The Holiness of Money

Bread is made for laughter,

and wine gladdens life,

and money answers everything.

Ecclesiastes 10:19

If there is a shooting somewhere, we often hear moralizing by the media and victims’ families on the danger of firearms and the need to ban them.

But if you were Richard Phillips, captain of the Maersk Alabama and hostage of Somali Pirates, you probably are quite happy the SEAL Team 6 sniper took a shot to the head of your captor just before he could end you.

So it is with money.

Money, like firearms, is a tool which can be used for tremendous good, or ultimate evil.

This is why the bible has so much to say about money, and most of it is somewhere around neutral.

Without dividing hairs, it’s easy to argue that money is one of the most effective tools on earth.

It gets work done (quickly), moves souls across the world, and can mean the difference between life or death, great comfort or discomfort - or perhaps danger.

The bible never argues these facts. In the bible God himself “needs” at times money to build one tabernacle and two temples, pay taxes for Jesus himself, and to get Jesus safely to Egypt and away from Herod.

Thus the author of Ecclesiastes reminds it’s readers and hearers (whether read aloud or read on paper) that

Bread is made for laughter,

and wine gladdens life,

and money answers everything.

Money is even compared by the bible author with the utility of bread (the staple item in the eastern diet at the time) and wine for making one happy.

Thus if money is so important to daily function in the world, and saints are commended at times to have it, use it, and store it - then money, as in any other thing the people of God use for living and moving and having our being in God, must be holy at least if used rightly.

So we read:

Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

Eph 4:28

So here we find the thief (taking others' goods and money) to be rebuked and told to work hard and earn his own money for himself and others’ sake.

[The utility here being not depending on the charity of others and being able to provide charity to others]

And in the Letter from James we read:

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?

James 2:14-16

Thus faithfulness is even to store up and have something extra in order to be able to share.

As a loaded firearm, C4, or two people greatly attracted to each other, money has a right use and a wrong use.

In fact, it’s the hyper-efficacy of money as a tool that makes it dangerous:

They shall eat, but not be satisfied;

they shall play the whore, but not multiply,

because they have forsaken the LORD

to cherish

whoredom, wine, and new wine,

which take away the understanding.

Hosea 4:10-11

In this passage from Hosea we see the prosperous Northern Kingdom of Israel falling away from the Lord because of the accutriments of money and their effects. Not reading too closely into the literal idea of drunkenness, we see the people of Israel filled with propserity, leisure, and partying which has given them a stupor.

The stupor of prosperity can give a drunken sense which “take[s] away the understanding.”

It is the ability to understand what God says in a genuine and deep way which saves, not just reading the bible and attending assembly.

Jesus neatly packages the problem with money into two solutions:

1. Although you need money to live (in most seasons of human history save the period of the end times requiring the beast’s mark), you sign away all you have to him upon conversion. (He’s your ‘living trust’).

2. The danger of money comes from the corruption of the heart which the new covenant addresses by killing “the flesh” (the corrupt version of ‘you’), and giving the life of God in the Christian.

So to point 1, Jesus says:

So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

Luke 14:33

and to the corruption problem (point 2) Paul outlines the death of the self,

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Col 3:1-4

and,

For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body [aka sinful deeds], you will live.

Romans 8:13

Because money is so dangerous (greed, misuse, etc), in some sense only the Christian is truly safe with money.

The genuine Christian who has been crucified with Christ, their corrupt nature dead and being transformed into the image of Christ daily is the only one able to daily use money in the purest way.

All people are required of course in all ordinary seasons to use money, so I’m not saying nonchristian people should have their hard earned cash confiscated and given to Christians, but I’m saying that everyone who is without Christ will suffer in some manner with the dangers of money, while the Christian at least has the tools to safely handle this world’s ultimate tool without being corrupted.

You may be thinking then “but what about the daily financial scandals plaging ‘the church’ in the news?”

I have no debate with you there, I just think that a genuine Christian is the rarest substance on earth, and most churches are not filled with Christians, but merely religious folk adding a few principles or rituals into their unchanged lives.

The big danger is that one may be so infaturated with money that one will leave the eternal for temporal gain.

The love of money is such a terrible danger that even atheists can be disgusted by it. You can probably find all kinds of waiters and waitressess on Sunday afternoon with story after story of stingy ‘Christians’ who came with a party of 10 and didn’t tip.

The beauty of money is that it solves problems, it lifts people litterally out of the gutter, but if misused or if it takes your heart away there is no remedy, you will lose your soul in more ways that just heaven or hell.

Therefore consider yours to be His, live as Christ living in you, and you can use what you have well.