John Wesley: Are you a dead Christian?

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal. Matthew 6:19-20

“If you aim at “laying up treasures on earth,” you are not barely losing your time and spending your strength for that which is not bread, for what is the fruit if you succeed: you have murdered your own soul! You have extinguished the last spark of spiritual life therein! Now indeed, in the midst of life you are in death! You are a living man, but a dead Christian.”

John Wesley (1703-1791) in “Sermon on the Mount” Discourse 8.13. To purchase a copy from Seedbed.com visit Thirteen Discourses on the Sermon on the Mount.

If this post offends you, it’s not the post, it’s the gospel that is the stumbling block for you. Wesley is merely pointing out that one cannot follow both the prevailing cultural norms and the commands of Jesus. Those who try are just rationalizing disobedience. It’s Jesus who explicitly instructs us not to store up resources in the wrong place.

In the words of my friend, J.D. Walt at Seedbed.com, it’s not because money is a bad thing, it’s because money is a dangerous thing. It leads us to trust in it other than God. Money is the leading alternate god (cf. Matthew 6:24 and Luke 16:13). Plain and simple: We show where we place our trust as followers of Christ by where we store earthly treasures.

But since you excel in everything–in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in the love we have kindled in you–see that you also excel in this grace of giving. 2 Corinthians 8:7

“Of course, not everyone in the congregation will heed the call to increased giving. Clergy and lay leaders are likely to hear a number of complaints. Do not let disgruntled members deter you from your resolve! My experience is that the most vocal complaints will come from those who give the least, not those who have the least. The whiners, complainers, naysayers, and freeloaders are not the ones who will lead the church to a promising future.

In contrast, those who already give the most will welcome the encouragement to increased generosity. These church pillars not only contribute the most, but the also ask the least in return (This is why it is fine for the minister to know what people in the church contribute. Ministers usually do not give preferential treatment to higher-level [givers] because these people do not want preferential treatment)…These are the generous and committed souls that churches can and should produce.”

Michael Durall in Beyond the Collection Plate: Overcoming Obstacles to Faithful Giving (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003) 65-66.

As I prepare to teach a course this summer for clergy on “Nurturing a Ministry Culture of Christian Generosity in the Local Church” this quote will no doubt inspire the pastors I will serve. Sadly, the anticipation of complainers and the fear of naysayers have hindered many pastors from teaching on giving. In helping them see how Paul dealt with similar responses (and non-responsiveness) from the Corinthians, pray with me that they will be inspired to cultivate generous and committed souls.

I’m thinking of my prospective students today as registration is underway. God fill the course with pastors and strengthen me to serve them well.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” Matthew 16:24-25

“In the world of thriving church faithfulness that is emerging, people within and beyond the church make different assumptions: God requires only one sacrifice–myself–and therefore, my lifestyle and God’s mission are one. The real issue is not whether I am willing to give up my life to acknowledge Jesus, but whether I am willing to give up my lifestyle to follow Jesus.”

Thomas Bandy in the Foreword to Beyond the Collection Plate: Overcoming Obstacles to Faithful Giving (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003) 12.

In trying “to save their life” many will lose it, or in Bandy’s words, they will not be willing to give up their lifestyle, so they will never take hold of the life Jesus offers. Will you? This past Sunday Bridgeway Community Church Pastor James Hoxworth put it this way: “If there is anything in your life you can’t give away, you don’t own it, it owns you.” So here’s the real issue: Have you given up your lifestyle to follow Jesus? Are you willing to?

For we aim at what is honorable not only in the Lord’s sight but also in the sight of man. 2 Corinthians 8:21

“Besides making a budget and living simply, financially generous people suggest setting numerical goals for the good they hope to do with their time and money. They pray about God’s calling in their loves. They consider which of their activities bring joy to God and also bring joy uniquely to them. Then they find ways to participate. As these activities are discerned, financial goals are projected for their annual giving, along with metrics by which to measure them.

When we are generous, we aren’t so much doing things for God as we are becoming part of what God is doing in the world. As stewards, we understand that resources ultimately belong to the Lord, and we simply manage them. That’s why it’s important to begin the year with quantifiable goals of what we hope to contribute to the ministries, organizations, and projects to which God calls us. It’s amazing what we can do when we set goals for financial generosity and then order our lives to make that generosity possible.”

Tom Berlin in Defying Gravity: Break Free from the Culture of More (Nashville: Abingdon, 2016).

Berlin’s book seeks to help stewards avoid getting sucked into the world’s way of thinking, and instead, charges followers of Christ take aim, and shoot for goals that make a difference not for God but with God. What about you? It’s Monday and the start of a new month. Do you have goals for the work you hope to accomplish with God today or this week or month? What about linked to your financial generosity? What would it look like set a goal to grow in this area? Take aim and ask God to help you set a goal and reach it.

And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. Colossians 3:14

“Charity indeed is not…a matter of mere generous intention: on the contrary, it involves that exact appropriateness of reciprocal action necessary to produce a ‘beautiful’ order, and in this sense, charity is the very consummation of both justice and prudence.”

John Milbank in Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Malden: Blackwell, 2006) 416.

Charity is grace: unmerited favor. When we receive it from God and extend it toward others we exhibit generosity that Milbank rightly describes as “that exact appropriateness of reciprocal action.” It produces unquestionably beautiful order, or in plain terms, it makes things right.

On this Lord’s day, ask the Father what it would look like for you to consummate justice and prudence in the place where He has planted you. How has he placed you there to bring beauty and contribute to flourishing not by “mere generous intention” but as an conduit of charity?

For a taste of our experience at Union Church Hong Kong last Sunday, read the lyrics of a beautiful song we sang last weekend, “Great Source of all our life” by Joy F. Patterson.

Great Source of all our life,
we come with thanks and praise,
for countless gifts of love with which you bless our days.

Chorus:
With joyful hearts
we come to you, renewing now
our gifts of love.

For time to work and play,
for talents we can share,
for wealth enough to live, and give for others’ care,

For those who went before,
strong followers of your way,
who worked and gave to build the church we know today,

Dear God who first loved us
and drew our hearts toward you,
confirm our faith, increase our love our whole life through.

And if you want hear the sermon I preached at Union Church Hong Kong on 24 April 2016, click this link entitled, “Guarding our Lives against Greed: Five Insights for Faithful Stewards” from Luke 12:13-21.

Being rich toward God is only possible when we realize that the God who loves us is the great Source of all our life, and the One who provides “enough to live, and give for others’ care.”

Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need. Ephesians 4:28

“Paul defines the opposite of stealing another’s property and possessions: work in order to have something to share with those in need. In other words the trajectory of the eight commandment [You shall not steal] explicitly opens up from a narrow reading of the commandment as a guard of private property to a positive inducement to generosity…

In this way, the injunction to the Ephesian community follows out of and builds upon the various Old Testament regulations growing out of the eighth commandment that serve not only to protect the neighbor’s economic well-being but to enhance it, and especially those statutes providing for the poor, that is those in need.

The Scripture thus argues implicitly for a countercultural assumption that our aim is not the acquisition and protection (by legal and illegal means, by work and by stealing, by truth-telling and false witness) of our property and possessions but the sharing of the wealth that God provides.”

Patrick D. Miller in “Property and Possession in Light of the Ten Commandments” in Having Property and Possession in Religious and Social Life, eds. William Schweiker and Charles Mathewes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004) 41-42.

The OT provides a beautiful backdrop for the NT. The fruit of work in the OT Law was not private ownership for selfish gain, but rather private property stewarded in obedience to care for family, needy neighbor, and foreigner. I love how this restores meaning to the income-earning side of work in God’s economy.

Consider some examples. Through our work, our family has resources to help the church our son has helped plant here in Littleton. We have funds to help destitute children get food and Christ-centered education in Guatemala. We have monies to support friends who serve refuges in Germany, and we are positioned to mobilize missionaries in Hong Kong and Asia.

The “countercultural assumption” the Scriptures call for is seeing the fruit of our labor not as ours per se but as resources for blessing others. Failure to live this way is stealing because it holds back for self what God intends for blessing. When we obey, we are enriched and filled with joy. When we don’t obey, God’s work still goes forward, and we are the ones who miss out because God works through other channels.

Are you joyfully participating or missing out?

Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 1 Timothy 6:9

“Despise riches, if you would have riches. If you would be truly rich, become poor. For such are the paradoxes of God. He would not have you rich from your own care, but from His grace. Leave these things to Me, He says; make spiritual things your concern, that you may know My power [cf. Colossians 3:2]. Flee from that yoke of slavery, which riches impose. As long as you cleave to them, you are poor. When you despise them, you are doubly rich, in that such things shall flow in upon you from every side, and in that you shall want none of those things, which the multitude want. For not to possess much, but to need little, is to be rich indeed.”

John Chrysostom (347-407) in Homilies on First Timothy 11.

Last night Jenni and I got to a Colorado Rockies baseball game with Paul and Marj Lewan. They are truly rich people because they don’t let riches stay with them. With openhanded generosity they are “doubly rich” people who joyfully serve as conduits of God’s material and spiritual blessings.

Chrysostom is spot on when he depicts the handling of money as one of the “paradoxes of God” as those who chase after it, lose everything. Those who want to possess it end up empty, while those who “make spiritual things” their concern end up truly rich.

How can you grow in your generosity journey? Find people who have the right perspective on this paradox. Spend time with them. They “know” God’s power by experience. Riches don’t secure our life, they seek to enslave them. Carve out time with truly rich people who “need little” and you will begin to understand.

Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. 1 Peter 4:10

“God expects us to be “trustworthy stewards” of all that belongs to Him. When we ignore that everything belongs to God, squander His resources, or act as if it belongs to us, we are not acting in a trustworthy manner; we are unfaithful stewards. So what does it mean to be a trustworthy steward? …

We act as trustworthy stewards when we use what He’s entrusted to us to serve others…Once we grasp that we are not owners and aren’t supposed to be mere consumers, but stewards, we realize that we are to be conduits of God’s grace to those around us. God never intended for us to receive His grace and gifts and keep them for ourselves; we are to let His grace flow through us to others…

So why do many of us receive God’s grace and gifts but then stop the flow, keeping so much of it to ourselves instead of distributing it to others? One reason: fear. We are afraid that if we give, we won’t have enough. we are afraid the supply will not continue to flow, that it will dry up…

Fear is always a lack of trust. We’re not sure God can be trusted. This fear lies deep within us; in fact, trust is the core issue of life. We want to trust, but fear talks us out of trusting and obeying God. Fear sabotages our desire to be faithful. That’s why God teaches us over and over again about trust…We were made to live in a trusting, wonderful, vibrant dependence on God.”

Jim Mindling in Learn to Breathe: The Surprising Path to a Transformed Life (Bloomington: WestBow, 2014) 228, 234-236.

One of the colleagues who joined me for meetings in Hong Kong was Anjji Gabriel. He believes (like Mindling) that trust is the core issue of the transparent administration of God’s work and a core component for generosity. I will never forget the rhetorical question he asked Christian leaders to consider: “Can God trust you?”

When we live in fear we hold back God’s material blessings rather than serve as a conduit. Alternatively, when our everyday living, giving, serving, and loving is rooted in trust, we hold nothing back because we know the generosity of the One who provided it in the first place. Has fear sabotaged your desire to be faithful? Can God trust you?

If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 1 John 3:17

“If we want to understand God’s goodness in God’s gifts, then we must think of them as a responsibility we bear for our brothers and sisters. Let none say: God has blessed us with money and possessions, and then live as if they and their God were alone in the world. For the time will come when they realize that they have been worshiping the idols of their good fortune and selfishness. Possessions are not God’s blessing and goodness, but the opportunities of service which God entrusts to us.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) in A Testament to Freedom as recounted in The NRSV Daily Bible: Read, Meditate, and Pray Through the Entire Bible in 365 Days (HarperCollins, Kindle Edition) 569-570. Special thanks John Cochran for sharing this meditation with me.

Jenni and I have safely returned home from Hong Kong. In reflecting on our experience this morning, I think this is a perspective that can be spotted both in the East and the West: people can treat material blessing as an idol or as an opportunity for service. How will you view the material possessions entrusted to you? We cannot live like we are alone in the world. As John writes, if we see someone in need, we get to show God’s love by helping them.