What Does Matthew 19:22 Mean?

(22) **He went away sorrowful.**—St. Mark adds “sad,” *i.e., frowning,* or as with a look that lowered. The word is the same as that used of the sky in Mark 16:3. The discipline so far did its work. It made the man conscious of his weakness. He shrank from the one test which would really have led him to the heights of holiness at which he aimed. Yet the sorrow, though it was a sign of the weakness of one whose heart was not yet whole with God, was not without an element of hope. A mere worldling would have smiled with cynical contempt, as the Pharisees did when they heard words of a like tendency (Luke 16:14). Here there was at least a conflict. On the common view, that we can know nothing more of the questioner, it might seem as if the failure was final. On that which has been suggested here, we may believe that the Lord, who “loved” the seeker after eternal life in spite of this inward weakness, did not leave him to himself. The sickness, the death, the resurrection of Lazarus, may have been the discipline which proved that the things that are impossible with men are possible with God. We are at least not hindered by any chronological difficulty from placing those events after the dialogue with the young ruler.