Luke 18:24
And when Jesus saw that he was very sorrowful, he said, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! And when Jesus saw that he was very sorrowful, he said, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!
The same account is told in Matthew 19:16-30, Matthew 20:1-16, and Mark 10:17-31. It comes from an event that gave opportunity to teach right principles about free grace and the reward of the righteous, set against the belief that divine favor and eternal life can be earned by human works. It declares that those who have riches enter the kingdom of God with great difficulty, and that sorrow over giving up riches can keep a person from entering, a teaching that astonished the disciples.
Wealth itself is not a curse and possessions give a person no value or claim in God's sight. Wealth rightly used for good blesses others, builds up the cause of truth, and supports missions. The barrier comes when the heart trusts or clings to riches, trusting in money, hoarding it, or using it for pride and self-glory. Love of wealth then overwhelms judgment and trust in God and His promises. As riches increase people may grow more anxious about future need, desire still more, hoard their means, trust wealth instead of God, and in doing so become poor toward God.
Rich and poor alike can enter only through unearned grace, since human effort cannot free the heart from attachment to earthly treasure, but God can change the heart through the love of Christ. Rightly estimating the value of the soul means turning away from the attractions of the world and fixing the eyes on heaven, which comes only by studying and striving to understand the great plan of redemption. Realizing something of the cost of Christ's sacrifice to uplift and ennoble humanity leads to counting no sacrifice too great to fulfill His loving purpose to save, laying all that one is and possesses at His feet and making it the highest aim to be a doer of His word. A changed person treats possessions as a trust from God, regards nothing as solely their own, and uses means to help the poor and suffering and to save the lost.
The difficulty is stewardship: when people of business, farmers, mechanics, merchants, lawyers and others join the church they become servants of Christ, and though their talents are entirely different their responsibility to advance God's cause by personal effort and with their means is no less than that resting on the minister. A minister who abandons successful soul-winning work to secure temporal gain becomes an apostate accountable for misapplied talents, and the woe falling on a minister who does not preach the gospel will just as surely fall on the business person who will not co-work with Christ to accomplish the same results, a hard but true saying continually contradicted by the practice of professed followers. The verse is connected with the oppressed people of God raising a united persistent cry to heaven for deliverance in the closing scenes of church history, symbolized by the prayer message of the fourth angel in Revelation 14:15, in answer to which the commandment-keeping remnant with the testimony of Jesus will be delivered.