Question: When Jesus said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God, is Jesus referring to a small door in the wall of a city or the eye of a sewing needle? And, how much money can a person have before he is classified as being rich?
Answer: The account of this teaching is located in three of the four Gospels: Matthew 19:24; Mark 10:25; and Luke 18:25. The New Testament was written in the Greek language (an extremely precise language) and the word for needle in Matthew and Mark is ραøφισ (pronounced: RHAPHIS). The word used in Luke is βελονησ (BELONE). The monumental lexicon by Arndt and Gingrich reveals that RHAPHIS is “needle, esp. one used for sewing” (p. 734), and BELONE is defined by the scholarly lexicon by Thayer as “a. the point of a spear. b. a needle” (p. 100). In Vine’s excellent dictionary, after defining RHAPHIS “to sew,” and BELONE as “a dart, denotes a sharp point, hence, a needle,” adds: “Note: The idea of applying ‘the needle’s eye’ to small gates seems to be a modern one; there is no ancient trace of it. The Lord’s object in the statement is to express human impossibility and there is no need to endeavor to soften the difficulty by taking the needle to mean anything more than the ordinary instrument. Mackie points out (Hastings’ Bible Dictionary) that ‘an attempt is sometimes made to explain the words as a reference to the small door, a little over two feet square, in the large heavy gate of a walled city. This mars the figure without materially altering the meaning, and receives no justification from the language and traditions of Palestine’” (Vine, vol. 3, p. 106-107).
Furthermore, the disciples’ reaction (“exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?”) and Jesus’ reply (“With man this is impossible”), is not the reaction to a (supposed) common and not impossible practice of a camel squeezing through a small door, but is rather the reaction to the thought of a camel going through the eye of a sewing needle.
What, then, is Jesus teaching? Is He teaching that rich people cannot go to heaven? Obviously not: Job was rich; Abraham was rich; Christians who are rich can still have the hope of the time to come (I Tim. 6:17-19). Rather, Jesus is teaching, that like the rich man who had just chosen riches instead of God (see the account in Mark), so are they who love money and what money buys instead of loving God, and trust in riches rather than in God. Such a person cannot be saved. Yet, as I Timothy 6:17-19 teaches, the rich man who realizes that he has been blessed by God and that his riches are not his, but they belong to God, and who uses these to accomplish God’s will, can certainly be blessed, both here and in eternity.
Gary Henson