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Matthew 23:24
Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.

than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
In the cultural context of first-century Judea, wealth was often seen as a sign of God's favor, making this statement counterintuitive to Jesus' audience. The kingdom of God refers to the reign and rule of God, both in the present spiritual sense and the future eschatological fulfillment. Jesus challenges the notion that material wealth equates to spiritual blessing, highlighting the potential for riches to become an idol that hinders one's relationship with God. This teaching aligns with other biblical passages, such asMatthew 6:24, where Jesus states that one cannot serve both God and money. The call is for a heart fully devoted to God, free from the entanglements of wealth.

“Indeed” signals Jesus is making an unshakable, authoritative statement. He has just watched a wealthy ruler walk away sorrowful (Luke 18:18-24) and now turns to warn the disciples. Whenever Jesus says something similar—“Truly, truly” or “Amen, I tell you” (Luke 18:17;John 3:3)—He underscores absolute truth that demands attention.

Jesus invites His listeners to picture the easiest-to-imagine outcome compared with the hardest. The phrase prepares us for a striking contrast, echoing other “greater/lesser” sayings (Matthew 19:24;Mark 10:25). He is not discussing mild difficulty; He is stressing comparative impossibility.

The camel was the largest land animal familiar to His audience. When Jesus elsewhere contrasts “gnat” and “camel” (Matthew 23:24), He chooses extremes to expose hypocrisy. Here the camel embodies the biggest, most unwieldy object people could picture.

A sewing needle’s eye is minuscule. Nothing in the text suggests a small city gate; Jesus is using literal imagery to emphasize impossibility.Mark 10:27 drives the point home: “With man this is impossible, but not with God.”

Wealth itself is not condemned—Abraham, Job, and Joseph of Arimathea were godly and rich—but riches easily capture the heart.

• Riches breed self-reliance (Proverbs 11:28).

• Riches root people in this present world (1 John 2:15-16).

• Riches can deceive, choking out the word (Luke 8:14).

Paul warns, “Those who want to be rich fall into temptation… For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:9-10). Jesus’ hyperbole shows that clinging to wealth shuts the door to God’s reign.

Entrance is salvation itself—being brought under God’s rule, now and forever (John 3:5;Colossians 1:13). Human effort, moral achievement, or financial security cannot secure that entrance. Right after this verse the stunned disciples ask, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus answers, “What is impossible with men is possible with God” (Luke 18:26-27). Grace alone opens the kingdom, and grace requires humble, childlike dependence (Luke 18:17) that wealth often masks.

Luke 18:25 paints an unforgettable picture: squeezing a full-grown camel through a needle’s eye is easier than getting a self-sufficient, wealth-anchored sinner into God’s kingdom. The illustration is literal in its impossibility, driving home that salvation can never be bought, earned, or bargained for. Only when riches lose their grip and a person turns in humble faith to Christ can the “impossible” become reality, because “with God all things are possible.”

"I would ride the camel,
Yea leap him flying, through the needle's eye
As easily as such a pampered soul
Could pass the narrow gate."

(Southey.) It seems strange that the three evangelists, SS. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, who tell this story of the young questioner and the Master's conversation with him, do not mention his name. And yet he must have been a conspicuous personage in the society of the time. First of all, his riches were evidently remarkable. One account tells us that he was" very rich." Two of the Gospels mention his "great possessions." St. Luke tells us that he was "a ruler." He was, then, certainly a very wealthy Jew holding a high official position, not improbably a member of the Sanhedrin council. Why is he nameless in the three Gospels? Dean Plumptre has a most interesting theory that the young wealthy ruler wasLazarus of Bethany. He bases his hypothesis upon the following data: He begins by stating that "there is one other case in the first two Gospels which presents similar phenomena. ]n the narrative of the supper at Bethany, St. Matthew and St. Mark record the passionate affection which expressed itself in pouring the precious ointment of spikenard upon our Lord's head as the act of 'a woman' (Matthew 26:7;Mark 14:3), leaving her unnamed. InJohn 12:3 we find that the woman was Mary, the sister of Lazarus. The train of thought thus suggested points to the supposition that here also there may have been reasons for suppressing in the records a name which was familiar to the narrator. What if the young ruler were Lazarus himself? The points of agreement are sufficiently numerous to warrant the conjecture. The household of Lazarus, as the spikenard ointment shows, were of the wealthier class. The friends who came to comfort the bereaved sisters were themselves, in St. John's language, 'of the Jews,'i.e. of the chief rulers (John 11:19). The young ruler was obviously a Pharisee, and the language of Martha (John 11:24) shows that she, too, believed in eternal life and the resurrection of the dead. The answer to the young ruler, ' One thing thou lackest' (as given by St. Mark and St. Luke), is almost identical with that to Martha, 'One thing is needful' (Luke 10:42). In such a case, of course, nothing can be attained beyond conjectural inference; but the present writer must avow his belief that the coincidences in this case are such as to carry the evidence to a very high point of probability."

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