Mark 10:17-31

The Voice

Young Man: Good Teacher! What must I do to gain life in the world to come?

Jesus: ¹⁸ You are calling Me good? Don’t you know that God and God alone is good? ¹⁹ Anyway, why ask Me that question? You know the Commandments of Moses: “Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not slander, do not defraud, and honor your father and mother.”^[a]

Young Man: ²⁰ Yes, Teacher, I have done all these since I was a child.

Jesus: Son, there is still one thing you have not done. Go now. Sell everything you have and give the proceeds to the poor so that you will have treasure in heaven. After that, come, follow Me.

Jesus (to His disciples): Oh, it is hard for people with wealth to find their way into God’s kingdom!

Disciples (amazed): ²⁴ What?

Jesus: You heard Me. How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God [for those who trust in their wealth]!^{[b] 25} I think you’ll see camels squeezing through the eye of a needle before you’ll see the rich celebrating and dancing as they enter into the joy of God’s kingdom!

Disciples (aloud to Jesus): Then who can be liberated?

Jesus (smiling and shaking His head): ²⁷ For human beings it is impossible, but not for God: God makes everything possible.

Peter: ²⁸ Master, we have left behind everything we had to follow You.

Jesus: ²⁹ That is true. And those who have left their houses, their lands, their parents, or their families for My sake, and for the sake of this good news ³⁰ will receive all of this 100 times greater than they have in this time—houses and farms and brothers, sisters, mothers, and children, along with persecutions—and in the world to come, they will receive eternal life. ³¹ But many of those who are first in this world shall be last in the world to come, and the last, first.