Money
Here is a comment that jesusandthebible made on my article, “Is Wealth a Blessing or a Curse?”
So you can love God and mammon, as long as your heart and character are right? But if your heart loves mammon–as well as God–Jesus says that heart actually hates God (Mt. 6:24). Jesus commands his disciples not to lay up treasures on earth (Mt. 6:19). Instead, sell treasured possessions, give to the poor, and have treasure in heaven; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (Mt. 6:20-21; Lk. 12:33-34). The only rich follower who did that in the Gospels was Zacchaeus, who gave half of his goods to the poor and repaid four times as much as what he had gotten from fraud (Lk. 19:1-8).
Thanks for bringing up these passages! There’s more here than can be answered in a brief comment, so I’m taking it up in its own article.
When reading the Bible, it’s important to:
- Pay attention to the exact words, not passing over or adding anything to the text.
- Put particular verses and statements in the context of the story in which they are embedded, and of related statements elsewhere in the Bible.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at these passages.
The first three passages, from Matthew, are all part of the same section from Jesus’ famous “Sermon on the Mount” that covers Matthew chapters 5–7. Here is the full sequence of these passages (leaving out a brief interlude on the theme that “the eye is the lamp of the body”), in a fairly literal translation of the original Greek:
Do not treasure up for yourselves treasures on the earth, where moth and rust cause them to vanish, and where thieves dig through and steal. But treasure up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust make them vanish, and where thieves do not dig through and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. . . . No one is able to serve two lords; for either he will hate the one and he will love the other, or he will hold to the one and he will despise the other. You are not able to serve God and mammon. (Matthew 6:19–21, 24)
“Mammon” comes from a word that occurs in various ancient languages, meaning wealth or greed, often personified as a false deity. In simple everyday terms, that final statement of Jesus means, “You cannot serve both God and money.”
In good Biblical fashion, let’s take this last statement first.
Notice that it does not say, “You cannot love both God and money.” It says, “You cannot serve both God and money.” Yes, they’re related, but they are not the same!
For the love of money, or for the love of God?
We humans love all sorts of things. Some of them are great and wonderful, like God, goodness, and love. Others are small and relatively unimportant, such as ice cream, roller-skating, and high-heeled shoes. We are perfectly capable of loving both God and ice cream. And the Bible has no problem with that, as long as we keep them in the right order.
What we can’t do is serve both God and ice cream.
Okay, okay . . . . My apologies to those of you who work in ice cream parlors. That was a bad example! 😉
So . . . umm . . . we can’t serve both God and high-heeled shoes.
If we think high-heeled shoes are the most important thing in life, that makes it impossible for us to serve God. Instead of doing what God wants us to do, which is to love God above all else and love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:36–40; and see my article, “How Do I Love My Neighbor?”), we’ll be busily devoting our lives to amassing a collection of high-heeled shoes to rival Imelda Marcos’s.
Okay, that’s a bit of a silly example, too.
But you get the idea. Jesus does not say we cannot love both God and money. He says we cannot serve both God and money. One of them will be more important to us than the other. And if money is what’s most important to us, we will come to hate and despise God, because God tells us that we should not put money first—and we don’t want God telling us what to do.
Another way of saying this is that we must not love money more than we love God. God is to be the “lord” whom we love and serve, whereas money is to be a mere servant, and not our lord and master.
Do not treasure up for yourselves . . .
Now let’s look at the first sentence of Jesus’ statement:
Do not treasure up for yourselves treasures on the earth, where moth and rust cause them to vanish, and where thieves dig through and steal. (Matthew 6:19)
A quick reading of this passage may suggest that it means we should never save any money, or amass any wealth.
But notice that it says, “Do not treasure up for yourselves treasures on earth.” It’s not about whether or not we save up money and amass wealth. It’s about our motives for doing so.
If we’re storing up money and amassing wealth only for ourselves and our own benefit, that is not a good thing. We humans don’t really need all that much to live. A roof over our heads, food, clothing, warmth, companionship. Yes, these things cost money. But the basics needed for our survival, plus a little extra for recreation and relaxation, don’t cost that much money.
If we keep on piling up more and more money beyond what we need for the necessities and comforts of life, what is our purpose in doing so? What do we plan to do with all that wealth?
If our plan for piling up more and more money involves giving ourselves more and more power, possessions, and pleasure, then we are headed for spiritual destruction. We are serving money, not God.
But if our plan involves putting our money to use in serving God and our fellow human beings, we are not storing up money for ourselves. And even if we originally were making money solely for our own benefit, if over time we have a change of heart and decide to use our money to benefit humanity, then we are no longer storing up money for ourselves.
Jesus is not concerned about storing up money in itself. He’s concerned about our motives for doing so. If we are driven by a love of money (otherwise known as greed) in order to serve ourselves only, then we are running afoul of the teachings of Jesus.
But if we are not storing up money only for ourselves, but are using it for the benefit of others in small or large ways, then it is not evil, but good.
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also
The question is, where is your treasure? What do you treasure most in life? Do you treasure money and wealth for its own sake, and for everything it does to benefit you and you alone? If so, your treasure is an earthly one, and sooner or later it will be eaten by moths and stolen by thieves.
However, if above all you treasure love for God and love for your fellow human beings (aka “the neighbor”), then your heart will not be in any material treasures you may have amassed. Rather, that earthly treasure will simply be a tool in your hands that you can use to do greater good for your fellow human beings.
This saying about treasure in Matthew segues into Jesus’ famous teaching that we are not to worry about our life, what we will eat and drink, and so on, but are to seek God’s kingdom first, and all of these other (material) things will be given to us as well. See Matthew 6:25–34, and the parallel passage in Luke 12:22–34, which comes to the same conclusion: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
This is also one of the places where Jesus says, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor.”
Once again, we must read the passage carefully, and not add or subtract words. In this passage Jesus did not say, “Sell all of your possessions and give to the poor.” He simply said, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor,” without specifying how many of our possessions we must sell and give to the poor. For that, we need to look at other examples found in the Gospels.
Do we have to give all of our wealth to the poor?
Many wealthy people are in fact “selling their possessions and giving to the poor.” With much of their fortune they have set up large charitable foundations in order to help people in need, and make the world a better place for everyone.
In doing so, they are following the example of someone in the Bible whose actions Jesus approved and celebrated. The example of Zacchaeus helps us to understand what Jesus did and didn’t mean when he said, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor”:
Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”
But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” (Luke 19:1–10)
Now, notice: Zacchaeus did not give away all of his possessions to the poor. He gave half of his possessions to the poor, and promised to make quadruple restitution for anyone he may have cheated.
Did Jesus say, “Sorry, Zacchaeus, you must give away all of your possessions”?
No.
Jesus accepted Zacchaeus as a saved man, based on his pledge to give half of his possessions to the poor, and make generous restitution for any financial wrongdoing he may have engaged in. Assuming Zacchaeus wasn’t too dishonest in his past dealings, he would still be wealthy after carrying out his pledge. He just wouldn’t be quite as wealthy.
Zacchaeus was not Jesus’ only wealthy follower. Another was Joseph of Arimathea, who is called a disciple of Jesus, and who provided the fine tomb in which Jesus was laid after he was crucified. For that story, scroll down to the section on “Working for Love and Money” in my article, “What Does Religion Have to Do with My Profession and My Daily Work?”
Yes, Jesus did tell at least one person to give away all his money (see Matthew 19:16–22; Mark 10:17–22; Luke 18:18–23). It seems Jesus realized that this man’s heart was in his money, and that the only way this very wealthy man could put God before money was to divest himself of all of his wealth.
But Jesus did not tell all of his followers to give away all of their money. Those who were able to put God first even while having money could continue to be wealthy, provided that they used their money wisely for the benefit of others in addition to themselves.
So the question is: Where is your heart? Where is your treasure? If for you money is an obstacle to putting God first, then you may have to divest yourself of it in order to focus your life on doing God’s work.
But if you are ready and willing to put your money in service to God and your fellow human beings, then God will welcome you among the saved just as he welcomed Zacchaeus and Joseph of Arimathea, wealthy as they were.
Serve God, use money
If we read the Bible carefully and pay attention to its exact words, and if we put together the various statements and stories throughout the Gospels and the rest of the Bible, we find that it says something different than the common interpretation that if we have money, we must give it all away in order to be a Christian.
The teaching of the Bible about money is not simplistic. It is deep and thoughtful. It takes into account the different spiritual states of everyone who is willing to listen to its wisdom.
For those whose hearts are so deeply attached to money and wealth that they are bound to serve money instead of God, the Bible does teach that it may be necessary to give it all away in order to remove that obstacle to salvation and spiritual life.
But for those whose hearts are moved more strongly by love for God and love for the neighbor than by the love of money, the message of the Bible is that our money is to be used not just to benefit ourselves, but to serve God and our fellow human beings.
In short:
God is our master. Money is just a servant. Keep it that way!
Thanks again to jesusandthebible for bringing up some fine points and great Bible passages!
You might also enjoy:
- What Does Religion Have to Do with My Profession and My Daily Work?
- Money Can’t Buy Happiness . . . But Service Can
- Amazon vs. Walmart: The Spiritual Shift
- The Gold Standard
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Lee Woofenden is an ordained minister, writer, editor, translator, and teacher. He enjoys taking spiritual insights from the Bible and the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and putting them into plain English as guides for everyday life.
Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life 
Yes, the OT promises over and over again that if we honor God we will prosper. But some people forget all that and say that any wealth is a sin. I agree with your post.
Oh, and another point:
Storing up money for our own retirement years is not a bad thing either. Here are two reasons:
1. If we have provided a means of support for ourselves when we are no longer able to work, we will not become a burden on others.
2. Freed from the necessity to do paying work, retirees can (if they choose) spend their days volunteering and helping others. Simply being a loving and wise grandparent or grandparent figure for children and teens can have a profoundly positive effect on them during their formative years.
In other words, providing a means of income for ourselves during our retirement years is not necessarily something we do only for ourselves. It puts us in a position at minimum not to be a burden on others, and at best to do a great deal of good for others.
[…] 73. Put particular Bible verses and statements in the context of the story in which they are embedded, and of related statements elsewhere in the Bible. (leewoof) […]
I struggle with the idea of saving for retirement in the West, daily, having immigrated from the East; this to me seems counter to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, when HE warns His followers to NOT worry about the morrow but to trust in Him to take care of us like the sparrows and the lillies of the field. I certainly don’t want to be a burden even to myself. The emphasis to me seems that I can trust the banks and investments but NOT the Words of Jesus Christ. It is a dilemma for me. My apologies for this comment!
Hi Hanna,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment. It’s a great question! I presume you are referring to Matthew 6:25-34, in which Jesus tells us not to worry about tomorrow.
May I suggest that the emphasis is on the “worrying” part? In the same passage, Jesus tells us to “strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” It’s a matter of what we’re focused on. Is our primary goal in life to provide for ourselves and our own retirement? Or are we focused on serving God and our fellow human beings?
If we focus on serving others, Jesus promises us that we will be taken care of. However, this doesn’t mean we should do nothing for ourselves. Did Jesus mean we should all just quit our jobs and go around doing random acts of kindness? I don’t think so. He was speaking to farmers, fisherman, merchants, shepherds, and so on. And though he did call a few to leave everything and follow him, most stayed in their occupations even after they put their faith in Jesus. They continued to work as they had before. But now they did it with love for God and for their fellow human beings, rather than just for their own benefit.
Jesus’ teaching on not worrying about tomorrow does not mean we shouldn’t work, save, and provide for ourselves. It means that that should not be the focus of our lives, and we should not be consumed with worry and anguish over our own future well-being. Setting aside a percentage of our paycheck each month to take care of our future needs is simply a thoughtful and prudent thing to do so that we will be taken care of in our old age, if we are blessed to live that long, and will not become a burden on others. And any that we don’t ultimately use ourselves can be given to our children, or to charitable causes.
Unfortunately, our Western society does not work the way the cultures of Jesus’ day did. In Jesus’ day extended families lived together in one household. Elderly people were naturally taken care of by their children and grandchildren in a way that just isn’t true in today’s society. So we have to adapt to the conditions that we find ourselves in.
In the future I would love to write a whole post on this issue. But for now, I hope these thoughts are helpful to you.
You cannot love God and love money. You can have money and love God. 1Tim.6:10 says that “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. And some people craving for money have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows”. The command of Jesus is to love God first, love yourself then love your neighbors the way you love yourself.
Hi Tunde,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your thoughts.
Hi, I need an advice coz as of now I am torn between God and my wife and son. If only the option is between two person that would be easy but the one is God and the other is my family. Coz as of now i am pulled to enter a monastery to totally serve the Lord.
Hi Ronir,
I don’t know your whole situation, so I can only go by what you have said here, and by my own understanding of the Christian life and faith.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I believe that the idea that monastic life is especially holy and close to God is a massive mistake. We don’t serve God by withdrawing from the world, but by engaging with the world from a spiritual and Christian perspective. Our primary marching orders in Christianity are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. We can’t really do that if we withdraw from the world and its activities.
If you choose a monastic life over taking care of your wife and son, you will have chosen to abandon the people whom God has put into your life and your care in favor of a life that focuses mostly on your own “enlightenment” and “holiness.” That, to me, is very far from that the Bible commands us to do. See, for example, Matthew 25:31-46 in which Jesus says that we will find our place in eternal life or in eternal punishment based on whether or not we have cared for our fellow human beings.
My strong suggestion, then, is that you remain with your wife and son, and do God’s work in loving them and taking care of them. That is what true Christianity is all about. And do you really want to leave them bereft? That is not a Christian thing to do.
For more on serving God within the world and its activities, please see: What Does Religion Have to Do with My Profession and My Daily Work?
24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
I always thought that Jesus meant that if we hate one we will love the other?
Hi Brigitte,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment and question.
Notice that Jesus says you cannot serve two masters. As I say in the article, God is meant to be our master, and money (“mammon”) our servant. If we try to make both God and money our masters, there will be a conflict between the two of them in our mind and heart, and sooner or later we will accept (“love” and “hold to”) one as our master and reject (“hate” and “despise”) the other. But if we make God our master and money our servant, we can love each in its own proper place: God above all, and money for the practical things it helps us to accomplish.
Wow. This helped a lot, sir. Thank you so much.
Hi Izell,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment. I’m glad the article is helpful to you.
Godspeed on your spiritual journey!
Thank you for being a source of light for many of us. This article has cleared some things up for me, and I really liked how you responded to your audience with great answers.
Hi Reuben,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your kind words. You are most welcome. If you have any further thoughts or questions, please feel free to leave additional comments.
Meanwhile, Godspeed on your spiritual journey!
Thank you very much for the illustrations, I have understood and learnt from the scripture
Hi Harrison,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment. I’m glad you found the article informative. Godspeed on your spiritual journey!
I would caution bible readers to carefully evaluate everything the gospels claimed that Jesus said. An extremely careful look at the history of the manuscripts reveal some unnerving information about their origin, and the way that the stories got around to be written from oral recounting, after everyone who had seen Jesus had died. Any collection of texts that attempts to establish its own vericity by claiming its inspiration internally, in my opinion, is suspect. Also, if Jesus really said this, then I see a him to be a poor role model when it comes to finances. He cared little about money other than to warn people against its power, and honestly, often seem bothered by dealing with the fact that people established a means of exchange to cope with a harsh world where people had needs; wherein, if he was god, he foreknew would be difficult, yet proclaimed false dichotomies like these just to put people’s loyalty to the test. For someone that desparately loved Jesus growing up; as an adult, unraveling some of the nonsense he supposedly engendered; I’m infuriated. Sometimes I honestly hate Jesus, having previously stood up for all of his teachings.
Which begets the truthfulness of his claim of loving one and hating the other.
Wait…He couldn’t have been that intelligent to know this…
::The insanity of acknowledging the upside down economy elicited by his teachings, bending the wise in against themselves.
This couldn’t be Mary and Joseph’s boy…doh!
Hi Brian,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment.
I understand that your youthful views about Jesus and the Bible were broken and smashed in your adult life. However, you might want to consider that the problem is not with Jesus and the Bible, but with faulty views about them that you were taught in your church growing up.
About the manuscripts of the Bible, it is true that the story is much more complicated than the average Christian realizes. However, as ancient manuscripts go, the biblical manuscripts are on about as solid ground as any. Because these texts were treasured from very early on, and copied and recopied, we have many, many manuscripts to draw from, which gives us fairly good confidence that they represent reasonably faithful versions of the original stories.
The problem comes when Christians, especially of the evangelical and fundamentalist variety, think that the purpose of the Gospels is to give an accurate historical account of the life and sayings of Jesus. Yes, it is probably true that they generally reflect his life and sayings. But even the four Gospels themselves do not entirely agree about exactly what happened, and exactly what Jesus said.
The purpose of the Gospels is not to be a historical record, but to transmit the good news of Jesus, his life, and his message to people who are in need of spiritual life and salvation. Getting every detail right is not important. Conveying the spirit of what Jesus said, and what he represents, was the aim of the Gospel writers. If some of the particular historical details and precise wordings got lost in the shuffle, that is not important to the main purpose of the Gospels.
About Jesus and money, in fact, money is the subject of many of Jesus’ parables. The Pearl of Great Price, the Parable of the Talents, the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus . . . the list goes on and on. However, it’s important to understand that none of Jesus’ parables were really about earthly and material things. They were all intended to convey a spiritual message using material things that people were familiar with as “props” to say something deeper. That’s why they’re parables.
In short, Jesus was not a money-manager giving business and investment advice. He was a spiritual teacher using money and other popular subjects as a jumping-off point to teach people about their inner spiritual life.
Would you go to a priest or minister for financial advice? Not a good idea. Neither should you read Jesus’ parables about money to get tips about how to make and use money.
I would invite you to consider that the Bible has a deeper meaning and purpose than what you were taught as a child. If you are interested in learning more of what the Bible is really all about, here are a few articles to get you started:
If you have further thoughts as you read, please feel free to leave additional comments.