Excerpt from "The Cost of Discipleship" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Doubt and reflection take the place of spontaneous obedience.

… [The young man] had hoped to avoid committing himself to any definite moral obligations by forcing Jesus to discuss his spiritual problems. He had hoped Jesus would offer him a solution of his moral difficulties. But instead he finds Jesus attacking not his question but himself. The only answer to his difficulties is the very commandment of God, which challenges him to have done with academic discussion and to get on with the task of obedience. Only the devil has an answer for our moral difficulties, and he says: “Keep on posing problems, and you will escape the necessity of obedience.” But Jesus is not interested in the young man’s problems; he is interested in the young man himself. He refuses to take those difficulties as seriously as the young man does. There is one thing only which Jesus takes seriously, and that is, that it is high time the young man began to hear the commandment and obey it. Where moral difficulties are taken so seriously, where they torment and enslave man, because they do not leave him open to the freeing activity of obedience, it is there that his total godlessness is revealed. All his difficulties are shown to be ungodly, frivolous and the proof of sheer disobedience. The one thing that matters is practical obedience. That will solve his difficulties and make him (and all of us) free to become the child of God. Such is God’s diagnosis of man’s moral difficulties.

The young man has now been twice brought face to face with the truth of the Word of God, and there is no further chance of evading his commandment. It is clear there is no alternative but to obey it. But he is still not satisfied. “All these things have I observed from my youth up: what lack I yet?” Doubtless he was just as convinced of his sincerity this time as he was before. But it is just here that his defiance of Jesus reaches its climax. He knows the commandment and has kept it, but now, he thinks, that cannot be all God wants of him, there must be something more, some extraordinary and unique demand, and this is what he wants to do. The revealed commandment of God is incomplete, he says, as he makes the last attempt to preserve his independence and decide for himself what is good and evil. He affirms the commandment with one hand and subjects it to a frontal attack on the other. “All these things have I observed from my youth up.” St Mark adds at this point: “and Jesus looking upon him loved him” (Mark 10:21). Jesus sees how hopelessly the young man has closed his mind to the living Word of God, how serious he is about it, and how heartily he rages against the living commandment and the spontaneous obedience it demands. Jesus wants to help the young man because he loves him.” -  The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer