Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”

In Jesus’ encounter with the rich young ruler he not only gives a new definition of righteousness. He also gives a new definition of riches. He bids the young man to let go of the old for the new. I think we need to examine what was happening here very closely. Jesus asks the young man to go and sell all that he has and give it to the poor. Then he can have the kingdom of God. We must not turn this into payment for the kingdom. Some might read this and think they have to be poor for God to accept them. Yet, Jesus makes this demand on no one else that we know. The question is why this young man? Why did Jesus demand that this fellow sell all that he had to possess eternal life?

This is one of the ironies of the kingdom of God. It is free, yet it is costly. What makes us worthy of God’s kingdom? I can see only one thing. It is not if we are rich or poor. It is not who we are. It is not what we have. It is not our deeds, good or bad. It is desire. We have to want it more than anything. To truly possess God, we must want Him more than anything. If we want something more than God, that thing will be our life. It will be what we look to for completion.

This young man obviously had lacking in his life. He would not have come to Jesus otherwise. He had money. He had what looked to be a good life too. Yet, it looked as if his left hand was reaching towards his possessions to fill him and be his life. His right hand was reaching towards God. What Jesus said was basically, drop your left hand. Let God be your true treasure, and you shall be rich.

This is probably the hardest thing this young man had ever been asked to do. Jesus was calling him to lose his life to find life in the kingdom. We are not unlike this young man. We all reach for something to give us life. We reach for God too. Yet, if we are reaching for something besides God to be our life, He will tell us to drop our left hand, and He will give us a whole new definition of life—a whole new definition of riches. God’s definition of life and riches is Jesus. Yet, dropping that left hand may be the hardest thing we have ever done. We might think if we let go, we won’t have anything. However, when we let go, we will have the riches of the kingdom.

We all have dreams in this life. We have things that we want to make us happy. We may think that the main purpose of God is to get us to our dreams. Yet, when we walk with God over the years, we begin to get a revelation. God is not taking us to our dreams (although we may get there). He is taking us to Himself. And when He becomes our dream, we are fully awake. We see.