Perishable Riches

by Bishop, A. C. | Category: The Lord's Parables | Jul 1991

The world's wealth and morality are in constant tension": these words come from a recent report entitled The root of all evil? and confirm that little has changed since the Lord Jesus Christ used parables to drive home the same message.

The parables of Luke chapters 12 and 16 form part of the Lord's ministry during His last journey to Jerusalem. In Luke 12 He was referring to the omnipotence of God and of man's dependence on Him when He was interrupted by a man preoccupied with his brother's injustice over his part of their inheritance. God's Son speaks of divine things, yet this man, blind to the significance of the occasion and able to think only of money, blurts out his problem and demands arbitration. His insensitivity brings no direct rebuke, but the telling parable of the rich farmer who saw nothing beyond material things.

Luke 12: The Dangers of wealth

Scripture does not regard wealth as intrinsically evil, but rather a blessing from God (Ps. 112:1-3; Eccl. 5:19); wealth not only bestows great power but also brings comparable dangers and obligations. The rich farmer of the parable was able to provide for himself a life of retired ease and comfort. The purpose of the story, and it must have driven deep into the man with the money problem, is to point out the folly of omitting God from the reckoning. The farmer trusted in riches and his own foresight and planning (note the repeated use of the personal pronoun in vv. 17-19) to the exclusion of the things of God. In Mark 10:17-27 the Lord further stresses the problems of riches, and the disciples were quick to grasp that these problems beset us all.

The farmer had fallen prey to materialism in the mistaken belief that present wealth is all-important, forgetting that true riches are laid up in heaven (see also 2 Cor. 4:16-18). Covetousness - the envious desire for riches - is ever the close ally of materialism. The Christian today is no less exposed to the dangers of wealth and the lure of riches. Israel long ago were warned of these same dangers (Deut. 8:11-20) and the Lord's words have not diminished in their relevance to ourselves and to our acquisitive, materialist age. John, writing to the Church in Laodicea, gives the Lord's assessment of them:

Because thou sayest, I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art the wretched one and miserable and poor and blind and naked: I counsel thee to buy of Me gold refined by fire, that thou mayest become rich (Rev. 3:17-18). The Laodicean Christians, like the rich farmer, were materially affluent yet were bankrupt toward God who assesses true wealth.

Are riches, then, incompatible with the disciple's life? The Lord said in the parable of the sower that the seed sown among thorns "is he that heareth the Word; and the care of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the Word, and he becometh unfruitful" (Mat. 13:22). It could hardly be more clearly stated. Although it may be possible to have and correctly to handle wealth, the dangers are such that, in general, riches tend to deaden rather than encourage faith in and dependence upon God because pride in human ability is so much involved. Riches are ever liable to cheat a man so that his life becomes unfruitful so far as God is concerned simply because "where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Luke 12:34).

Paul develops the theme in 1 Timothy 6:9-10, stating that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil: which some reaching after have been led away from the Faith, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows. The antithesis of the anxiety and sorrow that so often spring from materialism is the contentment that derives from a deep reliance on God.

The Lord, in Luke 12:22-34, follows the parable of the farmer with a word to His disciples about contentment and a reminder that God has an especial care for those who are His. In Luke 3:14 soldiers were told by John the Baptist to be content with their wages and the instruction in Hebrews 13:5 is: "be ye 'free from the love of money; content with such things as ye have: for Himself hath said, I will in no wise fail thee, neither will I in any wise forsake thee".

This principle, expounded in its fulness in the New Testament, is nevertheless of great antiquity. David said in Psalm 62:10 "if riches increase, set not your heart thereon" and Job, having learned to trust despite having lost all his possessions, his health, and most of his family, found that God was able to give him more than he had originally. Paul spoke from the depth of his personal experience when he told the Philippians,

I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know also how to abound: in everything and in all things have I learned the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in want (Phil. 4:11-12).

In these few words he expresses the outcome of a profound process of learning the ways of God that the Lord Himself expounded: to be independent of either poverty or wealth, to be in bondage to neither. Paul goes further, and explains how this can be: "I can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me" (Phil. 4:13); he trusted God to supply his needs, and this is the practical application of the Lord's word to the disciples in Luke 12. We may readily assent to this, but to how many of us is it a practical reality?

Luke 16: The Obligations of wealth

Here the Lord tells the disciples of the unjust steward - a plausible, unscrupulous rogue who, having miscalculated, and knowing that he would be called to task for his misdeeds, was nevertheless sufficiently shrewd to secure his advantage. The Lord does not commend him, but uses the story to jolt His hearers and to teach them that His followers are expected to manage their affairs with prudence. Wealth brings great responsibilities. The word mammon, used only in Matthew 6:24 and Luke 16:9, 11 and 13, is the transliteration of the Aramaic word for wealth or profit. In Matthew 6 the Lord regards mammon as that obsessive covetousness that consumes a man and can so easily estrange him from God, and it is in this context that He said "Ye cannot serve God and mammon" (v.24), thereby exposing the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who loved money and scoffed at His words (Luke 16:14).

He next relates the parable of the rich man and Lazarus to show that the present is the time to practise the longstanding biblical principle of caring for the disadvantaged. The rich man lived well, indifferent to the dire need of Lazarus. This principle of using wealth, not for personal satisfaction, but before God to the benefit of others, necessarily implies that some, at least' must be relatively affluent. The parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37) carries the Lord's approval of the caring attitude that should characterize His followers.

The key to the proper discharge of the obligations brought by wealth is the recognition that the disciple is not the absolute owner of the wealth that God has given and hence is not free to use it selfishly, but is instead a steward who is accountable to his Lord for the faithful and wise use of that which has been entrusted to him (see 1 Cor. 4:2). Once again, it is Paul who further expounds the principle in 1 Timothy 6:17-19. The rich are told to do good, and to be ready to distribute and communicate. He commends in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 the way in which this principle was expressed in the early churches of God in Macedonia by saints who gave themselves and their substance in the service of God. In so doing these disciples were emulating in a practical way the ultimate sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ who "though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might become rich" (2 Cor. 8:9), thereby laying up for themselves the true riches - treasure in heaven - of which the Lord spoke (see 2 Cor. 9:6-15).

The acquisition of wealth and the wealth-creation process also raise moral questions, for wealth can be gained by honest endeavour or by less honourable means. The Christian is told to work heartily and to live honestly (Col. 3:23-24; 1 Thes. 4:11-12; Heb. 13:18), leaving the matter of reward to God. Tainted money, obtained other than by honest means, has no part in the service of a holy and righteous God. Judas Iscariot is a stark example of a disciple whose life was blighted by the love of money. He was, presumably, with the other disciples and heard the Lord's teaching concerning money and material wealth yet' by this time, he had so come to love it that he is described as a thief (John 12:46). Eventually his whole being was taken over and he stooped to betray the Lord for the paltry sum of thirty pieces of silver. But Judas, seeing the outcome of his greed and treachery, was unable to keep the money and, having been smitten with remorse, only to be so contemptuously spurned by his paymasters, flings it away in the temple and takes his life. The erstwhile disciple had become the son of perdition (John 17:12). What could be in more marked contrast to the Lord's words, "lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth consume, and where thieves do not break through and steal: for where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also" (Mat. 6:20-21)? These eternal treasures are wealth indeed.

Bishop, A. C. | Jul 1991
The Lord's Parables