Luke 18:19 Meaning Jesus Asked Him

The mind loves to locate goodness in particular figures, ranking one person above another and calling this one holy and that one less. But goodness is not a quality some possess and others lack; it is the single nature of love itself, undivided and belonging to no separate self. To point at a person and stop there is to miss the source, mistaking the reflection for the light.

What this gently corrects is the whole habit of measuring and comparing, of parceling out worth in degrees. There is one good, and it is what every mind shares beneath its differences. To see goodness truly is to look past the particular figure to the love that is the same in all.

When someone calls another person wholly good, he is usually placing something on them that belongs inside himself. Each of us carries an inner picture of perfect goodness, a wholeness we long for, and it is easy to hang that picture on an impressive stranger.

Here the teacher refuses to wear it. By turning the word back where it belongs, he stops the man from worshipping a person and hands the search back to him. What he means is plain: the goodness you see in me really lives in you, and that is where you must go to find it.