The divine nature of Jesus wasn’t explicit most of the time. It was cloaked and controlled by His humanity. Aside from His miracles, most of His actions often came across as the actions of a lot of other humans. Jesus came across as compassionate, humble, self-sacrificing, full of wisdom, and as a man of God.

I’m speculating here that the rich young ruler who approached Jesus (Mark 10: 17-22) saw Him in that way. He said to Jesus, “Good teacher. What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.”

That statement by Jesus has caused some to go “Ah-ha. That proves that Jesus wasn’t God.” They ignore the many scriptural passages that support Jesus’ deity, such as John 1: 14’s “The Word became flesh;” John 10: 11’s “I am the good shepherd;” 2 Corinthians 5: 21’s “He who knew no sin; and Hebrews 7: 26’s “Holy, undefiled, and exalted above the heavens.”

So why, as though He weren’t, did Jesus say that no one’s good except God, if He were indeed God? It appears to me that Jesus wanted the young man to know that if he thought of Him as human, all humans fall short of God’s character; that a human’ s perceived natural goodness, in God’s eyes, are but dirty rags (Isaiah 64: 6). He wanted the young man to know that true exhibited goodness comes only from God.

He then went on to answer the young man’s question. He said that salvation is in keeping the Ten Commandments; not in a legalistic sense, He made clear, but in the sense of loving God and man with all of the heart, mind, and strength above the treasures of this world.

The young man affirmed that throughout his life he had kept the Commandments. Though it isn’t recorded in the Bible, I believe that Jesus got across to the young man that the way he kept the Commandments his whole life was self-deceiving; that he never experienced the Commandments spiritually; that he had only kept them as the letter of the Law.

I think that Jesus made it clear to the young man that it was He who knew the true way to fulfill the Commandments— and that He was that way. In doing so, I believe that Jesus impacted the young man’s heart, as He did upon meeting His twelve disciples and the woman at the well. He got it across that He was indeed the Messiah; that, yes, He was good, but that it was of God’s goodness.

Having done so, He bade the young man, “Come, follow Me.” In that beckoning was the claim that He and the Father were One. Unfortunately, as we know the story’s ending, the power of the world’s wealth had a greater pull on the young man.