The New Testament tells us many times that we
are saved by our faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior. God love and grace
and mercy are involved, too, of course.
It’s because God loves us that God allows us to have a chance for
salvation and eternal life in the first place. But the point is that it
is faith that saves us. It’s not the
things we do. We cannot earn our way
into heaven by doing good things or by anything else. We are saved by our faith in Jesus
Christ. Period.
Do you believe that? I do. But then I run into this story, the story of
the rich man and Lazarus, and I’m not sure what to do with it. Because in
this story, Jesus tells us that Lazarus is in heaven, and the rich man is in
hell, and yet we’re not told a thing about the faith of either one of
them. It’s like their faith was irrelevant to what happened to them.
The rich man and Lazarus are the only two characters in
the story. I guess we have three if you want to count Abraham, but
basically it’s the rich man and Lazarus.
We’re told
very little about either of them. We’re not even told the rich man’s
name—he’s just identified as “the rich man.” We know Lazarus’ name, we know
he’s a beggar, and we know he had sores.
That’s all we know about them. Then, we know they both die. We know Lazarus goes to heaven, and the rich
man goes to hell.
The way
Jesus tells the story, or at least the way it’s been recorded for us, it sounds
like the only reason Lazarus went to heaven is because he was a beggar who had
sores, and the only reason the rich man went to hell is because he was a rich
man. Because, again, we’re not told anything else about them. A lot of times, we assume things about
the. We assume that the rich man must
have been evil, or greedy, or have cheated or stolen or done something wrong to
get his wealth. And we assume that
Lazarus must have been a wonderful fellow who just never got any breaks while
he was alive.
Jesus did
not say any of that, or if he did it’s not recorded. We are not told that
the rich man was evil or that he did anything wrong to get his money. For
all we know, he may have worked very hard and earned his success. We’re told that Lazarus begged at his gate,
but we don’t even know if the rich man was aware that he was there. The
rich man may, for the most part, have treated people well. He may have even tithed, given ten percent of
his money to God. I’m not saying he did
that, but there’s nothing in Jesus’ story that says he did not. We’re not
told that the rich man did anything wrong in getting his money.
We also
don’t know whether Lazarus was a wonderful fellow. We don’t know if he
was a nice guy at all. He may have been
a jerk. He may have been very bitter and angry about the way he had to
live. He may have never had a good word
to say to anybody. Again, I’m not saying that’s true, but there’s nothing
in Jesus’ story that says it’s false.
We’re not told that Lazarus ever did anything nice for anyone.
And we’re
not told that either of them had faith in Jesus Christ, or even that either of
them believed in God. The only things that seem to matter in Jesus’ story
are that the rich man was rich and that Lazarus was a beggar. Listen to
what Jesus has Abraham saying to the rich man.
“Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things,
while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in
agony.” The only reason we’re given for why the rich man is in hell is
because he’d had a good life while he was on earth, and the only reason we’re
given for why Lazarus is in heaven is because he had a bad life on earth.
Now, Jesus
talked to a lot of poor people, and he had a lot of sympathy for them.
And remember, poor people back then did not get any government support or
anything. Begging was about the only thing a poor person could do, and it
was not very profitable. This kind of message would’ve given the poor people
Jesus was talking to a lot of hope. It
would’ve made them feel like God did care about them that God knew about their
situation and that they would get a reward in heaven. It can give us
hope, too, if we’re suffering in our lives on earth.
But you know
what really bothers me most about this story? What bothers me most is
that I feel like I have a lot more in common with the rich man than I have with
Lazarus. I think that’s probably true of most of us, if we think about
it. I’m not saying anyone here is rich,
at least not by the standards of our society, but very few of us would fall
into the Lazarus category. Few of us have had to beg for anything. Most of us have always known we were going to
have enough to eat each day. We’ve known
we were going to have decent clothes to wear.
We’ve always known we were going to have a warm place to sleep.
We’ve also
always known that, if something happened to where we might not have one of
those things, there were ways we could get help. In my case, I have a
loving family, both on my side and on Wanda’s side, and I have friends who I
know would not let me sleep on the street and would not let me starve, no
matter how bad my personal situation might get.
Not only
that, I’ve had a pretty wonderful life in a lot of ways. I grew up in a
loving family. I have an incredible
wife. I have a career that I love.
I have wonderful people to work with.
I’ve been blessed in an awful lot of ways. In many ways, I’ve received the good things
in my lifetime, just like the rich man did. Does that mean I’m going to
receive bad things in the next life, like the rich man did?
And again,
how do we square this with all the times in the Bible where we’re told that our
salvation depends on our faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior and on nothing
else? I mean, Jesus said that he is the way and the truth and the life,
and no one can come to the Father except through him. The Apostle Paul says over and over again
that it is through faith in Jesus Christ that we’re saved. And yet, in
this story, we’re not told anything about the faith of either the rich man or
Lazarus. We’re not told that Lazarus had
faith and the rich man did not. We’re
told that the rich man went to hell because he’d gotten good things during his
life, and Lazarus went to heaven because he’d gotten bad things during his
life. How does that work?
I don’t know
that I have the answer, but I’ll tell you what I think. Feel free to
disagree. As I was thinking about this,
it occurred to me that, in a way, it’s easier for us to rely on God when we
have nothing than it is when we have everything. What I mean is that
someone in Lazarus’ position has nothing, not even decent health, and most
likely never will have anything. In that
situation, we sometimes throw ourselves on God’s mercy because there’s nothing
else we can do. We ask God to help us because we know that we have no
ability to help ourselves and never will, and we know there’s no one else who’s
going to help us either. We turn to God
for help because we have nowhere else to turn.
When we have
some money of our own, though, we do have somewhere else to turn. If we
have a thousand dollars in the bank, we don’t have to rely on God for our next
meal. We can rely on ourselves. If
we have ten thousand dollars in the bank, there are a lot of things we don’t
have to rely on God for, because we can do them ourselves. If we have a
hundred thousand dollars, there are even fewer things we have to rely on God
for. And if we have a million dollars,
well, we probably don’t have to rely on God for much of anything.
I think this
is what Jesus meant when he talked about how it’s easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to heaven. I don’t
think he meant it literally, that it’s impossible for a rich man to go to
heaven, but he meant that it’s awfully hard.
It’s hard because the more we have, the more likely we are to rely on
ourselves, and the less likely we are to rely on God.
I don’t
think this story means that everyone who gets good things while on earth will
go to hell. What I think it means is that the more blessings we have
while we’re on earth, the more we can be tempted to believe that we’ve gotten
those blessings because of our own goodness, rather than by God’s
goodness. The more blessings we have while we’re on earth, the more we’re
tempted to take those blessings for granted, rather than thanking God for them. The more blessings we have while we’re on
earth, the more we’re tempted to have faith in ourselves, rather than having
faith in God
If we truly
have faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior, our lives need to show that.
That’s true whether we have a lot or we have nothing. The more we have, though, the more chances we
have to do things that show our faith. And, of course, the more Jesus
asks us to do things that show our faith.
I’m not
saying that nobody here does things that show their faith. I know that a
lot of you do. And besides, my point
here is not to make anyone feel guilty. The thing is, though, that
we can all do more. I know I can.
Jesus does not want us to just do so much and say, “Well, that’s good
enough”. That’s not what Jesus did when he was on earth. Jesus did not settle for “good enough”. Jesus does not want us to settle for “good
enough”, either.
If you feel
like you can identify with Lazarus in this story, then you probably know that
need to rely on God. But if we feel like we can identify with the rich
man, we need to rely on God, too. In
fact, we need to focus even more on relying on God. We need to be
grateful to God for everything we have, and we need to do all we can to show
our faith and to show our gratitude to God. From what Jesus said, it sounds like our life
in eternity depends on it.
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