I simply don’t measure up.  I’m simply human.  I can dress myself up, I can go to church, I can give money to charity and all of the rest of it.  But at my core, I’m a human being and all that comes with it.

The rich young man’s question presumed that with enough effort, he could earn his way into heaven.  I understand the presumption.   After all, the young man was rich.  Rich people tend to believe that they earned their riches.  So it makes sense that he would believe he could earn his way into Heaven.

But the truth is, it all comes from God.  God created the universe.  He created mankind.  He created you and me.  And everything that we have, one way or the other, can be attributed to God.  Our health, our intelligence, our gifts; all come from God.  How can we earn our way into God’s graces by giving Him back something that He gave us to begin with?  It’s sort of like the child buying Dad a birthday present with money Dad gave her.  It’s sweet and thoughtful and all that, but from an economic perspective, it was a net zero transaction to the Dad.

And that was Jesus’ point.  And it was also the point made throughout the Old Testament, in anticipation of the coming of the Messiah.  It’s simple.  The just shall live by faith.  Beginning with Abraham, the father of our faith (you can read about him in Genesis), God has sought one thing from humankind- faith in Him.  We “earn” our way to Heaven by believing in Him.  This is what it means to be saved by grace, through faith.  God gave us a free gift in the form of Jesus as savior, and we accept the gift through faith.  It’s so simple that many people have a hard time accepting it.  Like the rich young man, they prefer to keep a running tally of their lives.  They mistakenly believe that their good works will somehow created indebtedness by God toward them.  But again, it’s impossible for God to be indebted to any human because He gave us everything that we have.  As a result, from the day we are born, we have a deficit balance in our eternal bank account.  And, like the national debt, it only gets bigger over time.

And that’s why the rich young man left, saddened.  I’ve heard some people explain that he was sad because Jesus told him to give up his riches.  He had put his money before God.  But I think it runs deeper than that.   Jesus also said, “Follow me.”  And that was the real bottom line.  If we want to get to Heaven, we have to follow Him. 

But there’s good news.  To follow Jesus, we must first have faith in Him.  We accept through faith His free gift of eternal salvation.  And once we accept this gift, He steps in.  He gives us His Holy Spirit.  He comes to live within us.   And this makes it infinitely easier to follow Him.  Faith begets more faith.  We make the decision for Him and we begin to see its result manifest in our lives.  We are changed.  We become more like Him.  And the change reinforces our faith.  We stop living in our own effort and we rely on Him.   We study His words and we learn more about Him, which in turns results in more and more of this remarkable transformation that so many people have undergone.

Are there bumps and bruises along the way?  Certainly.  We will always have the free will to make decisions.  And sometimes we make the wrong decisions.  And wrong decisions have consequences.  But He is always there for us.  His sacrifice means that He does not see our sin.  Instead, He sees us as sinless.  And He loves us no matter what.

So, the rich young man either could not or would not follow Jesus.  And when the debate was over, he walked away sadly and left Jesus standing there.  But it didn’t have to end that way.  The rich young man could have embraced Jesus.  He could have stayed with Jesus.  Or he could have received Jesus’ teaching and left in jubilance, laughing and dancing. 

And the same holds true for each of us.  There is a popular Christian saying, “Know Jesus, know peace.  No Jesus, no peace.”  And this brings me to why I believe what I believe.  Jesus said that He was the only way to God.[1]  This causes some people heartburn.   “Surely, there is more than one way to Heaven,” they reason.  But I believe Jesus because everything else that He said, as recorded in the Bible, has been absolutely true for me in my life experience.  Every single day of my life, His version of things has been validated in my life.  A Man who lived two thousand years ago still speaks to me through his words.  And He speaks to me through His Spirit. 

I’ve wondered what happened to the rich young man after he left that day.  We have no way of knowing.  But something tells me that it wasn’t the end of the story.  Once you’ve seen the light, it’s pretty hard to go back to darkness.  If he was as smart as I think he was, I’ll bet he kept thinking about Jesus’ instruction.  And I’d bet that not too long after, he made a decision.

I’ll leave it to you to decide.

[1] John 14.

When I was in college, one of my least favorite subjects was Statistics.  Most Statistics classes start with the classic "five colored balls in a hat" scenario.  The basic idea always starts with a factual setup, followed by a question.   "If there are five balls, each of a different color in a hat, what is the probability that you will draw a red ball?"  Or, "What is the probability that you will draw a red ball on the first draw, and a green ball on the second draw?"  And so on.

The reason I disliked Statistics is what I'll call the "exceptional circumstance."  As the professor would work through the probability equation, I couldn't help but wonder, "But what if the improbable happened?"  In other words, what if you drew a red ball every time?  Further, what if you drew a red ball a hundred times in a row?

But here's the thing.  Statistics is a theory of the probability of equally random things occuring.  If the balls are all of the same weight and the conditions of the draw are the same, then in theory, the likelihood of drawing a different color ball each time is equal. 

And that's one of the reasons I believe that God is real.  There are simply too many things that have occured in my life to attirbute to random probability.  Start with the fact that there is a planet Earth and living things on it, and especially those things we refer to as "humans".  The entire system and the complexity of life is such that, at least to me, it cannot be attributed to random probability.  I suppose its possible that humanity evolved from amoeba, but when I think about all the things that would have had to come together for that to happen, I think it's simply easier to believe that there was a central, guiding Hand in all of it.

This leads to the question of exactly who that guiding Hand is.  And again, it's a Statistics question.  If I read about that guiding Hand and the description repeatedly and accurately reflects my own experience, then I'll most likely subscribe to that viewpoint.  For me, the Bible repeatedly and accurately reflects my own experience.  And so, I subscribe to the Bible's characterization of God.

One of the key characterizations of God in the Bible is through Jesus.  Jesus, His followers and the contributing writers to the New Testament clearly believed that He was God.  

Of even greater interest to me is how Jesus is described in the Old Testament.  The Old Testament is filled with prophecies of the coming Messiah- the One who would save mankind.  I won't go into the details here, but  these prophecies start in Genesis, and repeatedly occur in Psalms, Isaiah, Ezekiel and the writings of the other prophets of the Old Testament.  The words are chillingly accurate in the description of the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. 

If you haven't ever studied these prophecies, I would encourage you to look into them.  But when I read them and think about them in terms of probabilities, I find them leading to the single inescapable conclusion that Jesus was, in fact, God. 

Christians will tell you that Jesus was sacrificed for the sins of mankind- yours, mine, and everyone else's.  This raises the issue of my second-least favorite subject-  Math.  I hated Math as a kid and today, I use a calculator to perform mathematical functions- sort of an exquisite revenge for all those years spent sweating over a Math book, instead of being outside playing ball.

Assuming that you do believe that Jesus was God, this sacrifice may raise a couple of questions for you, nonetheless.  The first question is "Why do my sins even need to be paid for?"  A lot of people ask themselves this question.  They reason that their lives, in the balance, are pretty good.  They do more good things than bad things.  They always try to do the right thing.

But if you believe in God, the fallacy in this thinking quickly becomes obvious.  God created you; He gave you life.  God created the Earth and everything in it- the resources, the intelligence that developed those resources such that we are able to enjoy them.  God gave you everything you have (or at least the capability to get it).  So, you owe everthing you have to Him.  And because of that, even if you've led a perfectly sinless life, it would still be difficult to completely and perfectly pay Him back for it.

But let's face it.  You haven't led a perfectly sinless life.  I know that I haven't.  So, the truth is that you can never pay God back.  Which means, in the grand scheme of eternity, you are in a perpetual deficit relationship to Him.  Now throw a little sin on top of it.  Think Adam and Eve.  God gave them everything they needed, but it wasn't enough.  Instead of simply trusting in Him, they trusted in the serpent.  They bit the Hand that fed them.  And if I'm honest with myself, I quickly realize I've led a pretty rotten life, if I define "rotten" as living in a way that is counter to God's will for me (which is again, defined in the book that I subscribe to, based upon its validation of my life experiences- the Bible). 

This leads to the second question. How can one Man pay for the sins of all of mankind?  How can the spilled blood of one Man avoid the deserved spilling of blood for every man, woman and child ever born?

In this case, the math is simple.  The blood spilled of that Man wasn't of a man.  It was of God.  And it was the same God who created everything, including the men, women and children for whom He willingly shed His blood.  One drop of His blood is of infinite value.  And the fact that He shed all of it ihas to be more than payment enough for the blood of all of His creatures.

God created me and you.  He assumed human form and lived among us.  Through His life, He taught us about His true nature and how we should live.  Mankind, originally a perfect creation, has fallen, and to use infomercial vernacular, "can't get up."  Jesus, through his life and death helps us up.  We are forgiven, once and for all.  It's what Christians call "grace"- unmerited and undeserved favor.   He does it for each and every one of us.  We, through our lives, were headed to eternal separation from God (how can a perfect God coexist in eternity with imperfect creatures?).  But He intervened.

And here's the thing.  This grace leads us to respond in gratitude to Him.  Once we realize that He has forgiven us, we begin to want to act like He did and be like Him.  And over time, we become like Him.

Do the math.  It works perfectly.

I recently posted a quick story on Facebook about an incredible woman that I ran into recently.  I found myself somewhat stranded on a bike ride with my two little girls in the park and desperately in need of some help.  One of our bikes had gotten a flat and we needed to get back to the main entrance, about a half mile away, so that my wife could come get us.  The woman was jogging along and found us in our somewhat helpless situation.  She could have kept jogging.   She was right in the middle of her workout.  But she didn't.  Instead, she stopped and helped us.  She carried the bike back to the park entrance.

I'm pretty sure that she was a Christian.  We didn't talk much but her actions spoke much louder than her words.  Her human nature would have told her to keep on going past us.  After all, she probably had worked all day and was desperately in need of a run.   She seemed to be very fit, so I would imagine that she really relished her exercise and felt a bit guilty at not continuing.  But something selfless in her emerged.  Something in her caused her to not do what was likely in her nature, but instead to do something that was supernatural. 

The human condition is, at its core, selfish.  We want.  We need.  And we put us first.  The supernatural condition is to get past this.  It's to move from "me" to "you".  And that's exactly what this woman did.  The interesting thing is, that my Facebook post prompted a number of responses from my friends, with similar stories.  And the protagonists in these stories were either self-described Christians or missionaries.

I'm not saying that only Christians can be selfless.  I'm just saying that selflessness isn't really a human trait.  And it's interesting to me that in these stories, the common thread appeared to be Christ.  Of course, I'll never know for sure.  I can't see into anyone's heart.  I can only make assumptions, based upon  their behaviors, in a circumstantial way.

At the end of my post, I assured my friends that as to this random act of kindness, by a complete stranger, I would "pay it forward."  This phrase has gained popularity recently for who knows what reason.  But I find it very fitting in these circumstances.  Kindness begets kindness.   But it also reminds me that the only way anyone could ever deduce what I believe is as a result of the way I act.  If I act selfishly, they will conclude one thing.  If I act in an unselfish way, it will likely lead to a different conclusion.

Certainly, there are plenty of non-Christians who might have acted the same way as this woman did.  But they would have done it for a different reason.  Perhaps they would have considered it the "right" thing to do.  Or maybe they are simply good people who have high moral standards and try to live their lives the best way that they can.

But I believe this woman acted the way she did because she knew that it was the way that Jesus acted.  And she believed that He would have wanted her to act this way.  And His Holy Spirit provided the tools to do so.  And at that moment, with her having helped me and my children out of an extremely bad spot, I would have done just about anything for that woman.  But she didn't really need anything from me.  And so, I decided then and there, that I would "pay it forward."

And that's one of the common threads in Christian faith.  Jesus acted unselfishly.  Even the secular, historical literature acknowledges this.  But Christians believe that Jesus took unselfishness to a new level.  He died so that we don't have to.  He bore the punishment for every sin ever committed.  He reconciled humanity with God.  He didn't defend Himself.  He knew that His death was a necessary part of God's eternal plan for mankind.  He allowed Himself to be crucified.  He did if for me.  And He did it for you.

To a non-Christian, it must all sound so barbaric.  God sacrificed His own Son, so that mankind could have the hope of salvation from its sinful condition.  But the truth is that it was self-sacrifice.  We believe that Jesus was God, in a human form.  So, He could have called legions of angels to avoid this horrible death.  He could have snapped His fingers and turned His accusers into toads.  But He didn't do what His human nature wanted to do.  Instead, He allowed it all to happen.  The Creator of the Universe allowed His creatures to beat Him, torture Him, humiliate Him and kill Him in a slow, agonizing way. 

He did it because He knew that it was the only way, to address the problem of sin that accompanies the free will that He had purposefully built into to his creatures.  It makes sense to me.  After all, how interesting would it be to create a world of robots that I programmed to do what I wanted them to do.  That seems pretty junior league for Someone who created everything.  Instead, I think I would create humanity with free will and the power to choose.  And I would do it because I would know that ultimately I would arrange for this incredible self-sacrifice.  I would know that some of my creatures would respond that that sacrifice, out of free will, and in gratitude.  And that response would determine truly who my creatures were. 

And we would all pay it forward.