With God All Things Are Possible

It helps me to remember where we are standing in the chapter. By Matthew 19:1 Jesus has left Galilee and come into the region of Judea, on the far side of the Jordan, so he is already moving in the direction of Jerusalem. The conversation about wealth and salvation happens with that destination ahead of him, which gives the whole exchange a weight it would not have if he were settled and at ease.

The other thing I keep noticing is that verse 26 is an answer, not a slogan. It only makes sense because something has just collapsed. A man with money and morality and real eagerness has turned and gone, and the disciples are left asking who on earth could be saved if even he could not manage it. So Jesus is not handing them a motivational line. He is putting their whole assumption back together with God at the centre of it instead of human achievement. I find it steadying that the most quoted half of this verse was first spoken to people whose confidence had just been knocked clean out of them.

The sentence turns on a single contrast, and in the Greek the two key words share a root. Behind “impossible” sits a word built on the idea of being without power, no strength for the task. Behind “possible” sits the matching word for having the power. Same family, opposite outcome, and which way it falls depends entirely on the subject of the sentence.

That small thing matters to me. Jesus is not saying salvation is merely hard for us and easy for God, a difference of degree. He is saying we have no power for it at all, while God has all the power it needs. “With men this is impossible” is therefore not a gloomy view of people. It is honest accounting. Take the rich young man and strip back his wealth, his good record and his keenness, and he still cannot save himself, because saving was never a thing human strength could reach. Then the sentence pivots, and everything rests on whose power we are leaning on. The grammar is carrying the gospel.

When Jesus says all things are possible with God, he is not coining a new idea. He is joining a chorus that ran through the Old Testament. The Lord asked Sarah whether anything was too hard for him (Genesis 18:14). Jeremiah, with Jerusalem under siege, prayed to the God for whom nothing is too hard (Jeremiah 32:17). And Gabriel told Mary something close to the same thing about the child she would carry (Luke 1:37).

What strikes me is what God’s power keeps being attached to in those moments. Not success or comfort, but life arriving where there was none: a child to an old and barren couple, a future promised to a city facing ruin, a saviour given to a young woman. So when Jesus borrows the phrase and aims it straight at salvation, he is being entirely consistent. The impossibility he overturns is our own inability to rescue ourselves, the very point Paul later makes about being saved by grace and not by what we manage (Ephesians 2:8 to 9). The cross is where this verse pays out in full.

The part of this that searches me is not only the people I have written off, though there are a few of those. It is that the man who fails here is the respectable one. He had everything that should have made him a safe bet, the money and the manners and the obvious sincerity, and he still walked away sad. If salvation were a reward for being decent and keeping the rules, he was first in the queue. He was not.

So I cannot read this verse as if I am only ever the rescuer praying for harder cases than myself. When I start to feel secure because I turn up to church and behave well enough, the rich young man is there in the doorway, a quiet warning. My respectability cannot do for me what only God can do. That is humbling, and oddly it is also a relief. The same power that I lean on for myself is the power I can ask God to exercise for anyone, since none of us was ever going to manage this on our own strength.

• Where am I leaning on my own decency, effort or churchgoing to feel safe before God, the way the rich young man leaned on his record?
• Is there someone I have quietly decided is past reaching, and what would change in my praying if I really believed God can do the impossible with them?
• When a situation looks shut for good, do I treat “with God all things are possible” as solid ground, or only as a wish for the outcomes I happen to want?
• What am I most afraid is impossible just now, and could I bring it to God plainly today instead of carrying it on my own?

If you would like to keep going, you could read more of this Gospel at /bible/matthew/ or follow some related verses on faith and hope.