<p>18:22 <i>And when Jesus heard it, he said to him: One thing you lack yet- </i>Matthew records that this was in response to his question: &quot;What do I still lack?&quot;. And Lk. 18:22 provides the Lord&rsquo;s answer: &ldquo;One thing you&nbsp;<i>lack</i>&nbsp;s.w.&rdquo;, but the &ldquo;one thing&rdquo; was to distribute his wealth and to follow 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>The Lord was quoting from the LXX of Ps. 23:1. Because the Lord Jesus is our shepherd, &quot;not one thing is lacking to me&quot;. The selling and sharing of his wealth is paralleled by the Lord with following Him. The one thing that was lacking was to shed his wealth&nbsp;<i>and</i>&nbsp;follow Christ. To follow Christ, to have Him as our shepherd, is therefore no merely intellectual affair, nor is it a question of legalistic obedience to a set of principles we inherited from our youth. It requires the most painful sacrifices.</p><p><i>Sell all you have and distribute to the poor- </i>Luke again uses the word in describing how the early believers did indeed sell their possessions and 'distribute' to the poor within the ecclesia (Acts 4:35).</p><p><i>And you shall have treasure in heaven- </i>Alluded to in James 1:12. We note that the Lord treated each person differently. He approved Zacchaeus' distribution of only half of his possessions- whilst demanding that this 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. 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;</p><p><i>And come follow me</i>- See on Mk. 10:21; Lk. 10:42. In the first century, family and the family inheritance was everything. The way the Lord asked His followers to reject family and follow Him was far more radical than many of us can ever appreciate. Likewise His command to sell everything and follow Him implied so much- for the Middle Eastern family estate was the epitomy of all that a person had and stood for. And to be asked to give the proceeds of that inheritance to poor strangers... was just too much. It could seem, once one gets to know Middle Eastern values, that to abandon both family and the village home in favour of Jesus was just impossible- those things were more valuable to a Middle Eastern peasant than life itself. But still He asked- and people responded.</p><p>Consider 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=533 valign=top>            <p>            &ldquo;Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor</p>            </td>            <td width=533 valign=top>            <p>&ldquo;We have left all</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=533 valign=top>            <p>&hellip;and come, take up the cross</p>            </td>            <td width=533 valign=top>            <p>no comment by Peter- he censored this bit out in   his hearing of the Lord's words</p>            </td>        </tr>        <tr>            <td width=533 valign=top>            <p>and follow me&rdquo;</p>            </td>            <td width=533 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 least eight 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>