Jews understood the metaphor, “the eye of a needle”... - All The Good Seed Daily Devotionals for 2025

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
Mark 10:25.

Jews understood the metaphor, "the eye of a needle", to mean the smallest possible opening. If the Talmud of Jewish law indicated that something was impossible, it used the expression: no elephant could pass through the eye of a needle. So Jesus, too, used this imagery of a camel and the eye of a needle to express impossibility.

Everyone cannot simply enter the kingdom of God. We have to fulfil the conditions required. "A rich man" here signifies someone whose heart is taken up with his wealth and trusts in it completely; he therefore fails to fulfil these conditions. Jesus clearly did not mean people rich in earthly possessions, but those whose heart is set on wealth or anything similar.

A preacher of the 19th century once wrote: "Many people want to be certain as to eternal life, but they don't want what is necessary to remain in that certainty, i.e. living by grace". That proves a hindrance for many.

We cannot strive for and serve two incompatible things at the same time: God and mammon, grace and one's own merits, heaven and the world. If someone does not open his heart to God's grace and trust fully in it, surrendering every other support and every other idol, he will not attain living faith.

All who come to God by faith have entered by "the eye of the needle". All that they are and have has become so insignificant for them that they rely solely on God's grace. The kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom that we can enter only by casting ourselves completely into the arms of the Saviour Jesus Christ.

Today's reading: Exodus 38:1-8 · Luke 17:20-37