Let’s consider for a few minutes the words of the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 19:29.
In the context of the verse, a rich young ruler had come to Jesus asking what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus had said, “Keep the commandments.” The young man’s reply was, “I’ve done that from my childhood. What do I still lack?” Because Jesus understood that this young man loved his riches, he said, “Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me.” The rich young ruler went away sorrowful. Jesus then turned to his disciples and said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Our earthly loves are enormous obstructions to following Christ.
The disciples understood that not all men love riches, but all love something, so they said to Jesus, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus’ answer was, “Though it is impossible with men, all things are possible with God.” He can make us willing to give up riches and any earthly love for his sake.
Peter in a remark very typical of him, said, “We’ve given up a lot. What will we have?” it was in answer to that question that Jesus spoke the words of our text.
The first question to ask is, what does Jesus mean by the words “has left” in this statement? There are three things we can say about it.
First, sometimes when he calls us to discipleship, he requires that we physically leave certain things that belong to this earthly life. When he called the first of his apostles, as recorded in Matthew 4:18–22, we read that Peter and Andrew left their nets and that James and John left the boat and their father. They left their jobs and, to a certain extent, their families. Paul gave up his position among the Pharisees and his expected advancement. He counted it loss for Christ (Phil 3:3–7). If we are doing work that is in itself evil, or if we are unequally yoked with unbelievers in friendship or any enterprise, or if we find that we cannot withstand the temptations associated with certain things, places or persons, we may be required to leave them. God commands us to flee both from idolatry (1 Cor 10:14) and from sexual immorality (1 Cor 6:18), Part of his meaning is surely that we should physically remove ourselves from those places, persons and circumstances which may prove tempting to us. That kind of leaving is sometimes a cost of discipleship.
But it is relatively rare. Usually being a follower of Christ means that we become even more diligent in fulfilling the obligations we have to the people around us and to the things that God has put into our care. A wife or husband whom the Lord has called will love his or her spouse more faithfully after than before. Christians should be more, not less, diligent in lawful work than their unbelieving counterparts. We receive with thankfulness the good earthly gifts that God gives, even though some teach that we should reject them (1 Tim 4:1–5).
Therefore, we must dig a little deeper to understand what kind of leaving our Lord requires of us, and when we do, we will discover that it is more often a spiritual and mental leaving than a physical.
Luke 14:26–27 teaches us the second thing that our Lord requires of us when we become his disciples. If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. We could enter into a long discussion of what Jesus means by “hate” here, but let’s confine ourselves to this one point, that our Lord demands our primary loyalty. We may not love anything more than we love him. All other loves must be brought into the service of his love. We must seek first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness. We must, with the apostle Paul, count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord. This is a cost of discipleship for all Christians; we must subject all loves to our love for God in Christ. The first and great commandment is, Love God with all your heart. The second is, Love your neighbor, but not in such a way that it displaces love for God. Leaving things for Christ’s sake is giving them up as the first objects of our love.
The third thing he requires of us is that we acknowledge that everything that we have is ours only in a limited sense. We cannot say of anything, “This is mine alone. This is MY child, MY house, MY father, MY husband or wife, MY life. Whatever you have is God’s; the earth is the Lord’s and all that it contains, the world and those who dwell in it (Ps 24:1). Nothing is yours absolutely.
Therefore (and here comes the hard part), he has the right at any time to take it away. We may not say, “It’s not fair.” Whatever it is, it is his. He has the right to do with it as he pleases. To be angry with him is really to say, “You had no right; that was mine.”
That is the third cost of discipleship; that we be ready to say with Job, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:21).
That may seem very harsh, but, if we are willing, we can see that there are facts that diminish the seeming severity of it.
The first fact is this. Temporary possession is the nature of all things earthly. Sometime, somewhere we always lose them. Earthly life and earthly possessions do not last. We may hang on to them desperately, with all the passion and devotion of which we are capable, but, if we do not lose them while we live, we will surely lose them when we die. When he dies he shall carry nothing away (Ps 49:17).
That, of course, does not change the truth that to lose something now rather than later can be very painful. It is easier to lose a parent who has suffered many years from dementia, than it is to lose a child or a father and friend still in his strength. Perhaps we can say that it is impossible fully to recover from such losses while we remain in this world.
The second fact is this, that God is wise and good in all that he does. He is never arbitrarily severe, never cruel, never spiteful. He does what he does because it is necessary to the fulfillment of his purposes.
The problem we have with that truth is that we don’t understand his purposes. We see only the back side of the intricately woven tapestry of his work. Therefore it appears that there are all kinds of loose ends and even mistakes in what he has done. At best we can discern only very dimly the larger patterns, and the intricate interweavings of this life with that, of my own life with others, of prosperity and adversity. It all seems to us just a jumble and a mess. Trying to discern the purposes of God is like a layman trying to understand the full scale architectural drawings for a skyscraper from just one page. Most of it would make no sense to us, but every line and every word is important not just to the one page, but to the whole plan.
Understanding that takes humility and faith. The best we can say is, “God, you know what you are doing. I don’t.”
Perhaps then we would say to God, “Make me understand. Show me why, and I will be okay.” I’m not sure that we are capable of understanding. It might take eternity for us to see how pulling on one little thread here distorts the whole pattern, or changing one small thing on one page of the drawing endangers the integrity of the building. His ways are far above our ways (Isa 55:9).
You may say to me, What do you know about all this? You have never suffered like me. That may well be true, but the Lord Jesus has. He was tempted in all points as you are. He left all earthly things for the sake of his people. He said to his mother when his life was slipping quickly away, “Woman, behold your son.” And to John, “Behold your mother.” He also rose again, ascended to heaven and sits at the right hand of God. All things have become his, but exactly because he left them all first, and so that he may give them to those who, during their earthly pilgrimage, leave them for his sake.
Above all other comforts we have this, that in Matthew 19:29 our Lord promises that whatever we lose for his sake, he will restore a hundredfold, if not here, then in the life to come. That’s why the story of Job ends happily, with Job’s wealth and family restored abundantly. The Lord is teaching us that in the heavenly kingdom there are greater treasures than those we have here. He will wipe away every tear, bind up every wound, comfort every sorrow and give abundant life and good. No moth or rust will corrupt, no thieves break through to steal. The lame will leap like a deer and the tongue of the dumb will sing (Isa 35:6). The barren will be a joyful mother of children (Ps 113:9), and the eunuch will have in God’s house and within his walls a place and a name better than that of sons and daughters (Isa 56:45). All things will be yours. He has promised. He will give back everything we have left for his sake—and much more besides.