A young man walks away from Jesus, sorrowful, and Matthew 19:22 gives the reason: “for he had great possessions.” A little later the disciples ask, “Who then can be saved?” and Jesus answers with the famous sentence. Nobody can save himself, not even a rich man who said he had kept the commandments from his youth. God can, and nothing is too hard for him.
Who then can be saved?
After the young man leaves, Jesus says that a rich man shall hardly enter the kingdom, and then the line about the camel and the eye of a needle. His disciples are “exceedingly amazed.” If a man like that cannot get in, they can see no one left who could. Their question is the hinge of the passage, and the sentence people print on cards is the reply.
But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.
Matthew 19:26 (KJV)
“This” points back to their question. The impossible thing is a person getting into the kingdom of God. Then Jesus gives the reason God can do it, the broadest sentence in the passage: with God all things are possible. Mark tells the same scene and makes the link plain with one word, “for with God all things are possible.” In the whole King James Bible those exact words appear twice, here and in Mark 10:27, and both times they answer “Who then can be saved?”
So the sentence also states a truth about everything: nothing is too hard for God. In this scene Jesus says it about the one impossible thing nobody can manage for himself.
He went away sorrowful
Matthew records what he was asked: “go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.” Mark adds a line Matthew leaves out, placed just before the demand: “Then Jesus beholding him loved him.” In Mark he went away “grieved.” None of the Gospels that tell it says what he thought afterward, and Matthew and Mark both record that he went away.
Some sermons describe the eye of the needle as a low gate a camel could pass by kneeling. If that were so, the disciples would have nodded, and they were exceedingly amazed.
What Peter asks next
Peter speaks up at once: “Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?” Jesus answers him generously: twelve thrones “in the regeneration” for the men who followed him, and for everyone who has left houses or family or lands for his sake, “an hundredfold,” and “everlasting life.” The young man had asked how to have eternal life. The men who stayed are told they shall inherit it.
Where else the words live
Some people who search this sentence mean another verse. In Mark 9:23 Jesus tells a father asking for his son’s healing that “all things are possible to him that believeth,” and that same day he took the boy by the hand. The words also appear in Mark 14:36, in Jesus’ own prayer in Gethsemane.
Outside this scene, Luke 1:37 has the closest cousin: “For with God nothing shall be impossible.” The angel says it to Mary after telling her she will bear a son, and after news of a second conception, her cousin Elisabeth’s, “in her old age.” Genesis 18:14 has the same shape when the LORD asks Abraham, “Is any thing too hard for the LORD?” and repeats that Sarah shall have a son. In Luke 1 and Genesis 18 the impossible thing is something God has just said he will do, and Mary answers, “be it unto me according to thy word.”
Bringing your own impossible thing
If you came to this verse the night before an exam or while waiting on a test result, you can bring that to God, because he cares for you, and this verse takes nothing away from your asking. Paul, writing from prison to the church at Philippi, says what God does with it: “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” That is Philippians 4:6-7, and Peter, writing to believers under trial, puts the invitation in one line in 1 Peter 5:7: “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.”
Philippians 4:13 gets printed over achievements the way this verse gets printed on cards, and Paul wrote it about being held both full and hungry, which makes it a good verse to keep close before a test, whichever way it goes.
The impossible thing in Matthew 19 is getting in. With men it cannot be done, and with God it can.