Jesus and Money

I agree with you though, we need the whole of Scripture to get a big view of God.  With this in mind, didn’t Jesus Himself say something along the lines of, “You have read where it says this, but I say to you…”?  Not to be blasphemous here because I know it may come across that way, but isn’t that essentially playing a trump card?  Doesn’t that necessitate us taking the words of Jesus a little more seriously than perhaps other Scripture?  Scripture is complex, I get it.  However, are we reading Paul and the rest of the Bible through the lens of how it is lived out in the light of Jesus and His Words, aka the gospel?  Or are we instead reading the gospel through the lens of the Pauline letters and the Old Testament?

Here are a few examples to get us thinking along those lines.  Jesus said, “Whatever you did to one of the least of these, you did unto me.”  This is said in light of how He is going to separate the sheep and the goats.  Now, do we emphasize works at the risk of misguiding people in a works-earned salvation?  Or are we more likely to err on the side of how grace covers all our sin and it will be okay as long as you  believe in Jesus?  There are Scriptures on both sides of the issue of course, and often they’re coupled together ironically.  John 3:16-21 starts out by saying whoever believes in the Son has eternal life but finishes in verse 21 by saying that “so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.”

Another one or two examples; I’m glad you asked.  How many times do we quote to each other Ephesians 2:8-9 to assure one another that we’re saved by Christ?  What percentage of those same times do we neglect to mention the very next verse that states we are “created in Christ Jesus to do good works”?  Or what about all those pesky verses that say things like if we believe in God we will obey His commands?  1 John 3:24 states that, “The one who keeps God’s commands lives in Him, and He in them.”  I dare say His commands even in the New Testament didn’t solely talk about belief and accepting Christ into your heart, did they?  Random thought, is the sinner’s prayer even in Scripture at all?

Let’s get back to Jesus and Mammon, or money as it is often referred to today.  Money isn’t evil in itself, as with just about everything else in life, it is simply a tool.  You can do wonderful things with it, but you can also commit atrocities with it.  The love of money, not money itself, is the root of all kinds of evil, not all evil.  We need to remember that when we’re criticizing one another.  At the same time, don’t just go idly by in your life when it comes to how we view our money and how it affects our lives on so many levels.

The fact of the matter remains though, we simply cannot have two masters.  You can’t serve both God and Money.  What does that look like practically speaking?  It means that Jesus Himself will call some of us to literally give it all up in order to get our hearts straight.  It means that Jesus Himself will sometimes bless us with incredible wealth because He has prepared us for that incredible responsibility to use wealth to expand the kingdom.

In short, it means that Jesus will do whatever it takes to bring glory to Himself and expand His kingdom.  It means having to break us from our pathetic grasps at our wealth in some cases or blessing us beyond our wildest dreams so we can turn that blessing onto others in other cases.  You see, the older I get, the more I think that Christ simply does in fact meet us where we are and simply does in fact refuse to leave us there.  For some people that means Christ will rescue them from an empty life hooked on drugs and never having money to bringing them to a stable job that then produces a good income and an ability to pay for the needs of one’s family.  For some people that means Christ will wreck their comfortable Christian lives that they’ve always known when they finally decide to submit to His will even when it causes discomfort.