Matthew 19:26

The context

The rich young man has just walked away sorrowful rather than sell what he had, and Jesus has remarked on how hard it is for the wealthy to enter the kingdom. The disciples are astonished and ask who then can be saved. The saying answers that question, and the next chapter begins the journey to Jerusalem.

What it establishes

The verse concedes that salvation is humanly impossible and locates the possibility in God alone. It is a statement about the source of salvation rather than the difficulty of it, and it answers a question about who can be saved, not about what God might do in general.

What it does not establish

It is not a promise that anything can be had by asking. The “all things” is bounded by the question being answered, which concerns salvation, and reading it as a blank cheque ignores the sentence's place. Nor does it say effort is irrelevant.

Short note, first pass, October 2026. Corrections welcome.

Cited in these answers

• Can God make a rock so heavy that even HE can't lift it?
• Since God knows everything, He would have known how much suffering would eventually come into this world. Why didn’t He stop the process before it all got started, and save His creatures from all of the pain that would befall them?

Part of Scripture, Opened — the exegetical layer behind every citation on this site. Scripture quotations are from the ESV.