Are You Rich Towards God?

Treasure, riches, wealth, stock options, cash reserves, savings, the nest egg… there are a lot of ways to speak of financial resources.  Money is always in our lives and conversation.  “Follow the money” we are told.  Well, when you follow it all the way back, and I mean all the way back to the beginning, we find that God laced this world with gold and silver from the very first splashes of the watery formless mass.  God made a way for us to understand value, and even if we don’t know how it all would have worked in a perfect world, we still can still be sure that even in perfection there will still be things that show value.  There will be precious stones and gold in heaven and even there they are recognized as valuable.  So yes, in our fallen world, there are complicated and fluxuating calculations of the worth of certain items, but even so there will always be things that are undoubtedly valuable.  No matter how little you understand economics, everybody knows that gold and diamonds are valuable.  This remains constant even in national economic meltdowns.  

So God has made a world where valuable things can be found, earned and possessed.  God means for us to understand riches.  Why?  Because we live in a universe with layers of value.  God did not create everything equal.  Sparrows are great, but Jesus said that we are worth far more than sparrows (Matt. 10:31).  This naturally forces us to ask two things: how can I be rich with what is truly valuable, and what is the most valuable of all?

The answer to the second question supplies the answer to the first question.  The most valuable thing in all the universe is God himself.  His is infinitely glorious.  If rarity is the driver of value, then holiness is the ultimate term of value.  God’s holiness is his utter and total otherness from all created things.  He is singular, unparalleled and unmatched.  There is no equal, no competition and no rival.  To have God is to have what will satisfy the soul forever, for God’s beauty never fades or disappoints.  

This means that being truly rich means having God himself.  This is why the gospel is the greatest news of all.  Through the gospel we get all of God.  The veil is torn and the way is made to the very throne of God, we come not as a servant but as a son.  In Christ, we have all spiritual blessings which are all bound up in knowing and having God (Eph. 1:3).

Yet, even though we have God in Christ, we can still miss out on what is available to us.  Just as we can have riches in the bank and still choose to rummage around in dumpsters, we can also have full access to God and choose to pursue broken deceitful pleasures.  For this reason we find several times in the Bible where God calls us to be rich toward God.  In Luke, Jesus warns about the man who stores up treasure but who is not rich toward God (Luke 12:21).  Jesus tells the Smyrna church that even though they are poor, they are actually rich (Rev. 2:9).  Jesus tells the Laodicean church that though they are financially rich they are actually poor, but Jesus can make them truly rich (Rev. 3:17-18).  James tells his poor readers that they are rich in faith (James 2:5).  There are some other passages that speak of heavenly riches, but these are probably speaking about eternal rewards for labor on earth (which probably do ultimately end up being ways to know and glorify God, and thus be rich toward him).

So how do we become rich toward God?  How do you know when you are really increasing in the right way?  Abraham Kuyper, a Dutch theologian of the 1800s, spoke to this in an insightful way.  Imagine yourself at the moment of death.  All possessions and family are gone.  All titles and offices are released.  All accomplishments are forgotten.  In that moment what do you have?  Do you have a deep relationship with God to cling to?  Do you have countless hours of communing prayer?  Do you have revelations of his glory that have thrilled and satisfied your soul?  Has his friendship and fatherliness and lordship been nurtured and cultivated in ways that to lose all other things is ok?  This is what it is to be rich toward God.  

Think about it in terms of being rich toward your spouse.  As many have discovered, after the children have all left the house, there may be nothing of importance left to the marriage.  The connections of house and shared friends are as strands of spider-silk , not strong enough to hold the marriage together.  But if the marriage has shared the joys of laughter, the tears of hardship, the embrace of intimacy, the fellowship of shared dreams, the hand-in-hand pursuit of glorious goals, the confessions of failure, the restoration of forgiveness, the thrills of victories, and the thankfulness of undeserved kindnesses, then that marriage is rich.  It has a lifetime of shared communion that does not need 401ks or kids or friends or titles or anything else to keep it together.  

In Christ you have full access to God.  You need to delve into all that that means for you.  You need to plunge into God’s word.  You need to pray for God to give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation.  You need to follow him in obedience and watch what he does.  You need to open your eyes to all the kindness he daily gives you and repent for your presumption of them.  You need to be spurred along to deeper communion and holier living by God’s spirit-filled people.  In all these ways, you will build a true relationship with God, and find him to be all you need and for you to be truly complete in him.  You can be rich toward God.