To be honest, as strong as God’s Word is with these promises, my wife and I have struggled with this. When God began uncovering this blind spot in our lives, we had a hard time really saying, “God, we will sell, give away, and change anything and everything you want.” We liked our house, not just because it was where we lived, but because it represented stability and security, and it was a sanctuary of sorts for our family. We liked our lifestyle. It was convenient and comfortable for us and for our kids. As we began putting each of our possessions and all our finances on the table, we began to discover the hold many of them had on our lives.
We saw the gruesome reality of 1 Timothy 6 playing out in our hearts: “People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction.”25 Paul is talking here about simply the desire to be rich. So how much more does it apply to those who actually are rich? Our possessions can be deadly. They can be subtly deadly.
That’s why Jesus said it’s hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Ultimately, Jesus was communicating to this man that there was nothing he could do to enter the kingdom of God apart from total trust in God. It is impossible for us to earn our way into heaven. In the process, though, Jesus was exposing the barrier that this man’s wealth was to seeing his need for God. His wealth on earth would ultimately keep him from eternal treasure.
The reality is, most of us in our culture and in the American church simply don’t believe Jesus or Paul on this one. We just don’t believe that our wealth can be a barrier to entering the kingdom of God. We are fine with thinking of affluence, comfort, and material possessions as blessings. But they cannot be barriers. We think the way the world thinks—that wealth is always to our advantage. But Jesus is saying the exact opposite. He is saying that wealth can be a dangerous obstacle.
That’s why Paul says in 1 Timothy 6:6, “Godliness with contentment is great gain.” In the context of this passage, contentment is described as having food and clothing, having the necessities of life provided for. Put this together with verse 9 (which we saw earlier), and those who desire to be rich and acquire more than the necessities of life are in danger of being plunged into ruin and destruction.
This passage begs the question, am I willing to live a life that is content with food and clothing, having the basic necessities of my life provided for? Or do I want more? Do I want a bigger house or a nicer car or better clothes? Do I want to indulge in more and more luxuries in my life? After all, what’s wrong with luxuries?
This is a key question, and if we are not careful in how we answer it, we will miss the point of what God desires to teach us about our possessions. We don’t need to sell or give away nice clothes, nice cars, nice houses, or surplus possessions because they are inherently bad. As we have seen, wealth and possessions are not inherently evil; they are good in and of themselves. So we don’t sell them or give them away because they are sinful.
Then why do we sell them or give them away? We sell them and give them away because Christ in us compels us to care for the needy around us.
John Wesley (1703–91) provides us with an example of how to see our possessions in light of needs around us. Listen to this story about a purchase Wesley once made for his apartment:
[Wesley] had just finished buying some pictures for his room when one of the chambermaids came to his door. It was a Winter day and he noticed that she had only a thin linen gown to wear for protection against the cold. He reached into his pocket to give her some money for a coat, and found he had little left. It struck him that the Lord was not pleased with how he had spent his money. He asked himself: “Will Thy Master say, ‘Well done, good and faithful steward?’ Thou hast adorned thy walls with the money that might have screened this poor creature from the cold! O justice! O mercy! Are not these pictures the blood of this poor maid?”26
Were the pictures that Wesley had hanging in his room wrong in and of themselves? Absolutely not. But it was wrong—very wrong—to buy unnecessary decoration for himself when a woman was freezing outside without a coat.
Now, we need to be careful not to misconstrue this illustration. The point is not that every picture on the wall in your house or my house is evil. (For the record, there are pictures on the wall in my house!) The point is also not that we need to feel guilty whenever we purchase anything that is not an absolute necessity. The reality is that most everything in our lives in the American culture would be classified as a luxury, not a necessity. The computer I am writing this book on, the spoon and fork I will eat my dinner with later this evening, and the bed and pillow I will sleep on tonight (in addition to many other things in my life) are all luxuries. The point we can learn from this event in Wesley’s life is that our perspective on our possessions radically changes when we open our eyes to the needs of the world around us. When we have the courage to look in the faces of brothers and sisters whose bodies are malnourished and whose brains are deformed because they have no food, Christ will change our desires, and we will long to sacrifice our resources for the glory of his name among them.
So what would happen if we uncovered this blind spot in our lives and began paying attention to those who are in need? What if we took a serious look at them and actually began to adjust our lifestyles for the sake of the gospel among them? What would that look like? Think about the possibilities.
As I mentioned, little of what we have would be considered necessities, and as long as we are living in our culture, we will be surrounded by luxuries. So why not simply begin a process of limiting and eliminating some of them? Why not begin selling and giving away luxuries for the sake of the poor outside our gates? Why not begin operating under the idea that God has given us excess, not so we could have more, but so we could give more?
Now we’re getting radical.
Or maybe we’re getting biblical.27
Let’s dare to take things a step further. What if we actually set a cap on our lifestyles? What if we got to the point where we could draw a line, saying, “This is enough, and I am giving away everything I have or earn above this line”?
This is what Wesley did. He identified a modest level of expenses that he was going to live on every year. The first year his income surpassed that level by a small amount, and he gave that excess away. The next year his income increased, but he kept his standard of living the same, so he had more to give away. This continued year after year. At one point Wesley was making the equivalent of about $160,000 a year in today’s terms, but he was living as if he were making $20,000 a year. As a result, he had the equivalent of more than $140,000 to give away that year.
Consider what could happen. What if you and I decided that having a $50,000 salary doesn’t necessitate living a $50,000 lifestyle? What if you and I had simple caps on our lifestyles and were free to give the rest of our resources away for the glory of Christ in the neediest parts of the world?
Scripture clearly teaches that God intends our plenty to supply others’ needs.28 In John Calvin’s commentary on 2 Corinthians 8–9, he noted that God “has enjoined upon us frugality and temperance, and has forbidden, that any one should go to excess, taking advantage of his abundance. Let those, then, that have riches… consider that their abundance was not intended to be laid out in intemperance or excess, but in relieving the necessities of the brethren.”29 As the practical outworking of this truth, Calvin once said that half of the church’s funds should be allotted specifically for the poor (a far cry from most church budgets today).30 While he did not expect everyone to enjoy the same resources, Calvin concluded that “no one is to be allowed to starve.”31