Our Lord's Teachings About Money

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Oct 25, 1906

Our Lord's Teachings About Money

One huge barrier always more or less obstructs the mission work of the church—the want of money. The fear of debt often prevents forward movement, and the fact of debt compels retrenchment. Even when men offer to go, Boards are often unable to send and support them. We believe that all this ought not to be so. Our Lord's teachings as to money gifts, if obeyed, would forever banish both these limitations on church work and all concern about supplies. These teachings are radical and revolutionary. So far are they from practical acceptance that, although perfectly explicit, they seem more like a dead language that has passed out of use than a living tongue that millions know and speak. Yet, when these principles and precepts of our Lord on giving are collated and compared, they are found to contain the materials of a complete ethical system on the subject of money, its true nature, value, relation, and use. Should these sublime and unique teachings be translated into living, the effect not only upon benevolent work, but upon our whole spiritual character, would be incalculable.

Brevity compels us to be content with a simple outline of this body of teaching, scattered through the four Gospel narratives, but gathered up and methodically presented by Paul in that exhaustive discussion of Christian giving in 2 Cor. 7: 9.

1. The basis of Christ's teaching about money is the fundamental conception of stewardship (Luke 12: 42; 16: 1-8). Not only money, but every gift of God is received in trust for its use. Man is not an owner, but a trustee, managing another's goods and estates, God being the one original and inalienable owner of all. The two things required of stewards are that they be “faithful and wise,” that they study to employ God's gifts with fidelity and sagacity—fidelity, so that God's entrustments be not perverted to self-indulgence; sagacity, so that they be converted into as large gains as possible.

There is a perfectly plain and simple basal principle, yet it is not the accepted foundation of our money making and using. The vast majority, even of disciples, practically leave God out of their thoughts when they engage in finance. Men consider themselves owners; they “make money” by their industry, economy, shrewdness, application; it is theirs to do as they will with it. There is little

or no sense of stewardship or of its implied obligation. If they give, it is an act not of duty, but of generosity; it ranks not under law, but under grace. Hence there is not felt inconsistency in hoarding or spending vast sums for worldly ends and appropriating an insignificant fraction to benevolent purposes. The great day of account will bring an awful reckoning, not only to wasters, but to hoarders; for even the unfaithful servants brought back to their Lord the talent and the pound, at last, but without profit, and the condemnation was for not having used so as to increase the entrusted goods.

The Principle of Investment

2. In our Lord's teachings we find this kindred principle of investment: “Thou oughtest to have put my money to the exchangers.” Matt. 25: 27. Money changing and investing is an old business. The “exchangers,” as Luke renders, are the bankers, the ancient Trapezitæ, who received money on deposit and paid interest for its use, like modern saving institutions. The argument of our Lord refutes the unfaithful servant on his own plea, which his course showed to be not an excuse, but a pretext. If it was true that he dared not risk trading on his own account, why not, without such risk, get a moderate interest for his Master by lending to professional traders? It was not fear, but sloth, that lay behind his unfaithfulness and unprofitableness.

Thus indirectly is taught the valuable lesson that timid souls, unfitted for bold and independent service in behalf of the kingdom, may link their incapacity to the capacity and sagacity of others who will make their gifts and possessions of use to the Master and his church.

3. Another most important principle is the subordination of money, as emphatically taught and illustrated in the rich young ruler. Matt. 19: 16-26. This narrative, rightly regarded, presents no enigma. With all his attractive traits, this man was a slave. Money was not servant, but his master; and, because God alone is to be supreme, our Lord had no alternative. He must demolish this man's idol, and when he dealt a blow at his money, the idolatry became apparent, and the slave of greed went away sorrowful, clinging to his idol. It was not the man's having great possessions that was wrong, but that his possessions had the man; they possessed him and controlled him. He was so far the slave of money that he could not and would not accept freedom by the breaking of its fetters. His “trust” was in riches—how could it be in God? Behind all disguises of respectability and refinement, God sees many a man to be an abject slave, a victim held in bonds by love of money; but covetousness is idolatry, and no idolater can enter the kingdom of God. How few rich men keep the mastery and hold money as their servant, in absolute subordination to their own manhood and the masterhood of the Lord!

4. We ascend a step higher, and consider our Lord's teaching as to the law of recompense. “Give, and it shall be given unto you.” Luke 6: 38. We are taught that getting is in order to giving, and consequently that giving is the real road of getting. God is an economist. He entrusts large gifts to those who use the smaller well. Perhaps one reason of our poverty is that we are so far slaves of parsimony. The future may reveal that God has been withholding from us because we have been withholding from him.

5. Kindred with this law of recompense is the law of superior blessedness. “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Acts 20: 35. Paul quotes this as a saying of our Lord, but it is not to be found in either of the Gospel narratives. Whether he meant only to indicate what is substantially our Lord's teaching, or was preserving some precious words of our Great Teacher, otherwise unrecorded, is not important. It is enough that this saying has the authority of Christ. Whatever the blessedness of receiving, that of giving belongs to a higher plane. Whatever I get, and whatever good it brings to me, I only am benefited; but what I give brings good to others—to the many, not the one. But, by a singular decree of God, what I thus surrender for myself for the sake of others, comes back even to me in the larger blessing. It is like the moisture which the spring gives out in streams and evaporation, returning in showers to supply the very channels which fill the spring itself.

Computation by Comparison

6. We rise a step higher in considering God's law of computation. How does he reckon gifts? Our Lord teaches us that it is by comparison. No narrative is more telling on this theme than that of the poor widow who dropped into the treasury her two mites. The Lord Jesus, standing near, watched the offerings cast into the treasury. There were rich givers that gave large amounts. There was one poor woman, a widow, who threw in two mites, and he declared her offering to be more than any or all the rest, because, while they gave out of a superfluity, she gave out of a deficiency—they of their abundance, she of her poverty.

She had cast her two mites into the sacred treasury, and by so doing became rich in good works and in the praise of God. Had she kept them, she had been only the same poor widow. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and the two mites “make a farthing.” He who, as the superintending Providence of nature, watches the fall of a sparrow, so that “one of them is not forgotten before God,” also, as the overseer of the treasury, invisibly sits and watches the gifts that are dropped into the chest, and even the widow's mite is not forgotten.

He tells us here how he estimates money gifts—not by what we give, but by what we keep—not by the amount of our contributions, but by their cost in self-denial. This widow's whole offering counted financially for but a farthing (a quadrant, equal to four mills, or two fifths of a cent or three fourths of an English farthing). What could be much more insignificant? But the two mites constituted her whole means of subsistence. The others reserved what they needed or wanted for themselves, and then gave out of their superabundance. The contrast is emphatic; she “out of her deficiency,” they “out of their supersufficiency.”

Not all giving—so called—has rich reward. In many cases the keeping hides, with God, the giving. Self-indulgent, hoarding and spending spread a banquet; the crumbs fall from the table, to be gathered up and labeled “charity.” But when the one possession that is dearest, the last trusted resource, is surrendered to God, then comes the vision of the treasure laid up in heaven.

7. We ascend still higher to the law of unselfishness in giving. “Do good and lend, hoping for nothing again.” Luke 6: 35. Much giving is not giving at all, but only lending or exchanging. He who gives to another of whom he expects to receive as much again, is trading. He is seeking gain, and is selfish. What he is after is not another's profit, but his own advantage. To invite to one's table those who will invite him again, is simply as if a kindness were done to a business acquaintance as a basis for boldness in asking a similar favor when needed. This is reciprocity, and may be even mean and calculating.

Never will the work of missions, or any form of service to God or man, get the help it ought until there is a new conscience and a new consecration in the matter of money. The influence of the world and the worldly spirit is deadening to unselfish giving. It exalts self-indulgence, whether in gross or refined form. It leads to covetous hoarding or wasteful spending. It blinds us to the fact of obligation, and devises flimsy pretexts for diverting the Lord's money to carnal ends. The few who learn to give on Scriptural principles learn also to love to give. These gifts become abundant and systematic and self-denying. The stream of beneficence flows perpetually—there is no period of drought.

Once it was necessary to proclaim to the people of God that what they had brought “was more than enough,” and to “restrain them from bringing.” Ex. 36: 6. So far as known, this is the solitary historic instance of such excess of generosity. But should it not always be so? Is it not a shame and disgrace that there ever should be a lack of “meat in God's house”? When his work appeals for aid, should there ever be a reluctance to respond or a doling out of a mere pittance? Surely his unspeakable gift should make all giving to him a spontaneous offering of love that, like Mary's, should bring its precious flask of spiknard and lavish its treasures

on his feet, and fill the house with the odor of self-sacrifice!—Missionary Review of the World.