Treasure in Heaven

Today's Reading

Read Matthew 6:19-24: "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven... No one can serve two masters... You cannot serve God and money."

Then read 1 Timothy 6:6-10,17-19: "But godliness with contentment is great gain... For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils." And then Paul's charge to the rich: "They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future."

Reflection

We arrive at the end of this plan where the Bible always arrives: at the heart.

Jesus was not an economist. He did not write policy papers on taxation, minimum wages, or trade agreements. But he said more about money than about almost any other subject — and what he said should shake every comfortable Christian to the core.

"You cannot serve God and money." Not "you should not." Cannot. The Greek word is mammon — not just currency but the entire system of wealth, security, and status that money represents. Jesus presents a stark binary: God or mammon. You will love one and hate the other. There is no third option, no balanced portfolio of dual allegiance.

This is not because money is evil. Paul is precise in 1 Timothy: "The love of money is a root of all kinds of evils." Money itself is a tool. But the love of money — the gravitational pull of wealth on the human heart — is one of the most powerful spiritual forces in the world. It promises security that only God can provide. It offers identity that only Christ can give. It delivers a sense of control that belongs to God alone.

C.S. Lewis diagnosed the mechanism with his characteristic insight: "Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is 'finding his place in it,' while really it is finding its place in him." The danger of wealth is not that it makes you evil but that it makes you comfortable — and comfort is the enemy of dependence on God. The more you have, the less you feel you need God. And the less you feel you need God, the further you drift from the source of all life.

Paul's remedy is contentment. "Godliness with contentment is great gain." Charles Spurgeon expanded on this: "Godliness with contentment is great gain — and it is the rarest commodity in the world, far rarer than gold. The man who has learned to be content has found a treasure that no thief can steal and no market can crash." Contentment is not poverty. It is not asceticism or misery. It is the deep, settled joy of knowing that your identity, security, and hope are rooted in God rather than in your bank account.

And the fruit of contentment is generosity. Paul charges the wealthy not to renounce their riches but to use them: "to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share." This is what Jesus meant by "laying up treasures in heaven." Every act of generosity — every dollar given, every meal shared, every need met — transfers wealth from the temporary to the eternal. You cannot take your money with you. But you can send it ahead, transformed into the currency of love.

Going Deeper

This plan has covered God's ownership, the dignity of work, prophetic judgment on complacent wealth, structural injustice, radical generosity, the role of government, and the spiritual liberation of contentment. The question that remains is the simplest and the hardest: What will you do? Not what economic system do you endorse, but how will you, personally, steward what God has entrusted to you? The measure of your life will not be what you accumulated but what you gave away.