The Man Who Thought He Kept the Law — A.W. Tozer

The Rich Young Ruler's Question About Eternal Life

So tonight I want to talk about a man who mistakenly thought he kept the law, in the 10th chapter of Mark, beginning with verse 17. And when Jesus was gone forth into the way, there came one running and kneeled to him and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?

And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God. Thou knowest the commandments, you're a Jew and you're a synagogue man. You know the commandments, here's some of them.

Do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false witness, don't be fraud. Honor your father and mother. He interrupted and said, Master, all these things I have observed from my youth.

And Jesus beholding him, loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest, thy way shall whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven. Come and pick up the cross and follow me.

He was sad at that saying and went away grieved, for he had great possessions. Now there is the story, it is also told in Mark and in Luke. But this simple little story here by Mark, who is the best of all the storytellers of the Gospels, he is succinct and brief and colorful, so I chose his story of this incident.

The Young Ruler's Religious Success

We see a young man here, a number of things about this man. He was a young man, and we learn that he was a ruler of the synagogue, which means that he had a high position in one of the local churches, Jewish churches, synagogue, from the Greek word meaning gathering together.

And they gathered together, and in the various groups they couldn't go to the temple always. And these various little gathering places, the synagogues, had rulers, elders, pastor you might call it, somebody who was in charge.

And here was one of those young men. Now he was without any doubt a man of superior character, personality, and some education at least by the standards of the day. And here he comes now running to our Lord Jesus Christ.

His dignity was forgotten, and he kneeled before our Lord to ask him a question. The question was, Good Master. And this, of course, gave him away. He didn't say, Lord, he said, Good Master, what shall I do that I may have eternal life?

And the fact that he used the word do here would show us that he expected to earn. He was a good Jew, and he thought that he would earn his way into heaven. So he said, What shall I do? Now this man, I say, was high in religious circles, but there's one thing about him.

Now if you'll notice here, he was a success. He was young, and that's always in your favor. I remember when Lindbergh flew the Atlantic, he was 26 years old. And when he landed in France, Morrow, who was the American ambassador there, had a little gathering and Morrow was making a little speech in honor of the young flyer.

And he said, We admire you for your courage and a lot of other things, and then added, And we love you for your youth. And that is always in anybody's favor, to be young. And this man had it. And he was a clean man and had a good reputation, and that was worth something, surely, as any time there was Morrow in Israel.

And he had a job which, as long as things went all right, he might expect to be honored and perhaps stand high in his circles. So this young fellow was a success. His mother, looking at him, would have said, I am so proud of my boy.

See him standing up there, leading, reading the scriptures and leading in the Jewish songs and worshiping Jehovah, the God of our fathers. I am so proud of him, and if he had a wife, as he likely had, she, her eyes shone as she looked at her fine young husband up there and noticed how everybody honored him and looked up to him.

And you would never have dreamed that this young man was miserable, for he was. He was a miserable young man. And this is more common than we know. This I say is more common than we know. So people who are going along with conventional Christianity, meeting regularly, giving of their money, attending all the functions and giving to missions and giving to the Church and buying Bibles and sending out Easter cards and going along with the functions of the Church, and yet in their hearts, deep down in their hearts, there is a lack of eternal assurance and a gnawing misery inside their heart.

Religious Activity Without Rest

Jesus said, Come unto me, and I will give you rest. And he said, If we eat of the bread he gives, we'll never hunger, and if we drink of the water of life, we'll never thirst. And yet here is a man who is both longing and thirsting, and who is thoroughly distraught and frustrated and miserable.

And while the world says, Look at him, he's a success, his heart was crying, I'm a miserable failure. While his mother was saying, I'm proud of my boy, he was saying, I'm ashamed of myself. While his wife was saying, Doesn't he look fine up there, leading the Jewish meeting in the synagogue, his heart was saying, My God, I wish I could fall through a hole somewhere and never be heard of again, for I'm a miserable man.

For he lacked that one thing that the human soul cries after, immortality, eternal life. What shall I do, he said, that I might have eternal life? Now, our Lord wasn't going to argue with the man. The Lord seldom turned on a man and set him straight.

He usually led him by a quietly devious way and exposed him, and let him expose himself. So our Lord took him at his own estimate, and he said, Now, two or three things here. First, you call me a good master, that is, a good teacher, and if I am only a good Jewish teacher, why do you call me good at all if I'm only a Jewish teacher?

If I'm only a doctor of the law, a professor of theology, a teacher of religion, why do you call me good? Don't you know that only your God, Jehovah, is good? And he said to him, Now, you hope to, by doing good, to gain eternal life.

Well, then don't you see how good you have to be if you're going into a good heaven where there's a good God? Why don't you see how good you're going to have to be? And he said, If you insist on buying your way in, why, then I'll go along with you on it and explain to you that you would get in if you got in by law by keeping the commandments.

Have you kept all the commandments? And the young man said, Which? Another gospel tells us, he said, Which commandments are you talking about? Well, the Lord said, You know the commandments, and then he named some of them.

He said they're the old, familiar Jewish commandments, Thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not defraud. I don't know where that's in, but that was a summation of one of the commandments.

Honor your father and your mother. And he interrupted him, and he said, But Lord, don't you know I have kept all these from my youth up? And instead of the Lord saying, No, you haven't, and starting an argument, he took him at his word without contradiction and said, All right, then, there is one thing that you lack yet.

The Test of Possessions and Discipleship

Sell that all that you have and take up your cross and follow me. And this young man went away sorrowing. Now, I suppose that there is no other man in the history of the Bible, in Bible history, that has deceived more people for a longer time than this young man did.

Because this young man, he didn't lie when he said, All these things I have kept from my youth up, but he only proved that he didn't know what he was talking about, which is quite another thing. But he was still false, but he was not deliberately so.

Now, I want you to notice that this young fellow had not kept the commandments at all. He was a man in authority in the temple or in the synagogue, and he was an honored young man, but he thought that he had kept the commandments.

He said, I have kept the commandments and still I am miserable. I have not eternal life, even though I have kept the word of the Old Testament from my boyhood to this hour. What's the matter, good master?

Well, the good master knew that he hadn't kept the commandments, but he didn't say so outright. He just let the young fellow prove it by his conduct. So here is what the young fellow did. He proved that he had not kept the law of God.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me, says the Bible. And the young fellow said, I have kept the law from my youth up. But when the Lord said, Go and sell your goods and come and follow me, he turned away from God to go back to his money.

Now you tell me he was a keeper of that commandment. Thou shalt love God with all thy heart. He wasn't. He thought he was because he wasn't a heathen kneeling down to stone and wood. He thought he was keeping the law.

Thou shalt love God with all thy heart because he told God every day that he loved him with all his heart. But when the test came, he proved he didn't love him with all his heart, but he loved something else better.

He loved his money better. Then thou shalt have no other God before me. That was one. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart. That was two. Love thy neighbor as thyself. That was another.

And he said, I have kept that law, Lord. But when the Lord said, Go and sell your goods and give it to your poor neighbor, he turned his back and went back to his money bags and let his neighbor starve.

For there were lepers and there were poor of every kind. There were widows begging on the corner. There were poor children crying for food in Israel. And when the Lord Jesus said, Go sell your goods and give to the poor, he turned his back on the poor and went back to his money.

He didn't keep the commandment that says, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. He loved himself and didn't love his neighbor. So he was not. He was not in any sense a man who kept the law. Then the last commandment of the 10 says, Thou shalt not covet.

But this young man was a covetous man. When the Lord of glory said, Sell your goods and come and take your cross and come after me and give all up and be my disciple. He said to himself, I can't do this because he loved his money and he went back to his money.

He was a covetous man. Now, here was an honest man, honestly deceived. He believed that he was a law keeper, but he was a law breaker. And even if he had kept 11 out of the 12, or there are 12 commandments, the 10 commandments written in engraving and stone and the two that were added, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and thou shalt love God with all thy heart.

Jesus mentioned them here and made them parts of the law. So if he had kept all of the 11 and broken one, James says, he that fails to keep all of the law and keeps it all, but fails in one point, he is guilty of all.

So this young man was not a law keeper at all. The poor people who expect to get into heaven by being good law keepers, they don't know how soon they will be in hell. They don't know what law breakers they are.

Overt and Covert Lawbreaking

There are two kinds of law breakers. There are the law breakers who are overt about it, and there are law breakers who are covert about it. The overt law breakers are those who go out and hold up banks, and the covert law breakers are those who smile and go to church, but love their money better than they love their neighbor, and love their money better than they love their God, and love their ease better than they love the Lord Jesus Christ.

They are the covert law breakers, and they are just as bad as the overt law breakers, though according to our civilized way of looking at things, when a man who has been a covert law breaker all his life dies and goes to hell, we put his name in the paper along with his picture in the night right up, and the preacher soars away on wings of eloquence telling what a marvelous citizen he has been.

But when the overt law breaker is shot coming out of the bank and dies on the sidewalk, weltering in his own blood, we feel he was a disgrace to his family and we bury him away and forget him. But both go to the same place.

The one who thinks he keeps the law and doesn't, and the one who knows he doesn't. And in the eyes of the great God, there isn't an awful lot of difference. This young man didn't know his own heart, and this is one of the most terrible things that I know within the whole realm of religion.

To know science but not know your own heart, to know literature but not know your own heart, to know all about the physical things, the geography of our country and all the rest, and not know our own hearts.

This is the terrible thing. To be able to quote for yards of poetry and to recite great orations and all the rest, and have proved we've been to school, and yet there's one person we don't know at all.

We know the neighbor next door. We know friends across the continent. We have friends in Europe. We have friends in Australia. We have friends in many parts of the world. And we know them and write them and they write us.

But to stand before our own heart and not know ourselves. This to me is a terrible, terrible thing. Know thyself, said the Greek philosopher. And he became one of the famous sages of antiquity for saying, know thyself.

And yet until the Holy Ghost reveals a man to himself, no man can know himself. No man does know himself until the Holy Spirit reveals him to himself. Because you see, just as a father who has a loved son, and that loved son begins to get into trouble and the father won't believe it.

The Deception of Self-Righteousness

We had a family in the church where I once served in another city. And we had a dear old lady who was in charge of the children's department of the Sunday school. A very wonderful, wonderful old lady she was.

And one day she went to a mother and she said to this mother, with that sweet smile that she always had and never could have anything else, she said to this mother, Mrs. So-and-so, I just want to talk to you a little about one of your boys.

Now he's a fine young chap, but he's causing a lot of trouble in the Sunday school. And I believe if you and I would work with him, pray for him and deal with him, we could bring him out of this. Well, that mother flew into a fury.

And instead of cooperating with this sweet little teacher, she flounced out. Well, her boys went bad and they were arrested for tire stealing and all the rest. She didn't go long. She couldn't believe anything wrong about her boys.

She was so prejudiced against them that if anybody said they'd done wrong, they were liars. Her boys couldn't do wrong. But they did do wrong and broke her heart by doing wrong later. And she was forced to see that they had been wrong all the time.

And those who loved them and her had been right. Now, just as we can be prejudiced and believe our child can do no wrong, so we can be prejudiced in a more virulent fashion about our own selves and believe that everything is all right with us when actually, like this rich young ruler, instead of being good, we're bad.

Instead of keeping all the commandments and meeting the tests, we're flunking every test in moral things. Now, the terms of salvation are that we acknowledge fully our sins and we do not defend them, that we do not stand before the Lord and say, all these things have I done.

The man who beat on his breast and said, in effect, oh God, all the law have I kept. But these poor sinners, what about them? He went out from that church a sinner still. The poor, humble fellow who beat on his breast and feared to look up to heaven and cried, God have mercy on me, a sinner, went down to his house justified.

The healing virtue of God's forgiveness flowed like a river of sweet medicine down into his spirit and cleansed him. And he went down justified and took to his house a shining faith that he hadn't brought away from the house.

For he was justified by the forgiving love of God, because he said, God have mercy on me, a sinner. But the man who thought he was all right, he went away a sinner still. I say a full acknowledgment of sin, not defense of it, and complete trust in Christ and utter abandonment to Jesus Christ our Lord.

Utter Abandonment and the Cross

Utter abandonment. Take up your cross and follow me. There are so many experimenters who go a little way with the Lord. They want to be delivered a little bit, but not too much. They want to be religious a little bit, but not enough to get them in trouble.

They want to follow the Lord enough to get the benefits of his cross, but not enough to feel the nails of his cross. They want to wear the crown, but they don't want to wear the thorny crown. They want to wear the robe, but they don't want anybody in mockery to put a robe around them and say, Hail, King of the Jews.

They don't want this. And I'm afraid there's an awful lot of experiment in religion, an awful lot of it. People come to hear me because they think I have some secret or some panacea for their spiritual ills, and when they find I don't, they fall away because they don't want the cross and they don't want to follow the Lord and go the way of the thorny crown.

But it's the only way, the only way of deliverance, and this young man couldn't make it. He couldn't make it. He turned away, and Jesus Christ looked at him and loved him. He didn't scold him nor rebuke him, but his heart went out to him, and there was sorrow in the heart of Jesus because there was sorrow in the heart of the young man.

Wanting Eternal Life More Than Anything Else

Now I notice about this young fellow that he wanted eternal life, but he wanted something else more. And I think that the average Protestant church is filled with people who want eternal life, but want something else worse.

And if you want something else more than you want eternal life, you'll never have eternal life. That's a rule of the kingdom of God. If I want something else more, I'll not be delivered. If in Noah's day Noah and his family had wanted to be saved but they'd wanted something else more, they could have had it, but they'd have drowned in the waters of the flood.

If in the burning of Sodom Lot and his wife had wanted to be saved from the fire but had not wanted bad enough to leave the city, they'd have died in the fire. I think a great many gospel churches have in them a high percentage of religious people who want eternal life, but they want something else more.

They want to follow Christ, but they want something else more. This young man wanted to follow Christ. He was moved very deeply by Jesus our Lord, but he said he wanted something else more. Now this reveals that not everybody who is lost is careless.

The Lost Who Care Deeply

We preachers talk about the careless people, and we talk about those who are out driving around at night or sitting in front of their television, who aren't at church or playing cards someplace or drinking someplace.

We say they're completely careless of religion. Here was a man who was not careless of religion. There was no carelessness here. He randed Jesus in an undignified manner and fell humbly on his knees and said, Good Master, I'm bothered about my future.

What must I do to have eternal life? This was not a careless man in any sense of the word, in any sense of the word. So I say this reveals that not everyone who is lost is careless. There are some who care deeply but are lost anyway.

This young man cared deeply, but he was lost anyway. Again it shows that not everyone that is lost is prayerless. We say, Oh, he never prays, never prays, he's lost. There are thousands who pray but are lost.

This young man prayed. He ran and got on his knees and cried out, Lord, will I do? But he perished anyway. Now, we think that if we can find an eager seeker that we've got a jewel of fabulous wealth. And if we find one person who will come to us and talk about religion, we tell it all around and tell it Wednesday night.

So-and-so came to see me. I've done it right down here. He came to see me, he's interested in his soul. This young man came to Jesus and he was interested in his soul, but he went away and was lost nevertheless.

And I suppose that neither Brother Gray nor I have in the last 10 years seen anybody as eager as this young man was. I haven't had anybody run after me and chase me down the sidewalk and fall on his knees and say, Brother Tozer, what will I do to be saved?

Yet that this young man did it. This young man had a concern for his soul that made him forget all conventionalities and drove him to his knees in humility, crying for the way of life. And when he found the way, he rejected it.

This is the terror of the day in which we live. This is why the churches are so cold and so powerless. This is why our moral standards are so tragically low. This is why instead of having the New Testament power and the New Testament worship and the New Testament joy, we drag along somehow and hope for the best.

It's because we mistake eager desire for eternal life for eternal life. It's because we think if we pray we're religious. This man prayed and was religious, but he perished. He turned his back on the fountain and wooden drink when it was open for him.

Say, we rarely see anybody as eager as this young man was, but he perished anyway. It's possible to be eager and still perish. It's possible to pray and still perish. It's possible to be deeply concerned and still perish.

It's possible to go around asking people questions and still perish. I noticed that this young man perished, but he went away. He went away sorrowing, but the point isn't that he sorrowed. The point is that he went away.

He did go away. He wrote to know how he could be saved, but when he found out, he went away. He asked, how can I be saved? When he found out, he went away. This is the terrible thing. The same thing is true with a victorious life, a spirit-filled life.

The Conditions of the Spirit-Filled Life

Now if you're going to preach on the spirit-filled life, then you'll have a hundred more people, because there are people deeply concerned about the spirit-filled life. But when they hear the terms, they don't want anything to do with it.

They go away sorrowing, but the point is they go away. They come and say, how can I be filled? A woman called me from way out in Eastern City, once to Chicago, long distance. And said, I'm coming to your city right away.

I've just read one of your books, and I must be filled with the Holy Ghost. I'm coming right away. And I said, don't come, don't come. I don't know what she thought of me. I was nice as I could be. But coming from, I believe it was Baltimore, maybe, or somewhere in the East, coming to Chicago wouldn't fill her with the Holy Ghost.

It would only disappoint her. I can't fill anybody with the Holy Ghost. I can only tell you the terms. That's all. And there are many people who follow evangelists around and read books on how to be filled with the Holy Spirit who aren't filled and don't intend to be filled.

Jesus said, now, young man, first go get rid of your excess baggage. You got too much. It's not good for you. Get rid of it. Then he said, come and take your cross, because I'm on my way to one. Find yours and follow me.

And he said, but Master, I didn't mean that. I never meant all that. I don't want to be a fanatic about this. I don't want to carry this thing to ridiculous extremes. I believe he died for me upon the tree, and by his grace I'll see his face.

You know that ditty stuff we sing now? I believe that by his grace I'll see his face, and on the tree he died for me, and all that. I believe that, we say, Lord. But then this ridiculous idea that I've got to get so generous that I can't have a big bank account, that I've got to get so earnest that I carry a cross, that I've got to put my Godhead of my money and my Godhead of my family.

That's ridiculous, Lord. That's what we say, but nobody would dare to say that out loud, that we say it. People follow us around. I remember one time when Paris Reedhead came to my study in Chicago. He had just been given the grand bummed rush out of a denomination because he was filled with the Holy Ghost, and believed that you couldn't get saved just by doping twice and saying, I take Jesus.

So they threw him out, and he was heartbroken. The Lord said to him, go down and see a man that lives down on Union Avenue by the name that tells her. He'd hardly heard about me, but he came down. We sat there and talked.

Oh, what healing bones. I believed him. Nobody else would. They all thought he was a fanatic, and I said, I don't see anything fanatic. Well, he brought a man with him, a man named Freeman, pastor of a Bible church.

If you know anything about the Bible church of the States, you know they're pretty ironclad. According to their teaching, you're not supposed to be filled with the Holy Ghost. That all happens when you're converted.

Some or other, this man Freeman broke over his theology, and blessed is the man who can get past his theology to God. He got on his knees and he said, Oh, please pray for me. Pray for me. I want what Brother Reed has.

I want what he has. So we got on our knees there in my little two-by-four study, and we put our hands on him. I don't often do that, but somehow we felt we wanted to do it that time, the two of us. So we put our hands on him and laid our hands on him, as they did in the New Testament, and said, Oh, God fill this man with the Holy Spirit.

Nothing happened. The devil, I suppose, had been on the ball as he should have been. He reminded us that nothing happened, but he didn't. I didn't hear about it. But not long after that, oh, maybe six months, maybe a year after that, Reverend Freeman crossed my path.

I said, Brother Freeman, how do you do? Oh, Brother Tozer, he said, you remember in your study when you two men laid your hands on me and prayed that I might be filled with the Holy Ghost? Ah, he said, God did it, God did it.

And he was just walking around just that far off the ground. He never did quite come down. The joy of the Lord was on him. He had met the conditions, you see. Mostly we don't meet the conditions. We want to be jockeyed in somehow, or we want to leak in or ooze in or crawl in or slide in.

There's no way we can't do it that way. Jesus, our Lord, said to this young man, our young fellow, you're all mixed up on a lot of points. You're a theologian and a teacher of your Sunday school, and you're head of your synagogue, and you're honored and all that.

But first, you don't know who I am because you called me a good master, and no master is good. Only God is good. And second, you think you keep the law, and I've convicted you of breaking at least four commandments.

And if you've broken four, you've broken the others of them. You're all mixed up. You think you want eternal life, but when I show you how to get eternal life, you turn your back on me. But he loved him nevertheless.

Grieving the Heart of God

So we want to live the victorious life, but we love this present world. We want to have the victorious life, but we go away sorrowing when we find the condition the Lord lays down. Just must grieve the heart of God no more than I can tell you.

To have your friends fail you, to have your friends make a great deal over you and then walk away from you in the crisis. Somebody asked Dr. A. B. Simpson what it was. He went through some pretty hard things, and they said, Dr. Simpson, what is it that's been the hardest for you to bear?

Well, he said, the hardest thing for me to bear ever in my Christian life is to have people come to me all enthusiastic, shake my hand, and say, I'm on your side, I'm going with you, we together will follow Christ.

And then when the test came, turned their back on me and go away. And Jesus turned and said, will you also go away? That wasn't a rhetorical question. That was a question bursting out of his wounded heart.

He was a wounded man even then. I think the wounds of Jesus were so great. I think the psychological, mental, spiritual wounds of Jesus were so great. He was a wounded man, slowly bleeding to death. If they hadn't nailed him on a cross, I wonder if he could have lived anyway, for he was bleeding and the sorrow was crushing his heart.

And there are Bible teachers who claim that he died quicker because his heart was broken. Let me repeat, we get not what we want, but what we want worse than anything else. We get not what we want, we get what we want most.

Trusting Christ Rather Than Personal Virtue

To count our virtues is to assure that we shall perish. To trust in Christ alone is to assure and guarantee that we shall never perish. Come to Christ trusting in our virtues. I heard of a man, Ralph, rather wryly and humorously, but it must have been a bitter thing at the time when he was on his knees in prayer at the time of his conversion.

He said he held God off and began to count on his fingers the commandments he had broken and the ones he hadn't broken. He said, Now, God, I broke this one, but remember, I didn't break this one. He went over them.

He had broken every one of them. He that hath kept all the law but failed in one is guilty of all. There is no such thing as a sin that is by itself. No sin is ever alone. Every sin breeds other sins, and if there is one sin, it takes another sin to cover it, and then it takes two others to cover those two, and four others to cover those four, and so sin multiplies like flies in a barnyard.

Sin can't be alone, and if I try to go to God and recount my virtues, I'm finished. If I go to him and say, With Luther, O God, thou art my righteousness, I am thy sin, the only sin he ever had was mine, and the only righteousness I can ever have is his.

The only sin that ever stained his holy soul was mine and yours, and the only way our astained souls can be free is by the blood he shed. That's so simple and so real, but he says, Christianity is not a boutonniere to fasten on your coat, not something you join as you might join the Canadian Legion of Foreign Wars.

Christianity is taking a cross and following the Lord. Christianity is giving up your righteousness along with your sins and turning to Jesus Christ. When he calls you to follow him, if there's anything that prevents you from following, that thing is your God.

Following the God We Love

Every man follows his God, don't forget that. Every man follows his God, and every man loves his God. God said, This is the first commandment, Love me! He acknowledged that men love their God. There are businessmen who love their business, actors who love their profession, women who love their jewelry and their clothing, people who love and they follow what they worship and worship what they love, and their God is what they love and worship.

We look down our educated noses at the heathen who kneel reverently before a stone image and cry, My God! But they're honest at any rate, and we cover up and follow our God. But that God must be Jesus Christ, our Lord.

That God must be God and his Son, Jesus Christ. You believe in God, believe also in me. What about it tonight? I'm finished. What about it tonight? What about you? I said at the beginning of this service, half-jocularly, but I meant it and mean it.

No nicer people that I've ever found, but that doesn't mean you're spiritual people. Lots of nice people are going to perish. They've got to get right with God, my brethren. They've got to get straightened out with God.

I'd rather have 100 people right with God than to have this place jammed with carnal camp followers. And I'm sure Brother Greg would say and will say a hearty, eager amen to it. We want quality. I believe we can have both, but we've got to start with quality.

Prayer for Mercy and True Salvation

Let's pray. O Lord Jesus, we've just been thinking of an incident that took place in thy earthly life back in old Judea. Here we are, Lord, in another part of the world, on another continent, among another kind of people, in another period of history.