Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Jesus doesn't condemn us for being born with a natural love for money; it's as endemic to human nature as the desire to live. He knew the temptation just as much as we do, even more. The devil offered Him more than any lottery could, bidding higher for His talents than for ours, because He had so much more to be bargained for.
We read that Satan took Him "up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto Him. 'All these things will I will give Thee if Thou wilt fall down and worship me'" (Matt. 4:8, 9). In other words, join the human crowd in greed. In wresting with that real temptation, the Son of God learned by firsthand experience how subtle and deep is this human yearning for money, power, and things. He was "in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. 4:15).
Jesus' solution to our selfishness is not to create a handful of Mother Teresas to shame everybody else, but to share with all of us the good news that we can enjoy a dynamic, practical victory over the love of money. How? The answer is simple, yet permanently effective. And it brings to an end our nightmares about future judgment.
The secret is a fundamental truth that underlies all human existence. No human being anywhere can claim rightful title to even one dollar as being his or hers. This principle is taught in a well-known verse: "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believeth in Him should not perish" (John 3:16). Obviously, this means that "the world" was doomed to "perish" unless God gave that Gift. It's a blunt, straightforward recognition that "the world" (everyone, not just believers) owes everything to that divine Gift. No one can believe the gospel without recognizing immediately that he now relates to money and things in a new way.
Another text states the same principle even more clearly: "The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if One died for all, then were all dead: and He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again" (2 Cor. 5:14, 15). The original language implies that a new compulsion now grips the heart, stronger than the old compulsion of selfishness.
This powerful truth lays an ax at the root of our love affair with money. If we believe that Christ "died for all," that is the same as saying that we died along with him and that if He had not died for all, we would all be dead and would therefore have nothing.
--Robert J. Wieland
From Signs of the Times, "What to Do With Money," December 1986.
Copyright © 2013 by "Dial Daily Bread."
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