Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost

Christ and the Rich Young Ruler by Heinrich Hofmann

Now as He was going out on the road, one came running, knelt before Him, and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not bear false witness,’ ‘Do not defraud,’ ‘Honor your father and your mother.’” And he answered and said to Him, “Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth.” Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.” But he was sad at this word, and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. (Mk 10:17-22)

Let us see, then, how the questioner styled Him, besides calling Him good. He said, “Good Master, what good thing shall I do?” adding to the title of good that of master. If Christ then did not chide because He was called good, it must have been because He was called good Master. Further the manner of His reproof shows that it was the disbelief of the questioner, rather than the name of master, or of good, which He resented. A youth, who provides himself upon the observance of the law, but did not know the end of the law, which is Christ, who thought himself justified by works, without perceiving that Christ came to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and to those who believe that the law cannot save through the faith of justification, questioned the Lord of the law, the Only-begotten God, as though He were a teacher of the common precepts and the writings of the law. But the Lord, abhorring this declaration of irreverent unbelief, which addresses Him as a teacher of the law, answered, “Why do you call Me good?” and to show how we may know, and call Him good, He added, “None is good, save one, God,” not repudiating the name of good, if it be given to Him as God.

Then, as a proof that He resents the name good master, on the ground of the unbelief, which addresses Him as a man, He replies to the vain-glorious youth, and his boast that he had fulfilled the law, “One thing you lack; go, sell whatever you have, and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” There is no shrinking from the title of good in the promise of heavenly treasures, no reluctance to be regarded as master in the offer to lead the way to perfect blessedness. But there is reproof of the unbelief which draws a worldly opinion of Him from the teaching, that goodness belongs to God alone. To signify that He is both good and God, He exercises the functions of goodness, opening the heavenly treasures, and offering Himself as guide to them. All the homage offered to Him as man He repudiates, but He does not disown that which He paid to God; for at the moment when He confesses that the one God is good, His words and actions are those of the power and the goodness and the nature of the one God.

Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity 9.16–17