Mark 10:18 Commentary and Bible Study

The rich young ruler has called Christ ‘Good Master’. That is a respectful term, but Christ finds fault with it: ‘Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.’ That is evidently a kind of reproof. The man, for all the promise of his approach, has not come to Christ recognising that he is Messiah, that he is Lord; he has set him lower than that. He sees Jesus as a great teacher with wonderful abilities – he can heal thousands – but he doesn’t see him as God; he doesn’t see him as divine and Christ corrects that. The young man has used the word ‘Good’ carelessly, without thinking what it really means. Really, he is a very secular person. God is not in his view. He comes to Christ and asks, ‘What good thing must I do?’ He is not asking to be changed, to serve the Lord, to love him; he just wants to know what he has to do.There are a number of explanations for Christ’s question. The best goes back to the church fathers. ‘Do you really mean this?’ The Lord is trying to stir him up to grasp that he is God. He is almost inviting him to say, ‘Oh, I see; you are God.’ All men come into the world as fallen human beings. There is only one who is without sin – the Lord Jesus Christ. Has the young man thought of this? Think of his miracles. The crowds have flocked; he has had this teaching and yet it does not occur that he is God, the prophesied one. He seems to be in a world of his own. If the man doesn’t realise who he is speaking to, how will he yield his life to him? But the man doesn’t respond to this question.