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There's no such thing as a free lunch. Not even the student suppers are free. There can be absolutely no doubt that they are exceptionally good value. But free they are not. There's always a price to pay somewhere for anything that looks like a free gift. That is the conclusion that the worldly wise amongst us came to a long time ago. Like the hotel that can't fill its rooms, so it offers them for free – you just have to spend £27.50 a head on breakfast and dinner.

I remember when our son was seven (many years ago), he had a taste of this. There was a competition in one of his comics. The card had six eggs on it. You had to scratch three to see what was in them. Get three embryonic dragons and you were a winner. He scratched. Three dragonettes! Amazing! What had he won? A Nintendo game machine. Or maybe a petrol-powered go-kart. Isn't life wonderful!

Trust his dad to look at the small print. Along with the handful of super-prizes there were also thousands of badges as runner-up prizes – or 'maybe a surprise booby prize', as they put it. How did you find out what you had won? Phone up and listen to a 5 minute tape, spending £2 in the process. 'No way, my son.' There is no such thing as a free Nintendo. We now had a world-weary seven-year old son. 'Look,' he said to me a few minutes and some scratching later, 'all the eggs have got dragons in them!'

You may be a Christian already. You may be looking into the Christian faith. Either way, I wonder if you are in the process of weighing up the cost of commitment to Christ. And if you are, I wonder which way you consider the scales are tipping. Are you in danger of being like the man who came to Jesus in that gospel reading?. Have a look at that: Mark 10.17-31. There are three vital questions in this passage. Two of them are explicit. First: 'Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?' (in v 17). And secondly: 'Who then can be saved?' (in v 26). The third question is implicit in what Peter says in v 28: 'We have left everything to follow you.' But we will come to that later.


First, 'GOOD TEACHER, WHAT MUST I DO TO INHERIT ETERNAL LIFE?' (v 17)

The first question is the crucial question asked by this rich young man (Matthew's Gospel tells us he was young.) He runs up to Jesus just as he is about to set off on a journey. (Always the moment when unexpected visitors arrive.)

'Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?'

Now here is a man who thinks in terms of the bottom line - a businessman if you like. If he wants something, the first thing that comes into his mind is: 'What does it cost?' And the second question is: 'Is that a good price?' He is a sensible, rational man and he wants to make a sound investment.

He knows that money isn't everything. He knows that there are issues of eternity that count when he is totting up his assets and his liabilities. That, at least, is something. All too few of us take eternity into account as we shape our lives. Sydney is in the news. You may have seen the harbour bridge ablaze with fireworks during the new year millennium celebrations. What wasn't shown on TV here was that at the climax of the show the one word 'eternity' appeared on the bridge, etched in lights. The same word was used again during the Olympic opening ceremony. Why? Apparently because of Arthur Stace. Arthur Stace was a drunkard, living on the streets, in and out of gaol in Sydney. In the 1930's, he went into a church looking for food. Before he got some, he listened to a man preach. As a result, he turned to Jesus Christ and his life changed for ever.

Soon after that, he was struck by the words of another preacher who said: 'I wish I could shout Eternity through the streets of Sydney.' Arthur Stace took that to heart. He started to write the word 'Eternity' in chalk on walls and pavements all over Sydney. It was the only word he knew how to write. It is estimated that he wrote 'Eternity' in his copper-plate handwriting about half a million times all over Sydney before his death in 1967. Somebody has commented: "Stace wanted us to live lives marked by gratitude to the Lord Jesus, who died that we might spend eternity not in hell, but heaven."

The rich young man who approaches Jesus is no secular atheist. His question is not 'Is there eternal life?' It is 'What must I do to get it?' Nowadays no doubt he would call himself a Christian, probably come to church as well. He may be a member of a home group, or a student member of Focus. He is keenly interested. But he wants to know the price before he buys. Jesus always makes it crystal clear that there is a cost involved in following him. For very good reasons, we should not hesitate for a moment to pay that price – but we do need to understand it. This rich man's question raises two issues that go right to the heart of this matter.

The first is this: Who is Jesus? 'Good teacher…' the young man begins. But Jesus challenges the man:

'Why do you call me good? No-one is good – except God alone.' (v 18)

The same challenge comes to us when we think about counting the cost of following Christ. Do we really believe he is God as he claims to be? When Jesus speaks, is that really God speaking to us? C.S.Lewis in his book Mere Christianity famously puts the issue like this:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit on Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

It is Jesus the Son of God, not just Jesus a good teacher, who addresses the rich young man. Verse 21:

Jesus looked at [that young man] and loved him.

Jesus, looks upon you, and loves you. He wants no profit out of you. There is nothing you have that he needs. But there is a price to pay if we're going to have what he offers us.

The second issue that the rich man's question raises is simply this: What do we have to do if we're going to have eternal life? Jesus answers that by saying, 'You know the commandments,' In effect, he is saying, 'Be perfect.' And with astonishing lack of insight the young man says, in effect, 'I have been':

'Teacher, all these I have kept since my youth.' (v 20)

He sees no further than the letter of the law and says 'I'm a decent guy. I've never done anyone any harm.' But let's not smile inwardly to ourselves about this. Aren't we all at times extremely self-indulgent about the way we assess our own lives?

Jesus knows better, and he digs up the root of the man's idolatrous life. His idol is wealth. The choice that faces him is simple: Who or what will be his god? Jesus? Or his great possessions? Verses 21-22:

Jesus looked at him and loved him. 'One thing you lack,' he said. 'Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.' At this, the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.

The man took a look at this investment proposition. He got out his new notebook computer and ran it through his spreadsheet. No deal.

You see, God is not willing to be one of a portfolio of securities in our lives. You know the way it is with the stockmarket. One share goes down, and you start to rely on another that is going up. I don't suppose too many student budgets stretch to a portfolio of shares. You may not be a player financially. But most of us play this game spiritually. We find our security in a range of things, and one amongst them is God. He's very convenient when the others let you down temporarily. If that's you, then you need to know that that is not the life of faith in him that Jesus demands. That's just hedging your bets. Jesus won't have it. He wants all that we are and all that we have.

No deal, thought the rich young man. Just not worth it. Too expensive. Leave it for someone else. It looks good, this eternal life, but money in the Building Society looks better. And he turned his back on Jesus and walked away. I hope he changed his mind. He thought he was sophisticated. But he had just fallen for the world's biggest con-trick. Nothing is worth hanging on to if it means losing Christ. What must I do to inherit eternal life? You can't do anything. You can't pay God. But you may need to let go of everything. Which brings us to the second big question.


Secondly, 'WHO THEN CAN BE SAVED?' (v 26)

The disciples are watching all this, and in near despair they ask this next vital question:

'Who then can be saved?' (v 26)

None of us can be saved if it relies on us. No price we pay, no sacrifice we make, can be enough to book a place in heaven. We have to look elsewhere for the way to heaven.

The American evangelist Billy Graham was once visiting a town, and he needed to ask a young lad the way to the post office. He thanked the boy for his directions, and then said, 'If you come to the Baptist Church this evening, you can hear me telling everyone how to get to heaven.' The boy said, 'I don't think I'll be there. You don't even know the way to the Post Office.'

What do we have to do to get to heaven? We can do nothing. No-one can be rescued from the hell we deserve unless God does it. Salvation is a gift of God – it is by grace, not by payment. We are helpless. A few years ago a three year old boy called Benny wandered off alone onto an electric railway line. He tripped and fell across the track and was badly electrocuted. He lay there unconscious. A railway worker called Gordon saw him from a distance and ran to where he lay. Gordon had already had to remove several adult bodies from the line over the years and he feared the worst. But he saw that the child was still alive and using a piece of wood because Benny's body was live with lethal electricity he managed to get him off the line.

But before he could move him out of danger he saw a train bearing down towards them. The only thing he had time to do was to stand on the track ahead of Benny with his arms aloft to try to warn the train to stop before he and the child were crushed. The driver saw him and slammed on the brakes and the train came to a halt fifteen feet from where Gordon was standing, rigid with fear. The boy survived the electrocution. Gordon literally laid his life on the line for Benny. He too survived. But he was not able to go near an electric railway line after that, and he had to leave his job. Jesus laid his life down and died to rescue us from hell.

The price of salvation is way beyond us. We are as helpless as Benny. But the price was paid by Christ when he died on the cross. Any price we pay because we follow Christ is simply a consequence here and now of the salvation that we have already been given. We don't pay it to earn eternal life. We pay it out of gratitude. And it is like just loose change in our pockets in comparison with the very life that Jesus gave for us. 'Who then can be saved?' Verse 27:

Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man this is impossible but not with God; all things are possible with God.'

Now we come to the third and final question. It is implicit in what Peter pipes up with next in verse 28.


Thirdly, 'WE HAVE LEFT EVERYTHING TO FOLLOW YOU?' (v 28)

Peter began to say to him, 'We have left everything to follow you.' Why does he say that? Surely it's because, even as he compares himself favourably with the rich man, Peter is falling into the same bottom-line kind of thinking. In other words his question is: 'What's in it for me?' Jesus doesn't rebuke him, but with great grace he takes the question serioiusly. Three things are evident from his response.

First of all, there is indeed a price to be paid in following Jesus. It is real. In order to take hold of all that Christ gives us, we do have to let go of everything else. We have to be absolutely clear eyed about that. Jesus lists homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields. Security, people and possessions all have to take second place for the sake of Christ and for the sake of the gospel. How does that affect you? Does your faith threaten to isolate you from your family? Are you going to have to stand out from the student crowd as a known Christian? Is Christ asking you to end your dependence on your bank balance or your salary?

Towards the end of the 19th Century, C.T.Studd gave up a privileged family background, a small fortune, and his position as a star England test cricketer to preach the gospel in China. The motto he gave to the mission organisation he founded was this: "If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for him."

Are we Jesus consumers – prepared to follow him as long as the feel-good factor lasts? Are we fair-weather friends who will stick with Christ as long we're getting what we want? Or are we faithful followers, in for the long haul? There is a price to be paid as we follow Jesus. Are we prepared for that?

Secondly, Jesus makes a startling promise. It's there in verses 29 to 30: anything you give up for him will be paid back over and over again now in this life. Jesus is preaching a prosperity gospel – but with a difference. You begin by losing. You begin by giving up. And indeed what you receive back now comes with 'persecutions'. We will have to wait for heaven before the thorns are stripped off the roses. But God is no man's debtor.

Then thirdly, there at the end of v 30, Jesus promises eternal life. In the age to come, everything is already paid for, and there is no further cost at all. The four times gold medal winning Steve Redgrave is after a fifth gold. But it has not been easy for him.

His biographer says: "He is not only defying two medical conditions [colitis and diabetes] but has reached an age when common sense dictates he should be at home, feet up, watching others at the Sydney Olympics suffer the agonies he has too often endured in the pursuit of glory."

You may remember how at the end of the last Olympics he said, "If anyone seems me anywhere near a boat again, they have my permission to shoot me." So why does he do it? "If you're not going to Sydney to win, you're a tourist," he says. And he says about their training regime, "It has never really been enjoyable. Out on the water in winter, you feel like hell. But what keeps you going is the thought that another crew might be training harder than you… What motivates you to go through the daily grind is your own success." The price, he reckons, is worth paying for the gold medal around his neck at the end of the games. The price is worth paying. How much more is that true of life with Jesus.

There is a cost in following him. It is real. It is not in any way a payment for eternal life. That is God's impossible gift made possible through the price of Christ's agony and death on the cross. The cost that we are faced with is the consequence of the eternal life we have.

Because we follow Christ, we cannot follow anyone else away from him. Because we follow Christ, we will get caught in the fall-out of the explosion of evil that he took full-on. But any price we pay will be repaid to us over and over again even in this life. And in heaven it will be forgotten in the glory of it all.

One of the big ironies in all this is that if we do try to cling on to things against the will of God, we lose them anyway in the end. A woman died alone at the age of 71. The coroner's report was tragic: 'Cause of death: malnutriton.' Before she died she used to beg food from her neighbours. What clothes she had came from the Salvation Army. She was apparently a penniless, pitiful, forgotten widow. But not so. Those investigating her death discovered a huge stash of stocks and shares and cash. She was a millionaire, but she died of starvation because she would not part with anything. Not even to feed herself. Jesus said,

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. (Luke 9.24.)

God knows what he is doing. He is good. He is not a con-artist. As Jesus looked at that rich young man, so he looks at us and loves us. We should not hesitate to pay any price that he asks of us. We will not regret it.