Why do you call me "Good"?

"Why do you call Me good?  No one is good except God alone."  

So read several English translations of Mark 10:17.  At least, that is the version best known from the King James version, the one most popular in sermons and teachings today.  It is also a verse often used to support the view that Jesus was not God, because He said that only God is good, apparently excluding himself.  I have heard other explanations of this, such as the fact that he was simply answering the rich young ruler in kind--saying, if you will, "Why are you calling me "good" teacher if you don't believe I'm God?"  I'm about 50% convinced that this argument would work.  

But this evening I was blessed to read a different "take" on this Scripture from a non-English speaker: Saint Augustine.  Reading from the Latin Vulgate, Augustine quoted two parallel texts, Matthew 19:17 and Mark 10:17 as saying, 

"Why do you ask about the good?"  

I was intrigued by this different, if somewhat awkward, translation.  So I got out my Greek New Testament and, sure enough, Matt. 19:17 says the above as clear as day.  Mark 10:17 is a little less clear.  There is a textual variant, below.  

1) NU says, "Why do you ask Me about the good?"

2) can be read either, "Why do you call Me good," or "Why do you tell / say to Me, 'good'?"  

Looking at the context, Jesus was in both passages answering this statement by the rich young ruler:  

"Good Teacher, what good [thing] must I do in order that I may inherit eternal life?"  

I think that in that line lies the key to understanding Jesus' statement.  Alone, it is possible to interpret Mark 10:17 as Jesus refuting His own deity.  However, taken in context--and assuming that the Synoptic Gospels concur and do not contradict one another, we must detect that Jesus was not commenting on the fact that the ruler called Him "Good Teacher," but rather the fact that this man himself presumed to be good enough to inherit eternal life through his actions.  

Only God is truly good.  Man can choose to reflect His goodness, but God alone is the source of life, the source of goodness.  Man can frequently love, but God IS love.  You cannot do anything good that will get you eternal life.  You must eat the Bread of Life.  

I once believed, as did the rich young ruler, that certain things were right and certain things were wrong, and that in order to be in God's favor, you must do the right and avoid the wrong.  I also believed that Christ'-blood-was shed-to-cover-my-sins, yadda-yadda... yet whenever I stumbled, I felt horribly guilty--as if God was hiding His face from me.  And so I hid my face from God for a long time.  My theology of the cross took many years to descend from my head to my heart and empower my way of living.  

I was brought up short one day, when an atheist candidly told me that he didn't see any evidence in my life that would cause him to believe there was a God.  Anyone, he said, could be a decent and kind person.  

I was forced to my knees that night and bared my soul before God, because I had come as far as I was able to go on my own strength.  I asked for His help for the first time in years.  My faith was at stake.  The course of my life had bifurcated, and I faced the choice either to take up my cross, and follow my Lord into the heavens, or to remain with my feet on the ground on the broad path that leads to destruction.  I told Him that I would do anything for Him, only that I could not do it alone.  

In response, He reminded me that He'd sent me the Helper, the Paraklete, who has been my source of strength, of righteousness, and of wisdom from that day forward.  

I now realize that while all the above is true about moral law, there is a higher truth, a "Deeper Magic," as C.S. Lewis's allegory put it, that transcends the behavioral modification program that we see in the Old Testament.  Dios llega al hombre.  God meets man.  Right here, in our daily struggles.  We cannot become good, but our God and Savior can, because He alone IS good.  He is the Righteous Branch, whose name is "The LORD our Righteousness" (Jer. 23:6).  We cannot keep the law; yet if we walk in the Spirit, living according to the nature of His promptings in our hearts, then we CAN escape the corruption that is in the world through lust. We don't know how to live as we ought, yet the Spirit teaches us one day at a time.  We don't even know how to pray as we need to, yet the Spirit intercedes for us, touching the Father's heart with utterances that we could never know or express.  

God meets man, so that man can walk in His footsteps.  This is the blessed truth that has changed my life today.