Tougher Than a Camel Walking Through the Eye of a Needle (Without Christ)

We can send and receive signals from Voyager 1 fifteen billion miles from earth. Our best microscopes can detect atoms, and one human hair is millions of atoms thick. But no one has ever pushed a camel through a needle’s eye. Jesus’ comparison still stands! It’s impossible, which is exactly Jesus’ point.

A man wanting to get into eternal life by what he did asked Jesus what the requirements were. Jesus told him to . . . . sell everything and come back as his disciple. The man left with a very sad face because he had great wealth, and since he did not return, we can assume he was not ready to part with it.

Jesus’ commentary to his disciples was this: It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God (Mark 10:25).
The message of the story shows the obstacle wealth can be in our life with God, but Jesus is most definitely not teaching us that rich people can’t go to heaven or that we have to sell everything to get into eternal glory.

If the man had actually sold everything, would that have gotten him eternal life? No. The disciples recognize that with their follow-up question, “Who then can be saved?” (v.26) If this successful and upstanding man can’t win eternity with what he does, who can?

If it’s not love of possessions, then it would be any other sin. It would be an unending statement by God that we had something we needed to change, only to return and find out there was still more sin in our lives. There would be no hope if Jesus had not come to open up eternal life through faith in him.

On the camel comment, some have tried to soften it to make it more “possible.” There are those who have tried to change the word for camel to a similar Greek word meaning “rope” instead. A rope going through the eye of a needle is maybe a little more likely, but still not really something that can happen. And the word in Scripture is “camel,” not “rope.” Others have come up with a theory about a Needle Gate into Jerusalem that was low and narrow, but that a camel could get through on its knees. However, there’s no evidence this gate ever existed.

What Jesus said is what he meant. Trying to find something we can do to get eternal life is just as impossible as a camel passing through the eye of a needle. But Jesus also meant what he said after that: “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God” (v.27). The impossible becomes possible through faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection for us. It’s God’s work! For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in[a] Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23).