Mark 10:27
What does Mark 10:27 mean?
Jesus, looking at them, said, “With men it is impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God.”
The short answer
Mark 10:27 is Jesus' answer to a question his disciples have just asked in something like panic: "Then who can be saved?" A rich man has walked away sad, unable to part with his wealth, and Jesus has said it is easier for a camel to pass through a needle's eye than for the rich to enter God's kingdom. The disciples assumed wealth was a sign of God's favor. If even the favored can't get in, what hope is there for anyone?
Jesus' reply does not soften the problem. He looks at them and agrees: "With men it is impossible." Salvation is not something people achieve by effort, generosity, or good standing. Then comes the turn: "but not with God, for all things are possible with God." The verse relocates salvation entirely. It is not a human accomplishment that God rewards; it is a divine act that God performs. What no one can do for themselves, God can do.
That's why this verse only works as good news after the impossibility sinks in. Read too quickly, it can sound like a loophole — a way to keep our wealth and our confidence and assume God will sort out the rest. But Jesus isn't offering an escape hatch; he's offering rescue to people who have just discovered they need one. The same conviction surfaces again in Gethsemane, where Jesus prays that all things are possible for God (Mark 14:36) — and yet is not spared the cross. Divine possibility, in Mark's telling, is not a guarantee that hard things will be waved away. It is the promise that God can bring life where human ability has completely run out, which is exactly where the disciples are standing when Jesus says it.
What scholars say
Brueggemann traces the claim of Mark 10:27 forward to Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane and to Paul's God of Abraham who gives life to the dead — while noting the sobering limit that Jesus himself was not rescued from suffering. Willobee's Bible-study story, in which a wealthy lawyer keeps searching for loopholes in the camel-and-needle saying, shows how instinctively we resist letting the impossibility land.
“In Mark 10:27 when Peter and the disciples see the problem of "the rich young ruler," Jesus assures them, "For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible" (Mark 10:27). In Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane Jesus affirms that "For you all things are possible" (Mark 14:36). In the end, however, the one thing not possible is that an obedient Jesus should be rescued from suffering; in that suffering and death, faith reaches the edge of God's impossibility. In lyrical fashion, Paul lines out the great evangelical possibilities that open the world to joy. He speaks concerning the faith of Abraham, and declares the God of Abraham to be the one "who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist" (Rom.”
“Preachers are affected by the same erosion of authority that has undercut all leaders since the sixties. I was teaching a Sunday morning Bible study on the passage in which Jesus says, “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 10:17–27). The class talked about what this Scripture meant for us as Christians in the United States. One participant, a lawyer who owned two homes and several cars, kept trying to find loopholes. Finally I said, “Though Jesus uses exaggerated language here, his teachings on riches add up to the same thing: wealth puts our souls in peril.” The lawyer looked straight at me and said, “Well, that’s just your opinion.”
What it means for you
This verse meets you at the point of honest defeat — the habit you can't break, the relationship you can't repair, the standing with God you can't earn. Its comfort is real, but it comes in a particular order: first the impossibility, then the promise. If we skip straight to "all things are possible" as a motivational slogan, we miss what Jesus is saying. He isn't promising that God will bless our plans; he's promising that God can do what we cannot.
So the invitation is to stop hunting for loopholes — ways to stay self-sufficient while nodding at grace — and to admit the need first. That admission is not despair. It's the doorway through which this verse becomes good news.
Mark 10 in context
Mark 10 follows Jesus on the road to Jerusalem, teaching on marriage, welcoming children, and meeting a rich man who asks how to inherit eternal life. When the man leaves grieving over his possessions, Jesus tells the disciples how hard it is for the wealthy to enter God's kingdom — the famous camel-and-needle saying. Their astonished question, "Then who can be saved?", prompts verse 27. Immediately after, Peter points out that the disciples have left everything, Jesus predicts his death a third time, James and John ask for places of honor, and blind Bartimaeus receives his sight.