Go Back In · Week 3 · Sunday

There is a man in the tenth chapter of Mark who does something no one else in the Gospels does. He runs to Jesus. And then he leaves.

He came in a hurry

Running and kneeling in public, in front of a crowd, to ask a religious question — that is not a cautious man.

As Jesus started on His way, a man ran up and knelt before Him. “Good Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”Mark 10:17 (BSB)

He is earnest. He wants this. Whatever we are about to watch him do, we cannot say he did not care.

One sentence

Before Jesus says anything hard, Mark makes a point of telling us what Jesus does first.

Jesus looked at him, loved him, and said to him, “There is one thing you lack: Go, sell everything you own and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me.”Mark 10:21 (BSB)

Notice the invitation at the end. Then come, follow Me. The same words He said to fishermen who dropped their nets on the spot. It is a real door, held open, by a Man who is looking at him with love.

And he walked out

But the man was saddened by these words and went away in sorrow, because he had great wealth.Mark 10:22 (BSB)

That is the whole tragedy in one line. He was invited in. He walked out. And Mark, who tells us how nearly everyone else’s story ends, tells us nothing more about him. The passage does not narrate him coming back.

Whatever he was holding, he could not set it down long enough to walk through the door he had run to.

He did not lack faith. He lacked the willingness to be without the thing that made him feel safe.

The child right before him

Read the four verses immediately before this, because Mark set them there on purpose.

Truly I tell you, anyone who does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”Mark 10:15 (BSB)

A child owns nothing, secures nothing, has no reserve and no record and no reputation to protect. A child just comes. And then, one paragraph later, a grown man with much to protect runs up and cannot. Mark put the child and the man in the same doorway on purpose.

The oldest trade

Two chapters earlier, Jesus had already named the exchange the man is about to make.

What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?Mark 8:36 (BSB)

The man in chapter 10 is that question with a face. He is not evil. He is comfortable — and he trades a door Jesus is holding open for the comfort of keeping what he already had.

Why this week

I run three businesses. I know the feeling of the exit — the quiet reassurance that if this goes wrong, I can handle it, I have a way out, I will be fine. That reassurance is not sin. It is comfort. And comfort is exactly the thing that can walk a man out of a room God put him in.

This week is five rooms and five securities. Money. A record. A reputation. The certainty that you can do it yourself. And on Friday, the one grip that will not come loose no matter how hard you pull, and what happens then.

The man in Mark ran to the right place and left holding the wrong thing. The rest of the week is about staying. And Saturday is a room I did not walk out of, and what it cost me to stay in it.