And Jesus, looking around, said to His disciples, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.”
The Lord turns this incident into an opportunity to teach the disciples. Wealth can become a great trial, because it gives the human heart a false sense of security, self-sufficiency, and strength. The rich person can easily think that he lacks nothing, while he is spiritually naked before God. Christ does not say that the salvation of the rich is impossible simply because of wealth, but that wealth creates great difficulty when the heart becomes attached to it. Entering the kingdom of God requires a poor spirit: humility, an awareness of dependence on God, and a heart that feels its need of grace, whereas a heart that relies on wealth is opposed to that humble spiritual condition.