This Is Impossible

Matthew 19:23-26 (cf. 23-30)

And Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?” But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 2)

Some have suggested that the saying about the camel going through the eye of a needle is actually a reference to a gate in Jerusalem that was called “the needle’s eyes.” A camel would need to unload all it was carrying on its back to get through it. Other people have pointed out that a word very similar to “camel” meant a sort of rope; maybe that he was talking of threading a sailor’s rope through a seamstress’s needle. But both of these suggestions miss the point. . . . [T]he point is precisely that it’s unthinkable. That’s the moment when all human calculations and possibilities stop, and God’s new possibilities start. What is impossible in human terms, Jesus’ followers are to discover to their amazement, is possible to God (verse 26).

Jesus is then offering a vision of God’s whole new world in which everything will be upside down and inside out (53).

A. Orendorff

The disciples’ astonishment (or perhaps better, their dumbfoundedness) at Jesus’ interaction with the rich young ruler is not relieved but rather intensified by his interpretive explanation. As Wright points out, Jesus’ illustration about a camel going through the eye of needle is meant to vividly portray the stark impossibility of a “rich person”—those “on top” in other words—every entering the kingdom of God. The disciples’ response is completely appropriate: “Who then can be saved?” If the powerful can’t get in, what hope is there for the rest of us?

I imagine Jesus turning to his disciples with a soft but knowing smile and telling them, “Exactly. From a human perspective, it is impossible. But with God, all things are possible.”

In many ways, this is the hallmark—the central, operative truth—of all gospel-ministry: “With people, it’s impossible. But not with God.” Jesus is forcing not only his disciples but us as readers to deal with the uncomfortable and humbling reality that none of us can get ourselves into the kingdom. How much more impossible, then, would it be for us to get others into the kingdom or, even more ridiculous, to go about building the kingdom ourselves?

The point is we can’t. We can’t. Jesus wants to drive us away from ourselves, away from the way we think the world operates—with the rich on top and the poor struggling underneath—and to turn us, with all the subtlety of a hammer to the head, to himself. You can’t, he says, but God can.