When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, "Who then can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." (Matt. 19:25-26)
How are 'all things possible' with God?
The word "man" is being translated from the Greek word ἄνθρωπος (anthrōpos), which can mean "a human being, whether male or female - generically, to include all human individuals" as well as "people" according to the lexicon. It can thus be used to describe mankind or humanity.More specifically, Jesus is referring to the physical body and those who occupy these temporary physical bodies. We are not these physical bodies. We occupy them for a few years and then leave them.
These physical bodies - and the physical mind - are by design limited. The Supreme Being designed these physical bodies to provide a virtual facility for some of His children - those who rejected their relationship with Him - to dwell outside of the spiritual realm.
These physical bodies thus provide an escape from the consciousness of the spiritual realm. Each of us is a spirit-person from this spiritual realm. And we were created by the Supreme Being to exchange love with Him and His children. But because love requires freedom, the Supreme Being gave each of us the ability not to love Him.
Those who decided not to love Him are given physical bodies and a virtual universe that provides the ability to be away from Him. This is accomplished by designing these physical bodies to shield our consciousness from the Supreme Being and the spiritual realm. So we can act out our self-centered desires without interference.
How free are we?
Thus these physical bodies and minds are by design limited. They cannot see or perceive the spiritual realm. This is why mental speculation about God and heaven is fruitless.We might compare this to the design of a movie theater. By design, the movie theater is a darkened room with no windows with a giant screen in the front of the room with all the chairs pointing towards it. This provides the ability for movie-goers to get lost in the movie and forget what is going on outside the movie. This is why there is no windows and the lights are turned off: To focus the movie-goers' consciousness upon the movie.
In the say way, these bodies were designed to focus our consciousness towards the physical world - while forgetting our real identity and our relationship with the Supreme Being.
Thus the physical body and mind also cannot lift us up, to allow us to return to the spiritual realm. They cannot even perceive God or heaven - how can they return us there?
The Supreme Being produced both the spiritual and physical realms. He is the Source and Origin of everything. Therefore He controls everything.
Therefore there is nothing impossible for the Supreme Being. While our physical body and mind were designed not to perceive the Supreme Being or the spiritual realm, the Supreme Being ultimately controls the physical and spiritual realms.
Therefore, for someone who becomes dedicated to Him, He can reveal Himself.
This does not take place whimsically, however. Nor automatically. It is ultimately the choice of the Supreme Being. And because we rejected the Supreme Being at some point in our past, it is not as if we can snap our fingers and He will allow us to reconnect with Him.
Can we get out by ourselves?
We are speaking of a relationship. A relationship that we once spurned. Should we want to return to our relationship, we must approach it with some humility, feeling sorry for our past rejection of Him.Is this not what also occurs in other relationships? A person who ran off and left a relationship will certainly have caused some hurt for the other person. As such, returning to the relationship is done with humility and sorrow - as the spurned person is asked for forgiveness.
While the Supreme Being is beyond pettiness, He still feels hurt when we reject Him. He feels transcendental sadness. He also feels sorrow for us because He knows we will never be happy without our relationship with Him.
At the same time, the Supreme Being wants us to become serious about returning to Him before He lifts the veil and reveals Himself to us again. He doesn't want us to run off again. We must become dedicated this time.
Being a rich man is a state of consciousness of feeling attached to our temporary physical possessions. Yes, all of us have been given physical possessions to become attached to. And a relatively poor person can be just as attached to a dollar as a relatively rich person can be attached to one million dollars. Attachment is the consciousness that we own those possessions, and we do not want to give them up.
So what Jesus was testing in the young man was not whether he was relatively rich or not. It was whether he was attached to that wealth, and identified with that wealth. So he asked the man to give his wealth away and follow him to illustrate to the man and Jesus' students how the attachments of worldly possessions can keep us from returning home to God.
Therefore, we can say with confidence that every person who is attached to their temporary possessions - regardless of how much money or how many possessions they own - would be considered a "rich man" in the context of Jesus' statement.
Thus the impossibility a camel going through the eye of a needle illustrates the difficulty all of us with physical bodies and possessions have in reaching God: We cannot do it alone.
Are we powerless?
The purpose of our journey into the physical world and into these physical bodies is to exercise our freedom. We have the freedom to reject God and chase our own dreams. Here we can exercise our intent to be independent of God.But while we have this freedom, our independence from God is an illusion.
Jesus’ statement above confirms that we are all powerless without Our Best Friend and Soul Mate, the Supreme Being. We have no ability to save ourselves. We have no ability to lift ourselves out of the attachments that we have created in the physical world. The reality of the situation is that we are stuck.
Like the darkened movie theater with the movie playing on the giant screen is hard to ignore, this illusory nature of the physical world is extremely difficult to transcend.
This illusory nature makes us think that if we make the body happy, we will be happy. So we struggle to make the body happy, and we only find that it - and our mind - is never happy with what we get. Nothing we do for our body or mind satisfies us. Even the movie stars, rock stars, and billionaires of the world with all their wealth and fame find that they are still not satisfied.
Transcending this unfulfilling physical world is impossible for us to do alone. We do not have the ability.
Who has the power then?
God does. God owns and controls everything, even the illusions of the physical world. He is able to shine the light of wisdom and knowledge into our hearts and lift us into awareness. He is able to send to us His representative to teach us how we can regain our loving relationship with Him. He is able to reach out and pull us back to Him: But only if we first make the choice that we want to return to Him.There is an expression that "love heals everything." This also is true for the emptiness that dwells within the heart of each person attached to their temporary physical body and possessions. Should we redevelop our loving service relationship with God, and we begin to rely upon Him, we will also begin to realize that this relationship automatically lifts us out of the quagmire of the temporary physical world.
But we cannot develop this relationship alone. As they say, every relationship takes two. Therefore, we must first make a choice: We must decide that re-establishing our relationship with God is more important than the temporary "things" of this world. Once we make this decision, we must trust that God will see this within our hearts, and begin to show us how we can re-develop that relationship. This process may take time and patience, but to the extent that we are serious, God will bring us back to Him.
This of course requires trust (also called faith) in God. And this trust is the very point of Jesus' statement here, as we must trust that “with God, all things are possible.”
