Nothing provides as clear and painful an X-ray of our hearts quite like money.
The 2008 stock market crash and resulting recession demonstrated this notion shockingly: According to researchers in the UK, more than 10,000 people committed suicide after losing significant wealth in the wake of that global economic disaster.
One investor jumped from a skyscraper, leaving behind a suicide note for his family.
Another took his own life with a firearm, saying he could no longer “keep up with the Joneses,” saying in a tape-recorded message to his wife and five children, “I had no choice because I can no longer provide for our family up to what’s become our standard.”
As one cheesy ’80s pop hit reminds us, money changes everything.
Indeed.
Doubtless this is why Scripture says so much about wealth and the believer’s relationship to it. Scripture’s sentiments on money mainly arise as stern warnings. Money is a temptress, an alluring maiden that we need in order to live in this world, but she is one fraught with idolatrous flirtation and toxic danger on every side.
… Scripture’s Assessment of Lucre
Solomon’s writings in Ecclesiastes and Proverbs bristle with warnings that highlight the fallen human heart’s tendency to deify money. Both books together provide a theology of money and possessions that would do every Christian well to study and hide in their hearts.
One well-known Proverbs passage paints an unforgettable picture about the temporal nature of earthly prosperity, one that unmasks the prosperity gospel’s devilish deception: “Do not toil to acquire wealth; be discerning enough to desist. When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven” (Prov. 23:4–5). A few years ago, Kevin DeYoung preached a thematic sermon on money in Proverbs, the main points of which are helpfully summarized in this article: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/money-and-possessions-in-proverbs/.
Paul placed among the qualifications of pastors, “he must not be a lover of money” (1 Tim. 3:3), and deacons may not be “greedy for dishonest gain” (1 Tim. 3:8). As Paul Tripp so aptly puts it in his book, Sex and Money: Pleasures That Leave You Empty and Grace That Satisfies (Crossway, 2013), money is not the problem — love is. Loving money — not merely possessing money — is potentially ruinous to the soul:
… “But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and armful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pangs” (1 Tim. 6:9-10).
Paul goes on to warn that people will be lovers of money (2 Tim. 3:2) in these last days.
Jesus, in His famous Sermon on the Mount, cautioned listeners to avoid a bifurcated heart with its bipolar worship: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” No degree in advanced Greek grammar is needed to interpret rightly His unambiguous wisdom.
In the parable of the sower, Jesus explained that gospel seed — the Word of God proclaimed — would germinate in some hearts alongside thorns of worldliness, only to end up choked out by a particularly deadly thorn He summarized as “the deceitfulness of riches” (Matt. 13:1–9, 22).
In Matthew 19, Jesus encountered a wealthy young man who seemed to be a seeker of eternal life — an evangelism target ripe for the picking. I suspect if any of us had been asked, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” we would’ve immediately laid on him the “sinner’s prayer,” walked him quickly down the Romans Road, or wrestled mentally to recall that Evangelism Explosion outline we learned at church. We’d want to get him in the kingdom posthaste.
What did Jesus do? He unmasked the young man’s true god: “… go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Matt. 19:21). The ostensible seeker’s god emerged at that moment: “When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.” That he had wealth wasn’t the problem; no, but the wealth had him.
Jesus used the moment to teach His disciples about the siren song of mammon: “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again 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” (Matt. 19:23–24). That encounter and Jesus’s ensuing lesson is a mini seminar on the ever-looming peril of money, possessions, and affluence.
… Money Can Function Like a God-Replacement
Why does money present such a stumbling block for fallen man? Because money — possessing truckloads of it — imitates deity. It can buy us a seat at the table of political power. It can fill our garages with luxury cars; it can buy us a fancy house at the beach as alternate digs to our fancy everyday residence; it can make others think we are infinitely wise because we were clever enough to accumulate such mighty means; it can buy us the best health care; it can buy us the best technology; and it can put academic letters to the right of our names.
And, really, with this little catalog, I’m just getting warmed up. I didn’t even mention that it could make some of my own material fantasies come true such as membership at the Augusta National Golf Club or ownership of a professional baseball team — but I digress.
Tim Keller nailed it in his book on idolatry: “Money can take on divine attributes, and our relationship to it far too often can approximate worship and obedience.”
Wars begin over money and land. Wars over money undermine marriages and tear families asunder. A desire for wealth leads to drug trafficking and has given us the dubious category of “sex workers,” both of which bring radical rot to a society.
Wealth can become a taskmaster and, as did the rich young man, we obey it, marching along in pursuit as if it were the Pied Piper, and we the unwitting mice — until it marches us blindly off the cliff of greed, materialism, and idolatry.
But in two parables that come after Jesus’s parable of the sower, our Lord draws us a map that points money-loving sinners to the only place where true and eternal treasure can be discovered.
… Jesus and Kingdom Economics
Jesus confronted the rich young man with a choice: Follow Me or follow money. He chose money and emerged with eternal poverty. In Matthew 13, Jesus strung together two parables — the treasure in a field and the pearl of great price — that made a single point: If we are to be His people, Christ must be our greatest treasure, our jewel of infinite worth — and we must be willing to give up everything to follow Him.
One man stumbles on a field beneath which is hidden a vast treasure. He sells everything and buys it. Another man searches for the world’s most dazzling pearl. Upon finding it, he liquidates all his assets and buys it. So it should be with us with Christ if we would have an inheritance that Peter described as “imperishable, undefiled, kept in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:4). In other words, the man or woman who values Christ above all else is truly wealthy. The world sees Christ as worthless and temporal wealth as infinitely desirable.
Christ and His gospel proclaim the opposite.
G.K. Chesterton puts this truth beautifully, “The Christian gospel preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valuable.”
As with so much of Scripture’s teaching, there’s an irony in following Christ: On one hand, salvation is the free gift of God. On the other hand, following Christ may cost us everything, which is a sub-point in Jesus’s two parables. There’s no crown without a cross. Jesus asked it this way: “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and yet loses his soul?” (Matt. 16:26).
Missionary Jim Elliott was killed in Ecuador in 1956 by the tribe he sought to evangelize. But he understood Christ’s kingdom economics well, famously concluding: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
That’s what Jesus meant by our willingness to sell all and buy Him. I daresay the witness of the rich young man and the financiers who ended their lives in 2008 tragically echo from the shores of eternity the truthfulness of Christ’s words.