How else is God’s grace manifest to us? We always think of grace as God giving us something, and yet in this instance, Jesus is trying to take away something from the rich young ruler. More precisely, He told this young wealthy man to sell all that he had and give it to the poor. Why did Jesus say this? Quite plainly, because He loved the young man. Jesus looked at him and looked INTO him and saw a man who could be His disciple right along with the rest of the crowd. And Jesus wanted the man to succeed.
You see, the man thought that he owned riches, but in reality, the riches owned the man. The reason Jesus wanted to strip away the earthly wealth was so the young man could make it long term. Jesus wanted short term loss for eternal gain. And Jesus was willing to put the hard line out there for the man to see up front knowing that if he crossed it, all the rest would be easy from then on.
That’s grace. God wants you and me both to succeed. And He is willing to take away the things that will hinder our long term success in our relationship with the living God.
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