The Spiritual Side Of Money

Read: Luke 16:10-15

If you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?

Luke 16:11

IN WORD There is an unexpected subject of which the Bible speaks in more than 2,300 verses. It is referred to more often than heaven, hell, salvation, or many of the other key doctrines of our faith. To have been given such attention in the Word, it must be of great interest to God. But the topic is often considered unspiritual. The topic is money.

Mammon. That unrighteous stuff that implies that we must account for every ounce of productivity, every moment of work, and every act of service because we do not trust each other. Think about that: We only have money because we need to keep track of the things we’ve done and the products we’ve traded. We can’t rely on others to be fair, so we’ve established a system of fairness. We’ve placed value on various currencies and used them to keep track of what is due to us. We compete with others for the limited resources at hand. We have money because we fell.

Heaven won’t be like that. If we were to speak of heaven in human terms, we could trust everyone to freely provide their products and services because we would freely offer our products or services. The store would give us its goods because its workers would trust us to give ours. There need be no accounting in heaven, because all things are abundantly available and everyone is completely reliable.

The fatal flaw of communism was that it sought a heavenly economy in an ungodly society, and that just won’t work. But we’re under no such illusion. Money is inherently corrupt because of the context in which we live. Our use of it, however, is intensely spiritual.

IN DEED Have you considered the emphasis your Father places on your use of money? Or have you wrongly seen it as peripheral to the spiritual life rather than a central means of grace? Use it often, but use it well. It is a deeper spiritual issue than you might have thought.

One fifth of all Jesus had to say was about money.

—BILLY GRAHAM