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“And as he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to him and knelt before him and began asking him, “Good teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.” Mark 10:17-18.

I would call this a ‘rabbit trail.’ When the subject presented is ‘how should this man inherit eternal life’, which Jesus does eventually answer, Jesus’ attention is first zeroed in on the word “good” that the man used. Okay, so you’re wondering who cares? Why do we care that Jesus takes this one simple, descriptive word “good” that the man probably used haphazardly, without a single thought, yet Jesus takes the time to pause and reflect upon it? What’s the big deal?

The more I study Jesus’ ministry, his words, his life, and his mission, the more I am captivated by how much of what he said and did was rooted in the Old Testament writings. Psalm 16 is a beautiful prophecy about Jesus, that David penned which many people site at Easter time, especially verses 8 – 11 where it talks about Jesus not being abandoned to the grave and decay. King David wrote this as a prophetic conversation occurring between the Lord Messiah and His God. I suggest you read the entire chapter, before I draw your attention specifically to Psalm 16:2 which says, “I said to the LORD, “Thou art my Lord; I have no good besides Thee.” It is a lovely Scripture! What is even more beautiful, is the more literal translation of this verse: “I said to YHWH, “You art my Adonai; I have no good besides You.” So, when Jesus casually makes this comment to the man, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone,” he is referring to this prophecy in Psalm 16. It is a sign to us that Jesus is really the Adoni (Lord) Messiah, God’s “Holy One” who is prophesied in Hebrew Scripture. Jesus is acknowledging to the man, and still to us today, that YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is His Lord and His God and that he has nothing without God. He is not good, without God’s anointment of His Spirit dwelling inside of him. Jesus derives everything he is and can do from His Lord God.

One comment about this verse on the web was this: Jesus is saying that the rich young ruler who addressed him as “Good Teacher” is technically calling Him God but challenging him to realize this on his own. Jesus is in effect saying “if I’m truly good (sinless) then the one truly good must be God. Jesus is good and He said “one who is good is God” therefore by default Jesus is claiming deity. It’s an allusion to deity and Jesus often spoke in this manner.

This is a very common argument for some to use this verse to say that it means that if only God is “good” and Jesus had to be “good” too, to be worthy enough to be our sacrifice, then therefore, Jesus must be God. This type of logic can be understood, yet is rampant with misunderstanding and error. To truly understand who Jesus was, we must acknowledge the Old Testament Scriptures and that Jesus was fulfilling these, not abolishing them. This Old Testament prophecy was a beautiful reminder that Jesus used, for his listeners then and today, to show us that he was the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ, and that everything he did and said came from His LORD God. He was humbly admitting here that he was God’s servant, His messenger, His prophet, His sacrificial lamb, through whom God would redeem and save the world.

How much more clear does Jesus have to be, when he asks the man ‘why do you call me good? Only GOD ALONE is good.’ Jesus is not God. Or Deity. Or Divine. He did not try to persuade men that he was the LORD God Almighty. Jesus readily admitted to all who would listen to him and accept him as the lord Messiah, that God was working through him – giving him the words to say, the authority to forgive sins, the anointing of His Spirit to obey His God’s will to the point of his own death. Jesus lived a sinless life, worthy to be our sacrifice for our sins, because he chose obedience and submission to God, not because he was the Almighty God, but because he was uniquely begotten by the Almighty YHWH in the womb of Mary, and therefore was the “last Adam” and therefore could be called “The Son of God” just as the first Adam was, in Luke 3:38. Jesus had the free will to sin and disobey God, just like the first Adam had that same choice to either obey or disobey. But, Jesus got it right. He obeyed His Lord God.

Another comment on the web says the following: “Here, Jesus is, of course, speaking as a human being. Notice that he is addressed as “good teacher,” and so responds according to what his human nature would prompt him to say. The word God, in Jesus’ day and in a Jewish context, meant only Yahweh/the heavenly Father. It did not mean the Trinity, much less the Second person of the Trinity. You could rephrase this “No one is good but the Father alone.” Jesus is not denying he is divine. He is denying he is the Father, or Yahweh, who in the first instance is the source of all goodness. In his divine nature, Jesus was one with the Father, but in his human nature he was distinguishable from the father and could speak in purely human terms.”

When Jesus says, “Only God ALONE is good,” he is saying, “not me, but God ALONE is good. I have no good besides Thee, O God!” Simply put, YHWH, the one and only living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is one person, the Father. Just as God, Himself, states in Isaiah 44:24, “I, Yahweh, am the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens BY MYSELF, and spreading out the earth ALL ALONE.”

Alone is defined:

1.	separate, apart, or isolated from others:

2.	to the exclusion of all others or all else:

3.	unique; unequaled; excelled:

People who want to believe that Jesus is part of a “3-in-1 Triune God” must take into consideration thousands of Scripture where God sees Himself as just one person, creating the world alone, by Himself. Jesus, too, sees God as one person, who alone is good. Only Trinitarians can take one person, the Father who is the only true God according to John 17:3, and create, then defend, a new being which consists of 3 persons who are all God, but yet are not three gods, but one, and which statement is yet to be found in the Scriptures anywhere. One, no longer means one. Alone, no longer means alone. Are you confused? You don’t have to be! It doesn’t have to be so complicated when the Scriptures are actually rather plain and simple on who God and Jesus are.
While Jesus was on earth during his 33 years, he was our living example of how to live, think, and show us what to do to please our God. His words in Mark 10 were not a cryptic statement, informing people he was Deity, but instead it was a humble acknowledgment of God’s role in his life as Lord over him. It was a public statement that only God, his Father, Yahweh, alone is good, and everything that Jesus did that was good, was because he had made YHWH the Lord of his life. God’s Spirit dwelled inside of him.

This example is ours to apply to our own lives! Jesus’ statement that is tied to Psalm 16, is a declared reference of his position as God’s Anointed One, and that the only good that Jesus could possibly have, was from God. Only God is good. Only Adonai YHWH is righteous and He alone sets the standards of what is holy and right for us. Jesus is righteous, good, holy, blameless and pure, because of God working through him, just as we too, can be seen by God as righteous, good, holy, blameless and pure, through our faith in Jesus. When we acknowledge that we can do nothing without Christ, it is an acknowledgment that we have made Christ the lord Messiah of our life and that there is no good in us, except for what he supplies. It is a clear chain of authority and power. God gave it to Jesus. Jesus gave it to us. And we are to claim it, be empowered by it, but never forget from whence it came. It is a very humbling fact, which exalts our Jesus as Lord and Messiah of our lives and makes us bow in worship and praise to the one and only living God, Adonai YHWH who is the creator and giver of all good things!

Let us remember, that when Jesus deviates from the main subject at hand and goes off on a rabbit trail, we should pause and wonder why. Then, with a little digging, a little seeking of precious knowledge and truth, we will find an abundance of grace and understanding which will dawn like the noon day sun. We will see that everything Jesus said was rich in meaning and was tied to the spoken word (logos/plan) of God in the Hebrew Scriptures. With every word Jesus spoke, we can see that he truly was the Son of God, the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One!