<p>10:21 <i>And Jesus observing him, loved him; and said to him: One thing you lack. Go, sell whatever you have and give it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven. And come AV: &quot;take up the cross and&quot; follow me</i>- &quot;You lack&quot; is s.w. to be destitute of. In response to the man's question &quot;What do I still lack?&quot; (Mt. 19:20). He lacked nothing materially, but therefore he lacked the important thing- treasure in Heaven. The word play involving 'lacking' suggests that spiritual wealth and material wealth are opposites; likewise to give away treasure on earth is to as it were transfer it to Heaven. All this underscores the point that we can't have both. All our material wealth is to be given away in order to get spiritual treasure (Mt. 13:44). &quot;What you lack&quot; is parallel to the phrase Mt. 19:21 records: &quot;If you will be perfect / complete&quot;. The man could still have had a relationship with the Lord if he hadn't sold all; but he wanted perfection and went away from Jesus because he couldn't face up to the fact that he wasn't perfect, would be saved by grace and now by his own obedience. And so many 'perfectionists' have done likewise. It's perhaps because of the man's tendency to perfectionism that the Lord prefaced His answer to the question by saying that even He wasn't completely &quot;good&quot; as God alone is &quot;good&quot; (10:18). The humanity of Jesus is therefore, in a way, an answer to 'perfectionism'. Not that there is ultimately any such thing as 'perfectionism', for it cannot be in man to be perfect. Perfectionism is merely an arrogant illusion. The record in Mt. 19:16,17 brings this out clearer- &quot;<i>Good</i> Master, what <i>good </i>thing shall I do... why do you call me &quot;<i>good</i>&quot;? There is none &quot;<i>good</i>&quot; but one, that is, God&quot;. The man thought that by his &quot;good&quot; deeds he could become as &quot;good&quot; as God, the only &quot;good&quot; One. And He walked away from Jesus because he was unable to accept that this is not in fact the case, and that even Jesus Himself stood as 'not good' compared to God; He stood 'perfect' with God by reason of the relationship He had with God, not solely on the basis of His good works. However, even total generosity and giving away of wealth will not bring total completeness. 'You lack one thing' appears to be an allusion to Ps. 23:1 LXX: &quot;The Lord is my shepherd; not one thing is lacking to me&quot;. To take up the cross and follow the Lord Jesus as our shepherd, with the loss of material wealth this implies, is the essence of lacking nothing. For walking with Him is perfection, completeness, our everything.</p><p>The very fact that we want to rise up to the heights commends us to God. When the rich young man, in his zeal for righteousness, claimed: &quot;Master, all these have I observed from my youth&quot;, the Lord didn't rebuke him for self-righteousness; instead, He beheld Him (with His head cocked to one side?), He took a long wistful look at Him, and <i>loved him</i> (Mk. 10:21). The Lord had a wave of warmth come over Him for that arrogant young man, simply because He appreciated the evident spiritual ambition which was within him. It was for this reason that the Father so loved the Son. God caused the Lord Jesus to approach unto Him; &quot;for who would dare of himself to approach unto me?&quot; (Jer. 30:21 RSV). The Father confirmed the Son in His spiritual ambition, recognizing that very few men would rise up to the honour of truly approaching unto God.</p><p>The &ldquo;one thing&rdquo; lacking was to distribute his wealth, and to follow the crucified Christ. The two things seem therefore related; it was the wealth which was stopping the following of Christ. The man had come to the Lord asking what great deed he must do to obtain eternal life, and so he was aware of his obedience to the commandments. He obviously felt that obedience to Mosaic law was not going to be the basis of eternal life, and he sensed that there was some great deed he must yet achieve. Therefore &ldquo;What do I still lack?&rdquo; shouldn&rsquo;t be read as an arrogant statement that he lacked nothing because he had been legally obedient. Rather is it a genuine question, seeking a concrete, clear and achievable answer.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>We note that the Lord treated each person differently. Jesus approved Zacchaeus' distribution of only half of his possessions- whilst demanding that the rich young man give away literally all. And He never seems to have demanded that those of His followers who owned houses should sell them. &nbsp;See on Mt. 19:16&nbsp;<i>What good thing.</i>&nbsp;The same principle is seen in His preceding teaching about divorce and remarriage- His ideal standard is not &lsquo;given&rsquo; to everyone, just as it is not a requirement of everyone that they sell and they have and give to the poor. The Lord taught that we receive the Lord's goods s.w. &quot;what you have&quot; on conversion to Him (Mt. 25:14). We resign all, but receive all. By giving away our earthly wealth, we directly receive wealth in Heaven. Lk. 12:15,33,44 make a sustained play on this Greek word: &quot;A man's life doesn't consist in the abundance of the&nbsp;<i>things which he possesses</i>&nbsp;s.w.... sell&nbsp;<i>what you have</i>&nbsp;s.w. and give alms... the Lord will make such a man ruler over all&nbsp;<i>that he has</i>&nbsp;s.w.&quot;. Whilst the specific command to the young man to sell all he had and give it to the poor was not in one sense universal, i.e. not a command to every believer, yet the spirit of it (according to Luke 12) is indeed to be followed by us all. We must at least &quot;forsake 'to bid farewell to' all that we have s.w.&quot; (Lk. 14:33). The early believers did not 'say' that anything they possessed s.w. was their own (Acts 4:32)- Luke surely intends us to connect this with his earlier record of how the Lord had taught that our attitude, at very least, must be that we do not really 'own' those things which we apparently 'have'.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>The rich young man would fain have followed Jesus. But he was told that he must sell all that he had, give to the poor, and take up the cross to follow Christ (Mk. 10:21). Notice how the ideas of following Christ and taking up the cross are linked. The man went away, unable to carry that cross, that sacrifice of those material things that were dearest to him. Peter responds with the strong implication that he <i>had</i> done all these things, he was following the Master, and by implication he felt he was carrying the cross. Notice the parallels between the Lord&rsquo;s demand of the young man, and Peter&rsquo;s comment (Lk. 18:22 cp. 28; Mk. 10:21 cp. 28):&nbsp;</p><div align=center><table border=0 cellspacing=10 cellpadding=0>    <tbody>        <tr>            <td width=355 valign=top>            <p>            &ldquo;Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor</p>            </td>            <td width=355 valign=top>            <p>&ldquo;We have left all</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=355 valign=top>            <p>&hellip;and come, take up the cross</p>            </td>            <td width=355 valign=top>            <p>no comment by Peter</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=355 valign=top>            <p>and follow me&rdquo;</p>            </td>            <td width=355 valign=top>            <p>&hellip;and have followed you&rdquo;</p>            </td>        </tr>    </tbody></table></div><p>Peter seems to have subconsciously bypassed the thing about taking up the cross. But he was sure that he was really following the Lord. He blinded himself to the inevitable link between following Christ and self-crucifixion; for the path of the man Jesus lead to Golgotha. We have this same tendency, in that we can break bread week after week, read the records of the crucifixion at several times / year, and yet not let ourselves grasp the most basic message: that we as followers of this man must likewise follow in our self-sacrifice to that same end.</p><p>&quot;Take up <i>the</i> cross, and follow me&quot; is inviting us to carry Christ's cross with Him- He speaks of &quot;<i>the </i>cross&quot; rather than '<i>a</i> cross'. The Greek translated &ldquo;take up&quot; is that translated 'to take away' in the context of Christ taking away our sins. Strong says that it implies &quot;expiation&quot; (of sins). This connection, between <i>our</i> taking away / up the cross, and Christ's taking away our sins, suggests that the efficacy of His cross for us depends upon our daily 'taking up the cross'. It is vital therefore that we &ldquo;take up the cross&quot; if our sins are to be taken away by Him. Of course we cannot literally take up the Lord's cross. Taking up the cross must therefore refer to an attitude of mind; it is paralleled with forsaking all that we have (Lk. 14:27,33), which is surely a command to be obeyed in our <i>attitudes</i>. &quot;Take up&quot; is translated 'take on' when we read of 'taking on' the yoke of Christ, i.e. learning of Him (Mt. 11:29). To take up the Lord's cross, to take on His yoke, is to learn of Him, to come to know Him. Yet do we sense any <i>pain</i> in our coming to know Christ? We should do, because the cross was the ultimate symbol of pain, and to take it up is to take on the yoke, the knowledge, of Christ. Consider the contexts in which the Lord spoke of taking up His cross:</p><p>(1) In Luke 9:23-26 He tells the crowds that they have come to His meetings because of the intriguing miracles of the loaves and fishes. The Lord is saying: 'Don't follow me because of the loaves and fishes; take up my cross' <br />(2) The rich young man was willing to be obedient in everything apart from parting with his wealth. In this context, of asking the most difficult thing for him to do, Christ spoke of taking up His cross - in the man's case, giving up his wealth. <br />(3) The command to take up the cross in Matt. 10:38 is in the context of Christ's description of the family problems which would be caused by responding to His word. Presumably some were willing to follow Christ if they didn't have to break with their families; but Christ asks them to take up the cross in this sense.</p><p>In all of these cases people were willing to follow Christ- but only insofar as it didn't hurt them. They were unwilling to take on board the idea of consciously deciding to do something against the grain of their natures and immediate surroundings. Yet this is what taking up the cross is all about, and it is vital for our identification with the Lord. It is very easy to serve God in ways which reinforce the lifestyles we choose to have anyway; it is easy to obey Divine principles only insofar as they compound our own personality. By doing so we can deceive ourselves into thinking that we are spiritually active when, in reality, we have never walked out against the wind, never picked up the cross of Christ. Israel were an empty vine, without fruit in God's eyes- because the spiritual fruit they appeared to bring forth was in fact fruit to themselves (Hos. 10:1).</p>