“What is Law?”

“Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone” [Mark 10:17b-18].

A thousand years ago, when I was in law school—actually, it’s been a mere 45 years since I graduated—we had a particularly frightening law professor. Dr. Robert E. Lee—no joke—was a 1928 graduate of Wake Forest Law. In my first year, the Autumn of 1973, almost 50 years had passed since Dr. Lee had been a law student at Wake. He still maintained the highest GPA of anyone ever to matriculate there. He quickly reminded us that as long as he was a law professor, it would stay that way.

I had already heard many stories about Dr. Lee when I entered his Personal Property class that fall semester of my first year. I remember thinking that he looked so old! In reality, he was 67, three years younger than I am now.

All these years later, like many of his other students, I remember one of his rituals. On the opening day of each semester—no matter what course he was teaching—he would always ask the class the same initial question before looking at the seating chart and calling on a student to provide the answer: “What is law?”

There was but one “approved” answer and the person called upon had to recite it perfectly, without reading it or even looking at notes. Failure to recite it perfectly would result in being badgered and berated for the next half hour. The answer (I still remember it verbatim):

Law is the set of rules that the courts of a particular state will recognize and enforce. It is the agency of social conduct that has received the sanction of the sovereign state. In short, Dr. Lee, law is the approved set of rules for the game of life.

When it comes to secular law, Dr. Lee’s definition is probably a good one. With its reference to “agency of social conduct,” it is the type of definition offered to society so as to elicit “good” behavior, or at least avoid “bad” behavior. Secular law presents us with a type of reverse “to do” list. “Don’t do this, don’t do that.” At first blush, secular law sounds a bit like the Ten Commandments: “Don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t covet, don’t cheat or bear false witness against another—you get the picture.

Yet, as we look at Mark’s version of Jesus’ encounter with the “rich young ruler” [Mark 10:17-31, the Gospel reading for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, RCL, Year B]—we see that when it comes to Yahweh’s law, Yahweh’s kingdom, checking the boxes isn’t at all what Jesus seems to be talking about. You remember the story.

The young guy from Hope Valley runs up to Jesus, kneels down before our Lord, and inquires, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus is a bit off-putting in his response, “Why do you call me good?” [10:18]. Jesus adds, “No one is good—except God alone.”

Jesus continues, “You know the commandments”—then for the benefit of the young man and the rest of us, Jesus fires off the final six of the “Big 10”).

The young lad confidently responds, “Oh, I’ve done all that since I was a boy.”

Then Jesus does what he so often does to make many of us uncomfortable: He starts talking about money. He tells the lad to sell all he has and give it to the poor. Notice he doesn’t say, “Give it to the church.” The fabled little story ends with the young man slinking away sad, “because he had great wealth” [10:22].

While some of us are glad that Jesus was talking to the young man and not to any of us, Jesus turns to his disciples (i.e., to us), and adds that it is hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. For the few of us who aren’t already squirming, Jesus goes into even greater detail. He says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” [10:25].

Now, I know, I know, some of you may jump in here and say, “Tom, haven’t you heard about old Jerusalem’s ‘Eye of the Needle?’” You’ll no doubt add, “It was a small gate beside Jerusalem’s main gate. When the large gate was locked at night, one could still use the small gate to enter and leave the city. And so, a camel could pass through the Eye of the Needle, but only if it bent down on its knees. So, what Jesus is really telling us is that we can get into Heaven if we just kneel before Him.”

“Yeah, right!”

I don’t want to burst anyone’s carefully maintained rationalization, but that attempt to maneuver around Jesus’ hard statement is too cute by one-half. I think Jesus has something altogether different in mind. But to hear it, we may have to move back to Dr. Lee’s definition of law for just a minute or two.

As I said above, Dr. Lee’s definition is designed to elicit good behavior. That’s what society desires. It wants order, peace, and calm relations between its citizens. Jails are expensive to build. Like the great 20th century philosopher, Rodney King, once said, “Why can’t we all just get along?”

And all that’s fine. But, according to Jesus, Yahweh is interested in something quite different, something far more radical and earthshaking. You see, when Yahweh gave Moses the Ten Commandments, He wasn’t so much trying to get the people to behave as he was trying to get them to understand the sort of people that they needed to be if they were to be rendered righteous. Yahweh didn’t so much want them to get along because it greased the skids of the economy; Yahweh was interested in making them His people.

We were talking about this very thing today in our Carolina Arbors Bible Study. There, we’re working our way through Matthew and, for the past couple of weeks, we’ve been moving through Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount [Matthew, chs. 5-7]. Today, we saw that Jesus fires off a series of couplets. For example, he points out that one of the commandments prohibits murder. Then he says, “But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment” [Matthew 5:22]. He says, “You have heard that is was said, ‘One should not commit adultery,’ but I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” [Matthew 5:27-28].

Jesus offers other statements. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven” [Matthew 5:43-44]. At each point, Jesus isn’t so much interested in outward actions—at what Dr. Lee would have called “the agency of social conduct,” as He is interested in moving us beyond the minimal check list. Jesus says that it isn’t enough to refrain from murder. It isn’t enough to refrain from adultery, or theft, or covetousness. We must do more. In fact, if we are to be the sort of people who would be called holy, or righteous, or “good,” then we must be perfect!

“What!” I hear you say. “Jesus isn’t telling us we have to be perfect.”

Well, unfortunately, that’s exactly what he’s telling us (with one proviso detailed in just a minute). Look closely at the Matthew text, “Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect” [Matthew 5:48]. Some of your Bibles will note in a footnote that Jesus is essentially quoting from the Law of Moses, “Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy” [Leviticus 19:2].

If that is true, we think to ourselves, then it’s going to be really hard to get to the Kingdom of heaven. I think at this point Jesus scratches his head a bit and says, “Is there an echo? That’s what I said a few minutes ago. It’s not only hard to gain the Kingdom; it’s impossible” [Matthew 10:27b].

At the risk of a little redundancy, Dr. Lee’s definition of law was to elicit good behavior. Jesus’ definition of law wants to show us what the righteousness of God looks like. It wants to show us that outward acts are insufficient, that what goes on in the heart or the mind is just as important. You see, Yahweh’s commandment is that we are to be “good” or “holy” because God is holy.

And so, Jesus seems to be pointing to a form of Catch-22. On the one hand, He tells us that we must be perfect. On the other, He appropriately points out that “No one is good—except God alone [Mark 10:18].

So, how does this work its way out? Well, you see, in a real sense it doesn’t. That is to say that there is no work that we can do to gain the Kingdom. While Dr. Lee’s definition elicits good behavior, Jesus’ definition elicits a true understanding of righteousness. We come to understand that it is impossible for us to game the system. It is impossible for us to put Yahweh in our debt. It is impossible to look at ourselves and think we are good because, after all, we didn’t do what she or he did.

Jesus offers a no-strings-attached relationship with Yahweh. He offers it without strings because He knows that we are completely unable to deal with the strings. Yes, someone must be perfect. Someone must be righteous. Someone must be truly holy. And thanks be to God, that’s His job, not ours.