The Audacity of God's Grace: 10 Strategies To Living Your Best Life Now by John U. Nwankwo

through the eye of the needle than for the rich man to enter into the kingdom of God was two-fold. First, he noted that we can see that it is easier to make a spiritual man wealthy than for a wealthy man to become spiritual. Secondly, Pastor Pfeifer observed that a person must understand what the disciples knew when Jesus spoke about the eye of the needle. The eye of the needle was the name of a gate in Jerusalem where camels regularly traveled through. In order words, Jesus contemporaries or audience who heard Jesus talk about the eye of the needle knew that Jesus wasn’t talking about the little opening in the sewing needle with thread running through it. Jesus was rather making a reference to a very low entrance into the marketplace known as the eye of the needle gate. The situation was that for a camel to go through this small gate, each camel had to be unpacked of their load and bend their knees. A clearer understanding of this process entails that a camel owner would not only have to unload the baggage carried by the camel in order for the camel to go through the eye of the needle gate, but must position the camel in ways that the camels come through the gate on their knees.
    Jesus Expectations From The Wealthy
    Thus, my personal understanding of Jesus expectations of the rich is that in order for a rich man to be saved into God’s kingdom, becoming a partaker of that kingdom must begin here on earth by how the rich individual surrender to the grace of God in Jesus and how such rich individuals make use of the material resources s/he has benefited from the economy of God’s grace. Not only must s/he unload their material possessions and release them to help finance the work load of God to reach its redemptive potentials on earth since the progress of God’s work needs greater amount of money and material resources to achieve its kingdom capital. For this reason, “every rich or wealthy individual wanting to be part of the Kingdom of God must by implication learn to be useful in God’s hands,” kneel before God, depend on God’s grace and daily bow in reverence by worshipping and acknowledge the one and only true creator of life who gives strength, health, and the ability to acquire wealth.
    “every rich or wealthy individual wanting to be part of the Kingdom of God must by implication learn to be useful in God’s hands,”
    The unwillingness of any rich individual to do the former means that they are not ready to inherit the kingdom they contributed nothing meaningful towards, with the wealth released by grace from the owner of the kingdom. Wealthy people must learn to reverence and serve God selflessly—not serving their wealth. The rich and the wealthy, in other to be saved must be filled with the Spirit of God before they become partakers of the kingdom of God. The wealthy must learn not to be tight fisted, oppress the poor with their wealth, or continually take advantage of the weak and become greedy and corrupt. To be saved, a wealthy person needs to trust that it is God who gives s/he the ability to acquire wealth and trust God by releasing wealthily into the world of those who are starving and have-nots. It further requires that the rich or wealthy must empower, not exploiting the lives of those who in the persistent lack of material resources could easily be recruited into crimes, violence, and making it impossible for others to live their best life now. This is consistent with Christ’s response to the self-centered rich young ruler who Jesus directed to give a share of his personal possessions to the poor and follow Him.
    What Jesus Saw In The Mind of The
Rich Young Religious Ruler
    By directing the wealthy man to give away some of his possessions and follow him, Jesus was not mandating the rich man to become poor first, before he could become his follower. However, Jesus saw a trend, a pattern, and a poor lifestyle of acquiring more and more and yet never able to release to the lives of others, nor