In Luke 12:32-34 we see Jesus tell people that they should, “not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the Kingdom. He goes on to tell them that they are to, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” This is the very thing that drove away the rich man in Luke 18 but it attracted Zacchaeus in Luke 19 and saved him. It is the idea of giving alms or voluntary aid or help to the poor. Jesus and His disciples did this very thing as we can glean from places in Scripture like John 13:29 (Batey 24, Hendriksen, “John” 248-249). We see in the giving of alms, a person that is ready to give away or surrender the control of their life to God and trust Him to do what is best. It is the premise behind Chapter 6 of Matthew and the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 6:2 we see that it is expected or assumed that a person would give to the needy, “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others.” It is the false assumption that one that needs material possessions and money to feel secure. This only shows that they have virtually no faith in God who would provide for them as He promised.
Matthew 6:25-27 ~“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
Can there be anything more counterproductive to a believer entering the Kingdom than this profound lack of faith on display? A person who is completely wrapped up in the system of the world system which is not of God… it is a system in rebellion against Him.
Poverty &
Kingdom are Relational
Poverty,
the Kingdom and therefore the Church are relational or relationship based. Tithes
and proper use of tithes by the church was also good but not if it totally replaced mercy and compassion in the heart of
believer. Sometimes loving you neighbor is more than just throwing money at
them. Sometimes help is not giving a homeless drug addict a $20 dollar bill.
Sometimes love and compassion is buying them a meal and getting them help to
wean them off their drug dependency. Tithes or offerings are not necessarily an
accurate indicator of the heart as is evident in the lesson from Jesus of the
Widow and her offering of mites.
“As Jesus looked
up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a
poor widow put in two very small copper coins. “Truly I tell you,” he said,
“this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave
their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had
to live on.” Luke 21:1-4
Here
the widow gave all she had therefore gave solely in faith. The rich on the
other hand gave of their surplus which required no faith as they were not dependent
on the money they gave nor would they be dependent on God to reimburse them to
be able to survive. So here we see that tithes and generous giving could be an
indicator of a generous heart but at the same time it could just be an
ostentatious façade by someone that craves attention and wishes to be viewed as
pious. In this story we see that giving should never be a replacement for
mercy, compassion and justice (Batey 23). It is better to feed and clothe the
poor rather than to buy them off as a salve for one’s conscience.
Personal
interaction and the “human touch” always trumped a faceless system or
government driven charity (contrary to Liberation Theology, again). In this
aspect of Jesus’ ministry to the poor and His concern for the downtrodden we
see the relational requirements of God’s Kingdom (Christian 185). Proper
communal function is not based in a centralized bureaucratic system but rather
a decentralized “soft” network of
people, bodies or souls. All of these need to be interconnected on the basis of
Christ being the centrality of all Creation and the Holy Spirit working through
them communally and in unity (Schlabach 143). When the body of Christ is
balanced and healthy, so will be the Kingdom. There will be no malignancy or
imbalance, poverty, prejudice, bias, sickness, etc. All will be equal in
Christ. Again, this is the general essence of the Kingdom. In God’s Kingdom,
relationships take precedence over benevolent actions, otherwise these
benevolent actions lack the main currency necessary between the giver and
receiver to create a lasting bond necessary in the Kingdom: Love. This
transaction then becomes just an informal exchange of goods not reciprocal
loving action that benefits both the giver and the receiver. In this way the
poor become a gift to the compassionate Christian and the compassionate
Christian become a gift to the poor and it is actually God making the exchange
through grace (Schlabach 37-38). Ironically, we see this in Jesus direct personal
interactions with sinners which gained him the reputation of being a friend of
sinners.
Mark 2:15-16 ~ While
Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were
eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When
the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and
tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors
and sinners?”
Through
not only Jesus’ message and teaching but also in Jesus’ actions, we see the example
for the Church. This means behind Church, is the Kingdom and behind Kingdom is
Christ and He is the power that sustains all life (Colossian 1:17, Hebrews 1:3)
and at the core of this life is an essence of benevolence and mercy. To put
trust and faith in the power which was Christ himself was to free a believer
from the fear and dependency of things of this world thereby freeing one’s self
up to pursue helping others through benevolent personal acts. Anything less was
a lack of faith in Christ and was by its nature self-centered and selfish. By
taking the yoke of Christ (the Gospel) and becoming a slave to Christ, a person
allowed themselves by volitional action to enter the Kingdom of God through
God’s requirements of obedience. This thereby freed them to do the will of the
One whom they were following which was the sincerest form of love for Him and
was a love that sustains them all, rich or poor.
John 14:15 ~ “If you
love me, keep my commands.”
The
two greatest of these commands/commandments spoke to helping the poor indirectly
by treating one’s neighbor as one’s self as outlined here:
Matthew 22:36-40
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your
mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love
your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two
commandments.”
This
interestingly is a similar response give to the question by the Lawyer in the
story of the Good Samaritan when he asked Jesus what one must do to inherit eternal
life:
Luke 10:25-29 “On one
occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked,
“what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What is written in the Law?” he
replied. “How do you read it?” He answered, “‘Love the Lord your
God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and
with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” “You have answered
correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
If
there is any confusion over who someone’s neighbor is in either of these
passages, it is cleared up in the answer to the lawyer. In short, these
passages show us that our neighbor is any person who is in need. So what we end
up seeing here is the outworking of a person’s salvation or a person who has
eternal life is directly linked to loving God and loving one’s neighbor as
one’s self. The question is why? To me, this is rather simple and commonsense.
If one does love God with all his heart soul and mind, it is a foregone
conclusion that he would then love God’s most beloved creation created in His
image: Humanity. In addition, if a person loves God to the extent commanded in
the bible, they are most certainly obeying God’s commands and therefore His
word (Schlabach 115). If they are doing this, then they are accepting Christ
and what He did for us, which was to die on the Cross to atone for sins. This
would mean that they are saved. It’s a packaged deal!
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