Matthew 19:22

Matthew 19:22

I. Consider the young man's sorrow. It was not quite so simple as at first sight appears. No doubt partly he was sorry (1) at the thought of giving up those large possessions of which he was naturally fond. But sorrow is seldom a single principle. It scarcely admits of a question that the young ruler was also grieved (2) at the idea of losing heaven. There had opened upon his mind some of the difficulty which there always is in the attainment of everything which is really worth having. The eternal life, which his ardent feelings had pictured to him as something easy and near at hand, seemed to retire back from him behind the mountains of self-sacrifice which Christ laid across his path. (3) Part of his sorrow was the discovery which he was making at that moment of his own heart. He went away most sorrowful of all in the wretched sense he had of his own guilty hesitation and his own inexcusable weakness.

II. The heaviness, then, of that man's heart was, we believe, yet in the main a right heaviness. At least, there was some grace in it. Can we believe that ever any one on whom Jesus once looked lovingly finally perished? No; rather we confidently trust and hope that ere long that discipline to which Christ subjected his soul wrought its own purifying work, and that, weighing in truer balances, he learnt what is the real secret of power to count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord.

III. In every state of life the characteristic of a Christian is self-renunciation. Always lean towards the position that your Master took, and which your Master taught in this world. Always, in everything, cultivate simplicity; always combat selfishness; be always increasing your charities; be always loosening yourself from the things of sense and time; and be always sitting, free to follow Christ whenever He shall lead you up to a higher walk.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,7th series, p. 20.

References: Matthew 19:22. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. i., p. 35.Matthew 19:24. F. W. Farrar, Expositor,1st series, vol. iii., p. 369; R. W. Evans, Parochial Sermons,vol. iii., p. 164.Matthew 19:27 S. Cox, Expository Essays and Discourses,pp. 203, 228; A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 262; Expositor,1st series, vol. iv., p. 256. Matthew 19:27. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 23.Matthew 19:29. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 1,661.