Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved?

Contents

1. 1.1Those who flatter the rich with praise are servile.
2. 1.2Flatterers of the rich are impious, because they give to human beings the glory that belongs to God alone.
3. 1.3Flatterers are treacherous, because they inflame the pride that wealth already produces, when they should cut it away; the exalted will be humbled.
4. 1.4The truly loving course is to help the rich toward salvation, by prayer to God and by teaching that leads them to the truth and to good works.
5. 1.5Prayer needs perseverance to the end of life, and conduct needs a steady will to keep all the Savior's commandments.
6. 2.1There are several reasons why salvation seems harder for the rich.
7. 2.2Some rich people, hearing that a camel passes through a needle's eye more easily, despair of salvation and give themselves entirely to this world.
8. 2.3Others understand the saying rightly but neglect the good works needed for salvation.
9. 2.4Clement is speaking about rich believers, not about unbelievers; those who love the truth and the brethren have a duty toward them.
10. 3.1Christians should neither despise nor flatter the rich, but first free them from despair by showing that the kingdom is open to them if they obey the commandments.
11. 3.2Once freed from groundless fear, the rich should be taught what works and dispositions lead to the hoped-for salvation.
12. 3.3The rich should think of their situation as athletes think of theirs.
13. 3.4An athlete who despairs never competes, and one who hopes but does not train never wins.
14. 3.5The rich believer should neither exclude himself from salvation nor expect it without effort.
15. 3.6The rich believer should train under Christ, with the new covenant as food and the commandments as exercise, so as to win the crown of heaven at the last trumpet.
16. 4.1Clement prays that the Savior will help him give the brethren a true and saving account of hope.
17. 4.2The Savior answers prayer; his own words about the rich interpret themselves.
18. 4.3The sayings about wealth trouble us because we have heard them without examining them.
19. 4.4Mark's account of the rich man begins: a man kneels before Jesus.
20. 4.5The man asks how to inherit eternal life; Jesus answers that only God is good.
21. 4.6Jesus lists the commandments; the man says he has kept them from his youth.
22. 4.7Jesus, loving him, tells him to sell all and give to the poor; he goes away grieving.
23. 4.8The man had great wealth; Jesus says how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom, and the disciples are amazed.
24. 4.9Jesus says a camel passes through a needle's eye more easily than a rich man enters the kingdom; what is impossible with men is possible with God.
25. 4.10Peter says they have left everything; Jesus promises a hundredfold now, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.
26. 5.1The story appears in Mark, and the other acknowledged Gospels agree with it in meaning, though their wording differs slightly.
27. 5.2Christ's words must not be taken in a fleshly way; their hidden meaning must be searched out carefully.
28. 5.3Even the sayings Christ explained to his disciples need careful attention, because of their depth.
29. 5.4Sayings that seem simple but bear on salvation itself, like this one, must be read with the mind fixed on the Savior's spirit and hidden meaning.
30. 6.1The rich man asks Christ, who is Life, Savior, Truth, and Word, the question most fitting to him: about eternal life.
31. 6.2The question concerns the very purpose of his coming: the gift of eternal life, which is the gospel's theme.
32. 6.3As God, Christ knows in advance the questions and answers, as Lord of every prophetic spirit.
33. 6.4Called “good,” Jesus turns the questioner to God, the only Good, who gives eternal life through the Son.
34. 7.1The first lesson for life is to know the one, eternal, good God.
35. 7.2Knowing God, who truly is and gives being to all, is the unshakable foundation of life.
36. 7.3Not knowing God is death; knowing, loving, and becoming like him is the only life.
37. 8.1One must first know the Father, revealed only by the Son, and then the greatness of the Savior, whose grace surpasses the law given through Moses.
38. 8.2If the law could give eternal life, Christ's coming and suffering would have been in vain, and the man who kept the law would not have needed to ask him.
39. 8.3The rich young man had kept the law from youth, which is admirable, since it is easy for the old to be blameless but hard for the young.
40. 8.4Though righteous by the law, the man knows he lacks life, and asks it from the Son of God, who alone can give it.
41. 8.5He moves from faith in the law to faith in the Savior, as a ship leaves a dangerous harbor for a safe one.
42. 9.1Jesus loves the man for keeping the law but says he is still imperfect with respect to eternal life.
43. 9.2The holy law was a preliminary training; Christ is the fulfillment of the law and makes believers sons, brothers, and heirs.
44. 10.1“If you wish” shows that the man was not yet perfect and that he was free to choose; the choice is man's, the gift is God's.
45. 10.2God does not force salvation but gives it to those who desire and ask for it.
46. 10.3The one thing lacking is what Christ alone gives, beyond the law: true life.
47. 10.4The man who had kept the whole law could not add the one thing Christ offered, and went away vexed.
48. 10.5He did not truly want life, but only the appearance of good will.
49. 10.6Like Martha, busy with many things, the man could not attend to the one necessary thing, which Mary chose.
50. 10.7Christ told the rich man to leave his many concerns and hold to the grace that gives eternal life.
51. 11.1Why did the man abandon Christ and his own hope?
52. 11.2“Sell your possessions” does not mean throwing money away, but banishing from the soul its attachment and anxious desire for wealth.
53. 11.3Mere poverty is not a virtue; otherwise all beggars, even those ignorant of God, would be the most blessed.
54. 11.4Renouncing wealth is not new: pagan philosophers did it for leisure or fame.
55. 12.1What Christ commands that is new is not giving up property, which others did, but stripping the soul of its passions and uprooting what is alien to it.
56. 12.2The philosophers who gave up wealth often grew proud and vain, so their souls were worse, not better.
57. 12.3Christ would not command what harms the life he promises.
58. 12.4Someone can give up wealth and still crave it, suffering both its loss and regret.
59. 12.5One who lacks necessities is inevitably distracted from higher things by the struggle to obtain them.
60. 13.1It is better to have enough and to help others; if no one had anything, no one could share.
61. 13.2Complete renunciation would contradict the Lord's other commands.
62. 13.3The Lord commands us to make friends with wealth and store up treasure in heaven.
63. 13.4No one could feed the hungry or clothe the naked, as Christ commands on pain of judgment, if he had nothing himself.
64. 13.5Christ stayed with rich tax collectors like Zacchaeus and Levi without telling them to give up their money, but only to use it justly.
65. 13.6Christ declares salvation to Zacchaeus's house and commands the rich to share with the needy.
66. 13.7If Christ commanded both giving to the needy and giving up all money, he would contradict himself; wealth that benefits others should not be discarded.
67. 14.1Possessions and money are prepared by God as material and tools for good use.
68. 14.2An instrument is only as good as the skill of the one who uses it.
69. 14.3Wealth is an instrument.
70. 14.4Wealth serves either justice or injustice; the blame lies not with it but with the human mind that chooses how to use it.
71. 14.5The mind has free will; one should destroy not one's possessions but the passions that prevent their good use.
72. 14.6The command to sell all one's possessions refers to the passions of the soul.
73. 15.1Since outward things are good or bad according to the soul's use, Christ's command must refer to the inner passions, not to outward goods.
74. 15.2One who gives up wealth can still be rich in passions, which continue to choke the reason.
75. 15.3Such a person discards what is indifferent and keeps the real source of vice, which poverty inflames.
76. 15.4Only harmful possessions must be renounced, not those that can be used well.
77. 15.5Wealth managed wisely and piously benefits; external things themselves do no harm.
78. 15.6Christ allows external goods and commands us to put away what misuses them.
79. 16.1The passions are the deadly wealth; the soul stripped of them can hear Christ's call to follow him.
80. 16.2Christ is the way for the pure in heart; God's grace does not enter a soul full of worldly desires.
81. 16.3The rich man who holds his wealth as God's gift for the sake of others, is not its slave, and could lose it calmly, is the “poor in spirit” whom Christ blesses.
82. 17.1The one who carries wealth in his heart instead of God's Spirit, always wanting more, cannot desire the kingdom; where one's mind is, there is one's treasure.
83. 17.2Christ speaks of a good and an evil treasure in the heart.
84. 17.3As there are different kinds of treasure among us,
85. 17.4So there is a good and a bad wealth, one to be gained and one to be discarded; and poverty is blessed when it is spiritual.
86. 17.5Matthew specifies “poor in spirit” and hunger for righteousness; those poor in the other sense, without God, are wretched.
87. 18.1Salvation depends not on external wealth but on the soul's virtues: faith, hope, love, knowledge, gentleness, humility, and truth.
88. 18.2Bodily beauty does not save or condemn; using the body purely saves, and destroying God's temple destroys.
89. 18.3Neither beauty nor strength decides one's fate; the soul that uses the body is responsible.
90. 18.4A strong man can obey the command to turn the other cheek, and a weak man can break it.
91. 18.5The poor can be drunk with desires, and the rich can be sober and pure.
92. 18.6Since the soul lives by virtue and dies by vice, it is saved when poor in the passions wealth brings and killed when rich in them.
93. 18.7Our final destiny depends on the soul's disposition: obedience and purity, or transgression and vice.
94. 19.1True wealth is wealth of virtues; counterfeit wealth is outward possession, which passes away.
95. 19.2There is a genuine poverty, of spirit, and a counterfeit one, of worldly goods.
96. 19.3Christ, rich toward God, tells the one rich in passions to give up the alien possessions of the soul, so as to become pure in heart and see God.
97. 19.4“Selling” them does not mean exchanging one kind of wealth for another.
98. 19.5In place of the passions one must bring in the divine wealth of dispositions that follow God's commandments.
99. 19.6By exchanging the passions for spiritual wealth, one gains treasure in heaven.
100. 20.1The rich young man, not understanding that one can have wealth and not be possessed by it, went away, making the difficult impossible for himself.
101. 20.2It is difficult but not impossible for the rich to be saved, if they turn to spiritual wealth and learn to use indifferent things well.
102. 20.3The disciples were frightened too, though they had already left their few nets and boats.
103. 20.4The disciples understood that the Lord spoke in a parable with deep meaning.
104. 20.5The disciples, though poor, knew their passions were not yet mastered, so they despaired like the rich man.
105. 20.6Salvation belongs to souls free from passion and pure, which is why the disciples feared.
106. 21.1What is impossible for man is possible with God: by one's own effort alone freedom from passion is unattainable,
107. 21.2but God gives strength to the willing, withdrawing his Spirit from those who grow slack; God saves by grace those who choose, not by force.
108. 21.3The kingdom belongs not to the lazy but to those who seize it; God gladly yields to those who hold on to him steadfastly.
109. 21.4Peter, first of the disciples, for whom Christ paid the tax, quickly grasped the saying.
110. 21.5Peter says they have left everything; if he meant his few possessions, that would be little to boast of.
111. 21.6But if they have given up the passions of the soul and follow Christ, they are among those enrolled in heaven.
112. 21.7To follow Christ is to strive for his sinlessness and perfection, shaping one's soul by him as by a mirror.
113. 22.1Jesus promises a hundredfold to those who leave everything for his sake.
114. 22.2Nor should we be troubled by the harder saying about hating one's family.
115. 22.3The God of peace, who commands love of enemies, does not command hatred of family.
116. 22.4If enemies must be loved, family must be loved all the more; otherwise the two sayings would contradict each other.
117. 22.5They do not conflict: the same disposition loves the enemy without revenge and puts Christ above one's father.
118. 22.6One saying removes hatred; the other removes excessive deference to family,
119. 22.7if it hinders salvation: a godless relative who blocks one's faith must not be followed.
120. 23.1Picture a trial: a godless father demands obedience against the law of Christ.
121. 23.2Christ answers: he has given new birth, freedom, and redemption, and will give eternal life and the vision of the Father.
122. 23.3Christ promises rest and the unimaginable good things God has prepared for those who love him.
123. 23.4Christ gives himself as bread and the daily drink of immortality, and has paid the death owed for our sins.
124. 23.5Having heard both sides, choose salvation: whatever any relative says, let Christ, who fights for you, prevail.
125. 24.1If one can master one's wealth, Christ does not take it away; but if it masters you, cast it off.
126. 24.2Whatever causes one to stumble, even an eye or life itself, must be given up for Christ's sake, to be saved in the life to come.
127. 25.1The saying about having fields and brothers with persecutions has the same meaning.
128. 25.2Christ does not call only the poor and homeless; he called rich men and pairs of brothers who were of one mind with him.
129. 25.3There is outward persecution, from those who harass believers through enmity, envy, greed, or the devil.
130. 25.4The hardest persecution comes from within, from a soul tormented by godless desires and passions until it despairs of life and despises God.
131. 25.5Inner persecution is worse, since it is always present and cannot be escaped.
132. 25.6One carries this enemy everywhere; outward fire tests, but inward fire kills.
133. 25.7If possessions or family bring this inner war, leave them, find peace, and choose Christ, the advocate of the soul, above all.
134. 25.8Visible things are temporary; eternal life belongs to the age to come.
135. 26.1The saying about the first and last applies to all believers and is set aside for now.
136. 26.2Christ does not exclude the rich because of their wealth, if they obey God's commands and look to him like sailors to a good helmsman.
137. 26.3There is no wrong in having earned a living before faith, or in being born by God's providence into a wealthy family.
138. 26.4If birth into wealth excluded one from life, God would be unjust.
139. 26.5If wealth caused death, why would God have made it grow from the earth?
140. 26.6The rich man who is modest, self-controlled, and seeks God alone
141. 26.7is truly poor and free before God; otherwise the camel will pass through the needle sooner than he enters the kingdom.
142. 26.8The camel has a deeper mystical meaning, which Clement reserves for another work.
143. 27.1The plain meaning of the parable teaches the rich neither to despair nor to throw their wealth away, but to learn how to use it and gain life.
144. 27.2Let us consider what hope Christ offers the rich and how it can be realized.
145. 27.3Christ names love of God with all one's soul and strength as the greatest commandment,
146. 27.4and rightly, since it concerns God the Father, through whom all things exist and to whom the saved return.
147. 27.5Loved by God first, we can repay him only with love, which gives incorruption; the more we love God, the more deeply we enter into him.
148. 28.1is love of neighbor as oneself; so God is to be loved above oneself.
149. 28.2Asked who one's neighbor is,
150. 28.3Christ answered with the parable of the Good Samaritan, not by defining the neighbor as a fellow Jew.
151. 28.4The neighbor is the one who shows mercy; Christ says, “Go and do likewise,” for love produces good works.
152. 29.1Both commandments are about love: first to God, second to neighbor.
153. 29.2The true Good Samaritan and neighbor is Christ himself, who had mercy on us when we were nearly killed by the powers of darkness and our passions.
154. 29.3Christ alone heals these wounds, cutting out the passions at the root, where the law dealt only with their fruits.
155. 29.4Like the Samaritan, Christ poured wine and oil on our wounds, bound them with faith, hope, and love, and set angels to serve us.
156. 29.5Christ must be loved equally with God, and he is loved by those who do his will and keep his commandments.
157. 29.6Christ requires not words but doing his will.
158. 30.1After loving Christ comes caring for his disciples, since Christ counts what is done to them as done to him.
159. 30.2Christ blesses those who fed, gave drink to, and welcomed him in the needy.
160. 30.3The righteous ask when they did these things for him.
161. 30.4The King answers that what they did to the least of his brothers,
162. 30.5they did to him; and those who neglected them are condemned as having neglected him.
163. 30.6Whoever receives Christ's disciples receives him.
164. 31.1Christ calls his disciples children and little ones and forbids despising them, since their angels see the Father's face.
165. 31.2The Father gives the kingdom to the little flock.
166. 31.3The least disciple in the kingdom is greater than John the Baptist.
167. 31.4Whoever gives even a cup of water to a disciple will not lose his reward.
168. 31.5Christ says to make friends by means of unrighteous mammon,
169. 31.6Wealth kept only for oneself is unrighteous, but it can be used righteously by relieving those destined for the Father's eternal dwellings.
170. 31.7Christ commands us not to wait to be asked, but to seek out the worthy,
171. 31.8Paul says God loves a cheerful giver, who gives generously without grumbling.
172. 31.9Better still is the Lord's “Give to everyone who asks”; and beyond even this, to seek out the worthy without waiting to be asked,
173. 32.1Giving buys an eternal dwelling: a divine exchange of perishable things for incorruption.
174. 32.2The rich should spare no effort to buy the heavenly kingdom.
175. 32.3Why delight in jewels and houses, which fire, time, earthquakes, and tyrants destroy?
176. 32.4The poor believer, imitating God, gives the heavenly kingdom in return for small gifts.
177. 32.5Beg the poor to accept your gift, for the command is on the giver.
178. 32.6Christ says “make friends,” and friendship, like faith and endurance, needs long care, not one gift.
179. 33.1The Lord gives the kingdom for the sake of his friends, and to the friends of his friends.
180. 33.2Do not judge who is worthy; it is better to help the unworthy too than to miss the worthy.
181. 33.3By testing too closely one may neglect God's friends and incur punishment; by giving to all one surely finds some who can intercede with God.
182. 33.4Do not judge; the measure you give will be given back to you,
183. 33.5running over; be open-hearted to all God's disciples, without contempt for their bodies,
184. 33.6Do not reject the poor, ugly, or weak: their body is only an outward form, and within them dwell the Father and the Son who died and rose for us.
185. 34.1The humble body hides from death and the devil the treasure within, guarded by the Father, the blood of the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
186. 34.2The redeemed rich man should enlist a different army: pious old men, orphans, and gentle widows.
187. 34.3The poor believers helped by the rich become their bodyguards, whose prayers, laying on of hands, and exorcisms protect them.
188. 35.1Each of these poor believers serves: some pray for you, some comfort, teach, or admonish, and all love you sincerely.
189. 35.2Their loving service is sincere and truthful, for they believe they serve God and the King of the ages dwelling in the rich believer.
190. 36.1All believers are noble, but some are more elect: hidden saints who shun recognition, whom Christ calls the light of the world and salt of the earth.
191. 36.2These saints are God's seed, image, and heirs, sent into the world as sojourners.
192. 36.3The world was made for the sake of these saints and will be dissolved when they are gathered in.
193. 37.1Contemplate the mysteries of love and you will see the Father's bosom, revealed by the only-begotten God; God is love and became visible to us out of love.
194. 37.2In God, the ineffable is Father, and his compassion toward us is motherly: in loving, the Father became like a mother.
195. 37.3The Son, born of the Father's love, came down, became man, and suffered, so as to raise our weakness to his power.
196. 37.4Before offering himself as a ransom, Christ left a new covenant: his love.
197. 37.5Christ gave his life for each of us and asks us to do the same for each other; how then can we hoard perishable goods from our brothers?
198. 37.6John says that whoever does not love his brother is a murderer, a child of Cain, cut off from the vine and awaiting the fire.
199. 38.1Learn Paul's more excellent way: love, which does not seek its own but spends itself on the brother.
200. 38.2Scripture's praise of love: it covers sins, casts out fear, endures all things, never fails, and is the greatest of faith, hope, and love.
201. 38.3Faith and hope end when God is seen and promises are fulfilled, but love grows to fullness.
202. 38.4Whoever grows in love and repents sincerely can repair past sins.
203. 38.5No one should despair after learning who the rich man is
204. 39.1who has no place in heaven; and one who has sinned after baptism, through ignorance or weakness, should not think God has condemned him forever.
205. 39.2The Father gladly receives every truly repentant son; true repentance means uprooting the sins one has condemned in oneself.
206. 39.3There is great joy in heaven over one repentant sinner.
207. 39.4God desires mercy and the sinner's repentance, and will wash scarlet sins white as snow.
208. 39.5Only God forgives sins, and the Lord commands us to forgive our repentant brothers daily.
209. 39.6God, the Father of mercies, patiently awaits those who turn back, which means ceasing from sin and not looking back.
210. 40.1God forgives past sins; future ones each person must avoid; repentance is condemning past deeds and asking the Father, who alone can undo them, for forgiveness.
211. 40.2God will judge each person as he finds him at the end.
212. 40.3The end is decisive: a good life that ends in vice is wasted, while a bad life can be redeemed by later repentance.
213. 40.4Recovery from sin, like recovery from long illness, needs great care.
214. 40.5Repentance means abandoning each sin, restoring what was stolen, and curbing the passions, so as to be reconciled before one's death.
215. 40.6Deep-rooted passions cannot be cut off at once, but with God's power, prayer, brotherly help, repentance, and practice they are overcome.
216. 41.1The rich man should take a man of God as a spiritual guide, respecting and heeding one who speaks frankly to heal him.
217. 41.2As eyes sometimes need stinging treatment, so the soul needs correction.
218. 41.3Continual pleasure blinds the soul that will not be moved by frank rebuke.
219. 41.4Heed the spiritual guide's anger, grief, and pleas.
220. 41.5The guide should intercede for him through many nights of prayer, for the Father cannot resist his children's pleas.
221. 41.6His intercession is pure if he is honored as God's messenger and grieves only for the rich man's sake; this is sincere repentance.
222. 41.7God is not mocked: he searches hearts, heard the three youths in the fire and Jonah in the whale, and is near to believers.
223. 42.1To show that true repentance brings hope, Clement tells a true story about the apostle John.
224. 42.2After the tyrant's death, John left Patmos for Ephesus and visited nearby churches to appoint bishops and set churches in order.
225. 42.3In a nearby city John entrusted a promising young man to the bishop, solemnly, before the church and Christ.
226. 42.4The presbyter raised and baptized the young man, then relaxed his care, trusting in the seal of baptism.
227. 42.5Left to himself too soon, the young man was corrupted by idle companions, first by feasts, then by robbery.
228. 42.6Like an unbridled horse he plunged into ever greater crimes.
229. 42.7Despairing of salvation, he formed a band of robbers and became its most violent chief; later John was called back.
230. 42.8John asked the bishop to return the “deposit” entrusted to him; the bishop thought he meant money.
231. 42.9John demanded the young man's soul; the bishop wept and said he was dead to God, now a robber in the mountains.
232. 42.10John mourned, reproached himself for his choice of guardian, and rode off at once to find the young man.
233. 42.11The robbers' outpost captured John, who did not resist,
234. 42.12and demanded to be taken to their leader, who fled in shame when he recognized John.
235. 42.13The aged John ran after him, pleading as a father, offering to die for him and assuring him of hope in Christ.
236. 42.14The young man stopped, threw down his weapons, wept, and embraced John, baptized a second time by his tears, hiding his blood-stained right hand.
237. 42.15John assured him of Christ's forgiveness, kissed his right hand, and restored him to the church through prayer, fasting, and teaching: an example of true repentance.
238. 42.16At death the repentant one is welcomed by rejoicing angels and by the Savior himself, who leads him to the Father and eternal life.
239. 42.17Whoever trusts the Scriptures and lives by them will see their truth proved at death.
240. 42.18Whoever repents now will not regret it at death or fear the judgment; whoever refuses forgiveness has only himself to blame.
241. 42.19The heavenly Father will grant true cleansing and unchanging life to those who seek salvation earnestly.
242. 42.20Doxology to the Father through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.