Matthew 19: 23 And Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly, I
say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of
heaven. 24Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a
needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” 25When the
disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be
saved?” 26But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but
with God all things are possible.”
And
James 5: 1 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the
miseries that are coming upon you. 2 Your riches have rotted and your garments
are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will
be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up
treasure in the last days. 4 Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your
fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries
of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. 5 You have lived
on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in
a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He
does not resist you.
I think, when many Americans read these verses, they assume
that the “rich person” being referred to must be someone like Bill Gates. Maybe they think that it would be someone who
could afford to buy a small country or pay cash for an airplane. Or maybe, they would at least say, that these
warnings are only for the 1%; the rest of the 99% of American people need not
worry about this warning. When we lived
in America, and resided in the mid to lower end of the American salary
spectrum, I was definitely guilty of this type of thinking. I never worried myself too much about these
warnings. It was easy to look around, see many people who were wealthier than us and therefore consider our family to be on the poorer side of things. When we moved to Uganda, our salary and
standard of living changed very little, but our perspective changed a lot. We suddenly were thrust into the 1% percent
of our surrounding neighbors. Suddenly,
we came face-to-face with the reality that we are rich… We are the rich people of Matthew 19 and
James 5 that will have difficulty obtaining heaven apart from God’s particular
grace to meet us in our weakness.
This has led me to question…
What exactly is it about being rich that makes it hard to
enter heaven? By looking into my own
prone-to-wandering-heart and into scripture, I can see a few things…
A rich person can end
up trusting in his riches. Riches
give us a better education, better food, better health, and better access to
theological literature. Riches give the
appearance of strength and power physically, spiritually and intellectually. In reality, Christ is the only source of
strength and power. To rest in our own
strength and power is to deny the sufficiency of Christ.
A rich person can become
a proud person…boasting in himself.
It is easy to look around and be well-pleased with the fruitful work of
one’s strong hands. But Christ wants us
to boast in our weakness, because we are recognizing that his grace is
sufficient. (2 Corinthians 12:9) Rich people don’t have as many easily apparent
weaknesses to boast in, so it becomes difficult to see that his grace is
sufficient.
A rich person can
often fail to cultivate a deep trusting relationship with his provider God
because he sees very little that his own hand cannot provide. When I listen to the depth of prayer and the
urgency with which my brothers and sisters in Uganda pray for daily bread, school
fees, traveling mercies, and health concerns, I realize that I am missing a
unique depth of relationship that they have.
They trust God because there is nothing else to trust in. Related
to this, rich people tend to store up treasures and things in their garages,
attics, cupboards, storage rooms and closets. All these items are sitting there “just in
case a need arises.” All these items,
that could be put to good use by someone else or sold and the money given to
the poor, are just sitting there for years, degenerating. I fully believe these items will be evidence
against us on the Day of Judgment. (James 5:3)
Oh to have greater faith that would trust God to provide when our needs
arise, rather than storing up our own treasures so we can provide for
ourselves.
Rich people can
easily think of themselves as “blessed” because they have a house, they have a
car, they have a full refrigerator, and they have their needs met. These are all good things to be thankful for,
but they are not how scripture tells us we are “blessed.” Matthew 5 defines a blessed person as meek,
pure and merciful. He or she is a
peace-makers who mourns, is poor in spirit, and who is persecuted because of his
righteousness. Rich people can be
easily distracted by their so-called “blessings,” and fail to strive for God’s
blessings, but the poor Christian brother and sister is more likely to see and
experience God’s blessings as He defines them because they have very few things
to be distracted by.
A rich person can
easily live in a bubble and forget about the poor. It is easy to get caught up in the daily life
of the wealthy: private Christian school life, church building committee life,
soccer-mom life, work-life, country club life, home school mom-life, etc. All the while, millions are suffering and
trying to find their basic necessities.
Failure to pull one’s head out of the daily life of the rich and do
things for the “least of these” puts one in danger of hearing the Lord say,
“Depart from me, I never knew you.” (Matthew 25: 31-46)
A rich person can
easily fatten his heart. Let’s face
it, obesity rates in America are crazy high.
Is it just our bodies that are fat, or could our hearts be also? Just like it is difficult for rich people to
stay physically fit, it can be difficult for a rich person to keep his heart
fit, in-shape and ready for service like a good soldier. Being physically fit takes self-denial: not
eating the rich, pleasurable foods or spending one’s daily calorie allotment on
empty calories. A physically –fit person
may enjoy a slice of something chocolaty every once in a while, but it isn't
where his fork usually resides. Heart
fitness takes self-denial too: not participating in the rich, pleasurable life
style that the world has to offer. A
spiritually fit person doesn't spend all his time or money that he has been
given on spiritually-empty, self-pleasuring, self-entertaining activities. He might enjoy some entertainment every once
in a while to the glory of God, but it isn't where his heart resides. But rich people have so much excess time and
money (or access to it via credit cards) to participate in all sorts of
potentially unhelpful entertainment: gaming systems, cruises, large screen TVs,
fine dining, fine wines and IPA beers, novels, movie theaters, etc. A rich person has to exercise great
self-control to not over participate in these things and end up fattening his
heart. Just like maintaining control over
one’s body is hard, maintaining control over one’s heart is hard too! And just like science has made clear that
obesity leads to death, James has made clear that when we fatten our hearts, we
do so for the day of slaughter.
Is it therefore wrong
and sinful to be rich? Or should we feel guilty for being rich? No.
It is not wrong to be rich nor should we
feel guilty that we have money while others struggle for money. We do not need to feel guilty or sinful every
time we shop for groceries that we have been given the means to provide for our
families while others haven’t. Nor
should we feel guilty about earning more money. But we
must be very aware that being rich puts us in a position where we can be (and
probably are!) easily deceived by Satan in many areas simply because our
culture does not see these things as sin.
Being wealthy is a potentially dangerous place for our souls to be. The Bible shows that there are many ways a
rich person can be guilty of not glorifying God with their wealth and therefore
be found guilty of sin and in need of repentance. This is the reason that I Timothy 6:9 warns
that the desire of riches (and that can include the desire for a certain
standard of living) can cause people to “fall into temptation, into a snare,
into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and
destruction.” We must pray earnestly that
God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, will sensitize us to these sins in a
world that is so desensitized to them. If
we have failed in these areas, a contrite and repentant heart that looks to the
cross of Christ will glorify God and his grace to us and save even the
rich! With God, even the salvation of a
rich person is possible!
And as we seek to grow in sanctification in
the area of wealth, a good passage to meditate on is I Timothy 6: 17-19 in-which
God tells us what we SHOULD do with
our wealth. It says, “17 As for the rich
in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on
the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything
to enjoy. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and
ready to share, 19 thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation
for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.” Being rich in good works, generous, ready to
share our wealth and storing up treasure in heaven by giving our earthly
treasure away is a means of grace to us.
God gives us this particular grace for our particular soul-threatening status
of being rich. If we have been given wealth, it is in our spiritual best
interest to lower our standard of living so that we have more to give. We must put off the old man by fleeing the particular
sins that can accompany wealth and we must put on the new man by being rich in
good works, generous and ready to share!
And we can take comfort that while we work on our hearts in this area, God is
also working in us to bring our hearts into submission to his will. That is the comfort of Matthew 19:26: “With
man this [a rich person being saved] is impossible, but with God all things are
possible.” When I see the hardness of my
heart, God says “I can change it. All
things are possible for me.” Through the
power of the triune God, may we all be known to the world as a people that seek
God with our wealth!
