It is often claimed by
those who
reject the deity of
Christ
that in Mark 10:17-22
Jesus
denies His divinity
by
rejecting the notion that He is good
It reads as follows:
“As
Jesus started on his way, a
man ran up to him and fell on his
knees before him. ‘
Good teacher,’
he asked
what must
I do to inherit eternal life?’
‘
Why do you call me good?’
Jesus answered. ‘
No one is good except
God alone
You know the commandments:
Do not murder,
do not commit adultery, do not steal,
do not give false testimony,
do not defraud,
honor your father and mother.’
‘Teacher,’ he declared,
‘all these I have kept since
I was a boy.’
Jesus looked at him and loved him. ‘
One thing you lack,’
he said.
‘Go, sell
everything you have and
give to the poor,
and you will have
treasure in heaven.
Then come, follow me.’
At this, the man’s face fell.
He went away sad,
because he had great wealth.”
Is Jesus here rebuking the man
for calling Him good
and
thereby denying His deity?
No. Rather, He is using a penetrating question to
push the man to think through the implications of
his own words, to understand the concept of
Jesus’ goodness and,
most
especially, the man’s lack of goodness.
The young ruler
"went away sad"
(Mark 10:22)
because he
realized that although he had
devoted himself
to keeping the commandments,
he had failed to
keep the first and greatest
of the
commandments--
love the LORD your
God
with all your heart
and with
all your soul
and
with all your strength
(Matthew 22:37-38).
The man’s riches
were of more worth
to him than God,
and thus
he was not "good"
in the
eyes of God
Jesus’ fundamental lesson
here is that
goodness flows not from a
man’s deeds,
but rather from
God Himself
Jesus invites the man to follow Him, the only means of doing good by God’s ultimate standard. Jesus describes to the young ruler what it means to follow Him—to be willing to give up everything, thus putting God first. When one considers that Jesus is drawing a distinction between man’s standard of goodness and God’s standard, it
becomes clear that following Jesus is good.
The command to
follow Christ
is the
definitive
proclamation of
Christ’s goodness
Thus, by the very standard Jesus is exhorting the young ruler to adopt, Jesus is good. And it necessarily follows that if Jesus is indeed good by this standard, Jesus is implicitly declaring His deity.
Thus, Jesus’ question to the man is designed not to deny His deity, but rather to draw the man to recognize Christ’s divine identity. Such an interpretation is substantiated by passages such as John 10:11 wherein Jesus declares Himself to be “the good shepherd.” Similarly in John 8:46, Jesus asks, “Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?” Of course the answer is "no." Jesus was “without sin” (Hebrews 4:15),
holy and undefiled
Hebrews 7:26
the only One
who “knew no sin”
(2 Corinthians 5:21).
The logic can thus be summarized
as follows:
1: Jesus claims only God is good.
2: Jesus claims to be good.
3: Therefore, Jesus claims to be God.
Such a claim makes perfect sense in light
of the flow of
Mark’s narrative with regards
to the
unfolding revelation of
Jesus’ real identity.
It is only before the high priest in Mark 14:62
that the question
of Jesus’ identity is explicitly clarified.
The story
of the rich young ruler
is one in a
sequence of stories designed
to point
readers toward
Jesus as the eternal,
divine,
incarnate Son of God.
The apostle Paul
was a
tentmaker by trade,
and he relied on
that trade to support himself
in Corinth
on his second missionary journey.
In Corinth, Paul met fellow tentmakers Priscilla and Aquila, and “because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them. Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue,
trying to persuade Jews and Greeks”
(Acts 18:3–4).
Where Paul learned his
trade of tentmaking
we simply can’t be sure.
The Bible never says.
We know that as a young man
Paul
studied under the
tutelage of Rabbi Gamaliel
in Tarsus,
who provided him with
an expert knowledge
of the
Hebrew Scriptures
(Acts 22:3).
Those
educational credentials
allowed
Paul to preach in
the
synagogues wherever
he traveled
(see Acts 17:2).
We also know that Tarsus, where Paul was from, was in the province of Cilicia, famous for raising goats and producing a goats’ hair cloth that was used for tentmaking. In fact, the cloth was named cilicium,
after the province of origin.
It was standard practice for
Jewish rabbis
to have learned a trade.
Rabbi Hillel, the grandfather of Gamaliel, was a carpenter. Paul’s trade was that of tentmaking. It could have been a business his family was involved in. It’s also possible that Paul learned and began to practice tentmaking during his school years. Another possibility is that he became a tentmaker during his ministry or in the time between his road-to-Damascus conversion
and the beginning of his ministry (see Galatians 1:17).
Paul turned to his training as a tentmaker in certain situations so as not to be a burden to the churches he was nurturing and to avoid accusations that he was preaching for gain. He told the elders in Ephesus, where he had spent two years, “I have not coveted anyone’s silver or gold or clothing. You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions” (Acts 20:33–34).
Most likely,
tentmaking was not a
big part of
Paul’s life in general.
His focus was always
preaching the
gospel of Christ
(see 1 Corinthians 2:2).
Being a tentmaker was probably
only something he
did on occasion, as a fallback.
as a traveler,
Paul did not carry the
supplies necessary to conduct a
significant
business as a tentmaker. . .
. In the
ancient Greco-Roman world,
it took considerable time to establish the necessary relationships in order to gain the necessary permissions to conduct business in a city,
both from city leaders as well as the
appropriate guilds.
Paul was able on occasion to enter into business, but only in situations such as Corinth, where he was actually assisting in an established business with an established shop with regular suppliers, owners with memberships in the appropriate trade guilds and a regular clientele”
When it comes down to it, the Bible just gives us broad,
“big-picture”
overviews of most of the events it discusses,
including the
ministries of major figures like Paul.
The book of Acts,
for example, doesn’t mention Paul’s heading to Arabia for a while before beginning his ministry; we don’t learn about that episode until
Paul mentions it in his letter to the Galatians.
So, even though we’re told Paul was a tentmaker by trade and he served in that capacity at times, it’s impossible to say with certainty how or when he learned the trade or how much tentmaking he actually did during his ministry.